The Great Gatsby
★★★★★ Sensational
Pitlochry Festival Theatre: 27 June – 25 Sept
Review by Rebecca Mahar
The Great Gatsby is an extraordinarily difficult story to adapt, but Elizabeth Newman has done it, in a dazzling, hopeful, forlorn and febrile production, helmed by Sarah Brigham and co-produced by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Derby Theatre.
Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of the same name, The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a writer and veteran of the Great War turned bond salesman, who moves to the Long Island village of West Egg to start afresh.
Nick Carraway is the fixed point in the sea of chaos that is Gatsby. He is, as Fitzgerald wrote, “rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people”. It is this aspect that Newman has seized upon in her adaptation, to great success.
David Rankine (Nick Carraway) and Oraine Johnson (Gatsby ) in The Great Gatsby. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
When Nick visits his flapper-turned-housewife cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her overbearing and adulterous husband Tom, a friend of Nick from his Yale days, in neighbouring old-money East Egg their friend Jordan Baker mentions Gatsby. The enigmatically wealthy Jay Gatsby, whose mansion is a riot of parties, happens to be Nick’s neighbour and, as we quickly discover, the former love of Daisy’s life.
After attending one of Gatsby’s parties and finally meeting his mysterious neighbour, Nick is quickly caught up in the tumultuous story unfolding around him: his quick, fast friendship with Gatsby; Gatsby’s yearning for Daisy, using Nick as a go-between to arrange a reunion; Daisy’s troubled marriage and desire for freedom; Nick’s decaying friendship with Tom and his own fledgling romance with Baker.
beautifully tailored
Newman frames the play with Nick, after everything has happened, attempting to write it all down, to finish the story, to find a meaningful ending in the tragedy of Jay Gatsby. He narrates as a way of unpicking it all, not just to us, but for himself. It is that desperate need which drives the story.
Played out on the sweeping staircases and clean marble lines of Jen McGinley’s set, the drama moves along vignette-like, with beautifully tailored costumes (also by McGinley) and sumptuous lighting from Emma Jones completing its art deco world of opulence and tainted dreams.
The cast of The Gtreat Gatsby. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
Sasha Harrington’s movement direction shines throughout the piece, and is of particular note in several exceptional slow-motion sequences. Dance is an integral part of Gatsby, set as it is in a world of parties and excess, and the choreography in this production is perfectly balanced between stylisation and realism.
The brilliant company of actor-musicians do double-duty throughout, in addition to their dramatic roles filling out the bandstand set at the top of the staircase. Jazz-age standards and more modern tunes arranged in that vintage, under the musical direction of Shonagh Murray, help propel the narrative and aid transitions, ensuring the stage is never still or silent for long, and drawing the audience deeper into Gatsby’s world.
vulnerable insouciance
At the heart of that world, Jay Gatsby is played with vulnerable insouciance by Oraine Johnson. Impeccable dance moves and a deliberately casual manner clothe the longing and insecurity of Gatsby, all managed with exceptional skill by Johnson. It’s easy to want the best for Johnson’s Gatsby, and to have your heart broken when his last pure rush of belief in Daisy’s love is betrayed.
The Band. The Great Gatsby. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
Fiona Wood’s Daisy, meanwhile, is a masterpiece in handling this complicated character, torn between past, present, and future. The reality of her situation and the constraints of her time doom Daisy, but Wood’s absolute sincerity makes it possible to believe that she might get her fairytale— and that she might have a decent life when it all falls apart.
Opposite Wood, Tyler Collins’s Tom Buchanan looms in blunt, derisively superior fashion, speaking with complete confidence about his class’s right to rule in society. Buchanan is unquestionably awful, but Collins still manages to make him grotesquely sympathetic in the end, both in his reconciliation with Daisy and his grief at the loss of his mistress.
superb
The entire company are superb, filling out the world of Gatsby with multiple characters, song, dance, and exhaustive detail. In any version of this story, however, and especially in Newman’s, the weight of making it work falls heavily upon Nick Carraway.
David Rankine (Nick Carraway, centre) with April Nerissa Hudson, Louis Newman and Leah Jamieson in The Great Gatsby. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
David Rankine’s Carraway is a triumph. Flitting between reliving the past and narrating it as he struggles to puzzle out its meaning, Rankine maintains the disparate threads of his story throughout. He delivers a Carraway that is still part of the story in his narration; he is not detached from what has happened, but inextricably tied to it, and forever changed. Though named for Gatsby, this is Nick Carraway’s play.
Near the end, when any adaptation of this story threatens to flounder in Fitzgerald’s denouement, Rankine’s delivery of Newman’s final, perfectly-crafted speech propels the conclusion out of cynicism and despair at the unfulfilled American Dream.
The potential for listless brooding burst into hope and energy and the idea that the green light across the water was not just hopeless longing but an ideal— that the orgastic future may yet be reached, and we need not be borne back, ceaselessly into the past.
Running time: Two hours and fifteen minutes (including one interval)
Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Port-Na-Craig, Pitlochry, PH16 5DR
Fri 27 June – Thur 25 Sept 2025
Evenings: 7:30pm (June 27 & 28; July 1, 4, 17, 18, 31; Aug 1, 9, 14, 19; Sept 4, 9, 19, 24)
Matinees: 2pm (July 2, 5; Aug 10, 20, 30; Sept 5, 10, 20, 25)
Access performances: BSL Interpreted (5 Sept 2pm); Relaxed & Dementia Friendly (20 Aug 2pm); Captions (30 Aug 2pm).
Tickets and details: Book here.
Derby Theatre, 15 Theatre Walk, St Peter’s Quarter, Derby, DE1 2NF
Fri 3 – Sat 25 Oct 2025
Tue – Sat: 7.30pm. Wed, Sat mats: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
The sweeping staircases and clean marble lines of Jen McGinley’s set for The Great Gatsby. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
ENDS
