an american faerie tale: a {glitzy} tragedy in two acts of the roaring 20's

oohhhh boy, the feeeeelings.

okay. so we know american entertainment is hesitant to go with NEW ideas. a recognizable name (ex: THE GREAT GATSBY) is gonna get more people in the seats.

and, yes, the great american novel (according to school boards and required reading and the glamorization of white men as the literati of yore) recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary. (as of 2026, and my seeing of this musical, the slim volume is now at the fine age of 101, ol’ sport.)

and sure, the idea to bring the Great Gatsby himself to the glittering, art deco, razzle-dazzle 1920’s new york is… uh, also great? but…

do we not remember how this book ends??

i don’t think 80%+ of the audience last night did. and not that there’s anything wrong with that…? maybe.

there IS tragedy in the world, of course.

there’s still love and murder and jealousy and criminals and gangsters and oppulence and the disparity between the haves and the have-nots.

and yet…. do i want a broadway MUSICAL, which i NorMALLy go to to feel HAPPY, to try and fool me into blissful razzle-dazzle state of joy when i know the inevitable is coming??

one enters the theatre to the sound of seagulls and gently crashing waves. and there’s that GREEN LIGHT blinking on the screen porjection.

okay, scottie. WE GET IT! (thank you so much for including Symbolism so that our 10th grade english teachers had something for us to write an essay about! p.s. hi, mrs. grieg! i love you! i learned so much, i promise!)

like many good stories, we’re introduced to this opulent world by an outsider. in this instance, nick. who moves into the cabin next door to gatsby’s mansion/castle. (that was my favourite set, by the way. the layers of foliage. and gatsby’s awkwardness with daisy and jumping over the fence. and nick and jordan under the umbrella as it “rained.” it was lovely.)

the set design was pretty great throughout. the occasional use of screen projections (ex: forced perspective art to show daisy’s giant house in the background as jordan, the professional female golfer she’s trying to set up with nick, hits golfballs into the water towards gatsby’s house. all the while encouraging daisy to go ahead and have an affair with gatsby since tom, her abusive jock of a husband, is obviously sleeping around.)

the set projections did some cgi animation to help us believe the car was driving over a bridge into manhattan, too. which my dad thought was cool aside from the headlights shining straight into the audience to blind us.

left: the show poster. selling it. but is it accurate?! right: me and dad, second to last row of the orchestra -ground floor- my new favourite spot near the switchboards! (and yes: dad is why i love musical theatre. i got to grow up on mary martin’s peter pan thanks to dad. and if there’s a show he wants to see, he’ll offer to take me, too. yay!) :)

so aside from the backscreen projections, there are moving wall parts. and a stage. with lights on the stairs.

the curtains in daisy’s house were diaphanous and gauzy. while gatsby’s house was all wood and bookshelves and bronze. and oversized lanterns. (i promise we get it, scott!!)

(although, tbh, the wall of shirts above his bed felt stolen straight from the baz luhrmann film of 2013.)

as i mentioned, the front of the cottage set was my fave.

the forced perspective of the pool (again: how is the ending shocking to people?! the story is over a hundred years old and we were all forced to read it in high school!) didn’t work for me, but whatevs. at least i knew what was coming so i didn’t jump out of my seat like the lady in front of me.

and what stood out to me the most was the colors. yeah, gatsby’s study was brown and more brown. but the sliding art deco walls and the rest of it? we were all green and gold.

which brought to mind the emerald city and, of course, the yellow brick road leading through oz. (because in my head, all roads lead back to l. frank baum and the wonderful wizard of, i suppose.) ;)

so sitting at the peace center last night, i finally correlated the two. baum’s first oz book was published in 1900. fitzgerald’s gatsby? only 25 years later.

both american faerie tales.

the later, post the great war. it wasn’t america’s struggle for survival in the new frontier anymore. it was fighting for the meaning of life after so much tragedy. reveling in the decadence for the nouveau riche. and old money families trying to keep their lineages, power, and legacies going.

i guess, even without the murders and the suicide, what was hardest to watch last night was that the decadence wasn’t soothing (or fooling) anybody.

baum gave us dorothy escaping sepia-toned farmland for a colourful city of fantasy and self-actualization.

fitzgerald gave us soldiers-turned-nouveau riche for the sake of winning their pre-war sweethearts. and women in abusive marriages with no way out and no hope for their daughters, either. so the american dream remains: you can still get rich here, but it won’t make you happy.

