GREAT LOOKS, LITTLE GATSBY

Too loud, too repetitive,
and nowhere near the Jazz Age

Joshua Grosso

The touring production of The Great Gatsby, now at the Citizens Opera House in Boston, gives us Linda Cho‘s Tony Award-winning costumes and great sets by Paul Tate dePoo III, but neither the book by Kait Kerrigan nor the score by Jason Howland (music) Nathan Tysen (lyrics) amplifies F. Scott Fitzgerald’s resonant 1925 novel. Amplification, in fact, is part of the problem. The musical numbers are consistently loud and monotonous, in the sense that they are generally alike and lacking in emotional range. Despite being set in a musically rich era—the Jazz Age—the music evokes the blandest and least memorable productions of late-1950s and early-1960s Broadway. I was waiting to hear the influence of musical greats such as Duke Ellington, George Gershwin, or Ma Rainey, but as far as this show was concerned, they did not exist.

The first national touring company of The Great Gatsby

Senzel Ahmady delivers an appealing and vivacious Daisy Buchanan. Joshua Grosso offers a sympathetic Nick Carraway—an earnest Everyman reminiscent of Jimmy Stewart in search of meaning, only to discover it can’t be found in the mansions of the moneyed. His chemistry with Jordan Baker (Leanne Robinson) makes them the most appealing couple of the bunch—until they aren’t. But while the novel offers a great deal in thematic content (American Repertory Theater’s excellent 2024 world premiere Gatsby: An American Myth focused on the women and working-class characters to good effect), this production doesn’t seem to know which of Fitzgerald’s many thematic threads to interrogate. It’s about the corruptions of wealth and the aftermath of World War I and the conflict between Old Money and the Nouveau Riche and about endless love and the hypocrisies of marriage and changing sexual mores. But in the end, it seems to be about nothing so much as Jay Gatsby’s (Jake David Smith) parties and what they wore—and that is simply not enough to merit two-and-a-half hours of stage time.

Leanne Robinson and company

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photos by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

The Great Gatsby: A New Musical
first national tour
ends on July 19, 2026, at Citizens Opera House, 539 Washington St. in Boston
2 hours and 30 minutes with intermission
for tickets, visit Broadway in Boston
tour continues; for dates and cities, visit The Great Gatsby

for more shows, visit Theatre in Boston

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