Review: THE GREAT GATSBY Could be Even Better with Less Pop, More Punch

If you go to see “The Great Gatsby: A New Musical” – being presented by Broadway in Boston at Citizens Opera House through July 19 – don’t expect it to live up to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel on which it is based. Indeed, despite its pedigree, the glittery North American touring production is an only so-so proposition.

With a score by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Tyson, this is one of two high-profile musical adaptations since the 1925 novel entered the public domain. “The Great Gatsby: A New Musical” has been playing at New York’s Broadway Theatre since 2024, following its world premiere in 2023 at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, and “Gatsby: An American Myth,” with a score by Florence Welch, of Florence + The Machine, and Thomas Bartlett, and lyrics by Welch, which was given its world premiere by the American Repertory Theater at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge in 2024.

Four feature film versions of “The Great Gatsby” have also been released in the last hundred years, perhaps most memorably in 1974, starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, and in 2013 with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan.

Familiarity with the Fitzgerald story, the basis here for an uneven book by Kait Kerrigan, remains the show’s biggest drawing card. Nick Caraway (Joshua Grosso), a young bond salesman from the Midwest, rents a bungalow in tony West Egg, Long Island, and soon finds himself immersed in the posh world of upscale New Yorkers. His neighbor, Jay Gatsby (Jake David Smith), throws one lavish party after another while trying to attract once again his long-lost love, Daisy Buchanan (Senzel Ahmady), who is Nick’s cousin.

Several years prior, Gatsby went to war and never returned, and Daisy, seeking security, wed the boorish Tom (Will Branner), who has a toned physique and a penchant for womanizing. Gatsby asks Nick for his help to win back Daisy and, although he’s uncertain at first, one glimpse of Tom’s wandering ways has Nick quickly bringing Gatsby and Daisy together. Romance isn’t the only thing in the air, however, as questionable business deals bubble up, and emotions and tensions rise.

Smith as Gatsby and Ahmady as Daisy both possess clear and strong voices, and make an appealing, if seldom arresting, couple. Indeed, the smooth-moving performers never seem entirely suited to center stage. It is Grosso, as Nick, who stands out most in scenes and songs.  Grosso is splendidly paired, too, with Leanne Robinson as Daisy’s friend Jordan Baker, a professional golfer and ahead-of-her-time feminist, who turns Nick’s head.

While there are many very fine voices in this company, the score is top heavy with mostly undistinguished pop that swamps the proceedings. A few exceptions, however, include the scene-setting opener “Roaring On,” with Grosso leading the company, “New Money,” performed by Grosso, Robinson, and the company, and the act-two duet “Better Hold Tight,” also sung by Grosso and Robinson.

Fans of the romance between Gatsby and Daisy may also enjoy Smith and Ahmady’s duets on “My Green Light” and “Go.” Overall, however, the score is shallow, given the story it is endeavoring to tell. There are many talented singers onstage at Citizens Opera House, but the songs – arranged by Howland – come too fast and too furiously, under Marc Bruni’s scattershot direction, to add any real depth to the proceedings. Dominique Kelley’s choreography is dazzling, however, with the dancing party guests fueling the visually stunning musical numbers.

The production’s all-around gorgeousness comes from Paul Tate DePoo III’s scenic and projection design, Cory Pattak’s mood-setting lighting, and Linda Cho’s Tony Award-winning costume designs that include silk and satin evening finery, crisp military uniforms, and the sequined, drop-waisted flapper dresses and bejeweled headbands that were the order of the day in the roaring ‘20s.

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