"The Great Gatsby". Trinity College Garden. Review by Victoria Tayler

How do you bring something as titanic as The Great Gatsby to life? This production does it with an addicting mix of inventive choreo, cinematic acting, some well placed umbrellas, and costume to boot. It walks the line between tragedy and parody, and the result is delightful, light-hearted, but touching, immersive, real. Perhaps the best part of this production is that it just exudes excitement. The band is loud and joyous. The cast really gets into the dance numbers. They flounce around in sequined costumes, arms extended. It’s a play made with love (or perhaps adoration), and the enthusiasm gives it the flavour of indulgence, glamour, and euphoria which is the essence of The Great Gatsby. Who needs a Broadway set? George Lyons and Izzy Moore can conjure an aeroplane out of pure imagination, create a dance hall out of grass, build a car out of dresses and umbrellas. I watch them play with reality and remember why I love theatre.

The Trinity Players’ Gatsby is both familiar and surprising. It evokes what I like to think of as ‘The Gatsby lean in,’ meaning, the total submergence of all moral judgement, and the refusal to think of anything except the intoxicating aesthetic of the play. Yet, it also skips over some of the Gatsby stereotypes and tropes I’ve come to expect. Gatsby is a character made mythical. For many, he’s the (literary) incarnation of a larger than life image of the 1920s, characterised by hedonism, charisma, and booze in buckets. Yet, this production gives us more of Gatsby the man, less of Gatsby the idea. He’s palpably vulnerable, obviously imperfect, totally romantic. Indeed, some parts of this production had me wondering if Dominic Murphy-O’Connor had tuned into a different Leonardo Di Caprio, more Romeo and Juliet and Titanic than extravagant The Great Gatsby. This is certainly a man who would buy an entire mansion across the harbour rather than talk to the woman he loved, and then lie for her when she engages in pseudo-accidental vehicular manslaughter. I can't really imagine him possessing the edge to run an illicit moonshine empire, but that’s tangential, water under the bridge by the time the audience arrives.

The deliciousness of the Gatsby aesthetic is there even when the main cast is off-stage. Ensemble actors Fynn Hyde, playing Mr McKee, and Nina Bayford, playing Mrs McKee, are a microdose of indulgence. As far as I remember, these characters were supposed to be unpleasant, burdensome, and resolutely uncharismatic. These two are anything but, and I love it. The decision to go with immersive theatre only exacerbates the headiness of the whole experience. At various points, members of the ensemble cast slide up to ‘take your order’ or catch your eye in a dance. Hyde even steals part of an audience member’s drink. Assumedly a friend, but who knows? There’s a sense of uncertainty and charm everywhere. It’s incredibly infectious.  

The looming cultural afterlife of Gatsby also lets you forget just how great the other characters in the story can be. The Nick of the book verges on grating, convinced of his own goodness, ultimately rather boring, unextraordinary, generic. He gets in the way of the settings and the characters we love, and reminds one all too horribly of themselves. But the Nick of this production, played by Alexander McCallum, is hypnotic, completely enchanting in his own right. He leads you, lightly, through the tragedy, and he has a sort of musical theatre style (in his voice, or maybe movements?) which makes it hard to take your eyes off of him. Maybe I was thinking too much with the immersive theatre angle of the production, but his delivery strangely reminded me of the directorial style sported at the current Cabaret run on West End: expressive but precise, sort of sincere, sort of desperately sad. In Gatsby, the emotional highs are high, but the lows are low, and McCallum won’t let the audience dodge any of them. 

And it’s never too heavy. There’s a nihilist edge to the breakdown of love in Gatsby which is a little funny, and the cast really gets that. Clarke’s Daisy is not sad, she’s melancholic to a point of provocative, illustrative extravagance. Jane Brenninkmeyer’s Myrtle is bawdy and burlesque whilst being totally tragic. Gillies Macdonald as Tom Buchanan is quite sinister, but he’s also laughable. The acting and directing, and especially the sophisticated choreography, allows us to see Buchanan in all his horrors without being distasteful. Macdonald floats between inhabiting a genuinely aggressive presence and the idea of an aggressive, but emasculated, man. It’s troubling in one part, deeply humorous in the next.

The dynamics between various combinations of characters is crucial to the Gatsby, and often pulled off with great success here. Yates and Macdonald nail the performance of a debauched, hateful, but anguished, affair. George Eustace as George B. Wilson, mourning his murdered wife, is devastatingly sincere and totally heartbreaking. Perhaps in keeping with the themes of Gatsby, the psychological wars between characters had me chewing knuckles, but the kitschier chemistry between the supposedly loved-up couples (Nick and Jordan, Gatsby and Daisy) was less ensnaring, almost trivial. I wondered if that was the point, but it feels slightly unintentional. However, one could speculate as to whether this is a problem on the part of the viewer: perhaps my view of love is just jaded. That said, my heart was stirred at certain points. A special mention must be made for the “such lovely shirts” scene, which this production runs with as the highpoint of romantic fantasy. As Gatsby, Daisy, and Nick run off stage, sprawling, throwing shirts, and giggling, I am forced to admit it’s utterly, undeniably charming.  

So, how do you make Gatsby come to life? A sense of how to square consuming tragedy with seductive frivolity definitely helps. This team certainly gets that, and does it well. Glitz and glamour is essential, and it’s provided liberally. Immense talent, passion, and a huge imagination are the most important ingredients of all. Lucky for us, in that regard, this team is way overqualified.