(no surprise: i prefer the story with the lions, tigers, bears, & shiny, magical shoes.) ;)

my perfect view of the house from the second-to-last-row of the orchestra level. thanks, peace center! :D

the (proverbial) curtain opens on gatsby in his white suitcoat, his back to the audience as he stares across the water at that blinking green light.

a wall moves, and instead of gatsby, we now have our narrator, nick. (he gets a laugh at “turns out manhattan’s expensive.”)

so if you DO know the story ahead of time, the opening has just reminded us of the inevitable. we’ve already framed the tale: there’s the title character, ol’ sport! there’s gonna be pining! lots of it! and, buckle up, it’s gonna be a tragedy! but enough of that, we’re here to sing! so the first song begins with a happy bang!

behind nick appears a silhouette lineup of flappers and gents ready to dance. people are looking for the party after the war. LIFE (even an empty one; to feel SomeTHINg, even if they’re drowning that LIFE in illegal booze) to combat the DEATH and loss suffered in the trenches. but we know more death is coming, on our shores, no matter how many sequins and headdresses they wear to distract and blind us.

and to make a slim, 200-page book a two and a half hour musical? it felt like a stretch. (dad likened it to evita, which he hates for refusing to have any dialogue. they sing the whole show and it still drives him nuts to think about it! ha!)

the songs? well, i happen to know that jeremy jordan originated the role on broadway. and i feel like the only songs worth listening to were gatsby’s. THAT VOICE. (the actor last night, jake david smith, had a STUNNING voice for those solos; can’t say as he nailed the “mid-atlantic” dialect, but his singing voice and those songs were *chef’s kiss.)

so yeah, the song “for her,” even if we heard it 3x? lovely.

the rest of it? meh.

the only time i REALLY smiled was the three minutes or so of tap dancing we got at the party scene the night daisy and tom come to gatsby’s. again: wincing for the inevitable brutality of the rest of evening.

but the whole story is just sad and awful. so while i admired the four EXCEPTIONAL dancers (go purple!), well, it’s just booze and affairs and death and abuse and sorrow.

i appreciated the inclusive casting (all colors! all sizes!), and the stand out performance was by leanne robinson in the role of jordan baker. couldn’t take my eyes off of her. and her voice was SpeCTAcuLAR. (DID love her line: “well, i’m glad we’re in new york so i can kiss you.” but daisy had way-less of an empowered ending. gargh.) :(

i don’t have any fringe in my closet at the moment so i went with polka dots on polka dots and my most comfortable vintage-vibes heels.

do i appreciate ALL the actors’ talents? obviously, YES. i can neither sing nor dance.

was the live orchestra AMaZING? FOR SURE YES.

were the sets pretty cool and the outfits shiny? yeah.

story? depressing.

songs? probably too many.

do people go because they’ve actually heard of it? probably.

was i super nervous going into act two because i was skeptical the audience knew what was coming? resoundedly affirmative and accurate.

(i also couldn’t help but think of SMASH, the tv show, where they take their marilyn monroe musical for an out of town preview and have to rewrite it so it doesn’t end with her death. no one wanted to clap when the lights went out. how were they gonna wrap this tragedy up?!)

did the show feel longer than the time it takes to read the novel? uh-huh.

am i still gonna download gatsby’s songs from the ocbr so i can have a (jeremy jordan) tenor in my ear? uh, yeah.

so, sad to say i’m not giving it a stellar review. no fault of the performers. of course i’m glad they’re employed. but i think i can handle the movie better. it’s a spectacle but not trying to make you think it’s something it’s not.

i’m grateful for live theatre. i just didn’t feel right enjoying such a painful story.