Pitlochry Festival Theatre
Four stars
Happy endings don’t come easy in Elizabeth Newman’s new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s twentieth century jazz age American classic. Produced for the 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication in this co-production between Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Derby Theatre, Fitzgerald’s ennui laden yarn of vaulting ambition lays bare how money may talk, but it also corrupts.
As with the book, the story is told by Nick Carraway, here a wannabe writer observing the scene he accidentally falls into with an eye for myth making where everything and everyone becomes material. And what a gift Jay Gatsby is, a self-made nouveau riche socialite with a murky background who only wants to impress his former lover Daisy. She may have sold her soul to marriage with nasty Tom, but is tempted back into Gatsby’s social whirl with devastating results.
Sarah Brigham’s production sets out its store on Jen McGinley’s neon tinged set of staircases either side of an empty stage that projects the air of a high-class speakeasy. Above it, the all-singing, all-dancing cast of nine become the show’s house band, an after hours jazz combo featuring a role-call of torch singers who, under Shonagh Murray’s musical direction, take turns in the spotlight. Inbetween numbers, they watch the spectacle below sporting vintage shades like a cabaret act playing a 3D B-movie.
Nick has his sights set on something bigger for his story, which evolves into a New Journalese tabloid fable on class, wealth and the hedonistic perils of living the high life without a safety net. This is made flesh here by David Rankine as a forceful Nick, with Gatsby’s easy largesse brought to the fore in a confident turn by Oraine Johnson.
Daisy is played by Fiona Wood with a mix of wide-eyed pleasure seeking and cutthroat opportunism, while, as Tom, Tyler Collins channels the laconic sneer of a young Jack Nicholson. There are some fine young cameos too from April Nerissa Hudson as Nick’s ice-cool love interest Jordan, Leah Jamieson as bored party girl Catherine, and especially from Celeste Collier as the hapless but doomed Myrtle Chase. Collier doubles up as a peachy keen cub reporter who will never make the Gatsby guest list in a deliciously turned out burl through what now looks like the beginnings of the American dream’s long drawn out last gasp.
The Herald, July 5th 2025
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