Review: THE GREAT GATSBY: A NEW MUSICAL at Connor Palace

F. Scott Fitzgerald's iconic 1925 novel "The Great Gatsby" has been adapted into everything from plays and movies to television shows, ballets, and a video game. While rarely made into a musical (the first being The Yale Dramatic Association's in 1956), 2024's Tony Award-winning THE GREAT GATSBY: A NEW MUSICAL with music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Nathan Tysen, and a book by Kait Kerrigan, roared into Cleveland this week to close out Playhouse Square's 2025-26 KeyBank BROADWAY SERIES in style.

Billed as a grand production befitting the 21st century, the two-act, two-and-a-half-hour Art Deco spectacle set in the 1920s jazz era was essentially two musicals in one. 

The first act, up to the beginning of the second act, was a musical comedy, a rather unusual take on a masterpiece of American dramatic literature, but one that proved surprisingly funny and quite entertaining. The remainder of the second act was more in keeping with the tone of the novel's tragic love story and its dark critique of the American Dream, exploring themes of wealth, class, morality, and disillusionment among Long Island's elites. 

The familiar tale of mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby (Jake David Smith) and his obsession with former lover Daisy Buchanan (Senzel Ahmady) is told through the eyes of Daisy's cousin and Gatsby confidant, Nick Carraway, portrayed brilliantly by Joshua Grosso, using dialogue and twenty dialogue-driven songs that draw on direct quotes from the novel paired with new material written for the production. 

While not a completely faithful adaptation of the novel, the musical roughly followed its main plot during its performance this past Wednesday, June 10, at Playhouse Square's Connor Palace theater.  

Missing from it were several characters from the novel, including the owl-eyed man, as well as some scenes. The production's 21st-century perspective also meant that it adopted a modern feminist approach to its female characters' thinking and invented an engagement plotline for Nick and Daisy's amateur golfer friend, Jordan Baker, portrayed with spunk and aloof coolness by Leanne Robinson, that is not found in the novel. New scenes and character motivations were also added.

Howland's emotive jazz- and pop-infused score for the musical was performed solidly by a live orchestra with several local musicians, led by conductor Charlie Alterman. And while none of the show's twenty songs were the type of stand-alone hits audience members would likely go home singing, a half-dozen of them were in-the-moment beauties, including lively opener "Roaring On," sung by Grosso and the show's multi-generational and multi-talented ensemble.

In addition to the first act introducing the audience to the production's main characters through several illustrative song-and-dance numbers, we got our first look at Linda Cho's glitzy, Tony Award-winning Roaring Twenties-inspired costumes, infused with Vegas showgirl and Liberace-style boldness. 

One of those song beauties, "New Money," sung by Jordan, Nick, and the company, came during Nick's initial visit with cousin Daisy and her loud, philandering husband Tom (Will Branner), whom she calls a brute for his alcohol-fueled tidares and physical abuse of her. The song transitions the scene to one of Jay Gatsby's opulent and raucous parties that Jordan has heard of, filled with glamour, merrymaking guests, and fireworks. Nick and Jordan arrive in Gatsby's yellow Rolls-Royce, which rolls onto the stage. 

After being summoned by the mysterious Gatsby, who's not attending his own shindig, Nick and Jay talk about their shared WWI experience, including veiled references to PTSD, Jay's time at Oxford, his affair with Daisy before her marriage to Tom, and his unyielding desire to rekindle their relationship with Nick's help. 

Unlike the suave bon vivant portrayals of Gatsby by Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio, Smith's demeanor as Gatsby was more rom-com-neurotic. He was a bit clumsy, and given to comedic double takes and vocal inflections. Together, Smith and Grosso's humorous banter was like watching a classic Bob Hope and Bing Crosby buddy film.

Another of the first act's memorable songs, "For Her," sung by Smith, followed. Pining for Daisy, the song showcased Smith's considerable vocal chops, combining choir-boy etherealness with extended-note belting stamina.

Ahmady as Daisy also got to show off her vocal chops in the heartfelt "For Better or Worse," where she resigned herself to a compromised life with Tom and the one thing good in their lives, their infant daughter.

Perhaps the funniest scene in the act was Nick being duped by Tom and his mistress, Myrtle (Lila Coogan), into going to a house of ill repute, where he got drunk and a swinger couple propositioned him. The scene, filled with double entendres and slapstick humor, was bonzer.

Act One concluded with the tune "My Green Light," sung by Smith and Ahmady, alluding to the light seen from Gatsby's mansion across Long Island Sound to the boat dock at Daisy's mansion, which represents his deep emotional connection to her.

The show's second act kicked off with another song-and-dance gem, "Shady," performed with Broadway moxie and power by Edward Staudenmayer as Gatsby's mobster partner, Meyer Wolfsheim, who was said to have fixed the World Series, and the show's ensemble. Staudenmayer was exceptional in the show-stealing scene that marked the end of the production as a musical comedy.

The remainder of the show leaned into the drama and tragedy of the characters' lives, in which relationships and plans fell apart with gut-punching regularity. 

Several more memorable musical numbers sprinkled the act, beginning with Smith's phenomenal performance as Gatsby singing "Past Is Catching Up to Me" after a heated argument with Nick over his delusions of a future life with Daisy, with Nick telling Gatsby, "You can't repeat the past." Gatsby replying, "You don't want to live in regret, old sport." 

That was followed by show choreographer Dominique Kelley's best effort, a marvelously danced tap sequence contained within the showstopping song-and-dance number, "La Dee Dah with You," performed by Joann Gilliam as singer Gilda Gray and the company during the second of Gatsby's over-the-top parties.

The meat of THE GREAT GATSBY: A NEW MUSICAL as a tragedy then followed in quick succession. A return to the Valley of Ashes and to George and Myrtle Wilson's service station home revealed that Myrtle was pregnant with Tom Buchanan's baby, and the poignant song "One-Way Road," about being "the other woman," was sung with heart by Coogan as Myrtle.  

The scene also delved into George's (Tally Sessions) anger with Myrtle and his equating a giant advertising billboard overlooking his business for an oculist in Queens, featuring two giant eyes wearing glasses as the eyes of God who sees everything. This nod to the novel's famous cover art, Spanish artist Francis Cugat's painting "Celestial Eyes," was a nice touch.

Per the novel, Myrtle is hit by Gatsby's Rolls Royce that Daisy is driving and killed; George, in a fit of rage, blaming Gatsby, shoots him dead at his home and himself, and Nick and Jordan break up over her attitudes concerning accountability. 

The musical ended, as the novel does, with Nick's prophetic words: "so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." 

THE GREAT GATSBY: A NEW MUSICAL runs through June 28, 2026, as part of the KeyBank Broadway Series at Playhouse Square's Connor Palace theater, 1615 Euclid Avenue in Downtown Cleveland. Showtimes are Tuesdays – Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 1:30 and 7:30 p.m., and Sundays at 1:00 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $34.80 to $174 and are available at playhousesquare.org. For more information on ticket sales, call (216) 241-6000. For group sales, call (216) 640-8600. 

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