Leanne Robinson in the First National Touring Company of The Great Gatsby | Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
As a disclaimer, you should know that I hated reading F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel in high school. It’s a literary classic and all, so perhaps I owe it another try as an adult, but I’m not eager to revisit it. I’m sure its take on the American Dream, class and corruption will have insights to offer adult Istvan, but I just don’t remember liking any of the characters or, more crucially, finding them at all compelling. I also still have unresolved scholastic trauma from the dissection of all those symbols. The colours of the damn cars, ugh… what a slog!
This musical version of The Great Gatsby, presented by Mirvish, is certainly an event—teeming with the glitz and glamour of golden age Broadway spectacle. Directed for maximalist visual impact by Marc Bruni, it has impressive razzle-dazzle. Paul Tate de Poo III’s scenery chews itself as it showcases an array of art deco facades gliding in and out, providing frames for a vast canvas of projected backgrounds that are rather impressively well integrated.
With all the palatial estates, waterfront vistas and the industrial wasteland of the “Valley of Ashes” (with the oppressively watchful eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg’s billboard), I was especially transported by an ominous scene (“One Way Road”) set beneath an overpass where the early morning sun has absolutely no warmth for the tragic character of Myrtle Wilson (Lila Coogan), walking towards her pathetic dream of a better life. Wilson gives colourful, playfully haughty dimension to this abject persona.
It didn’t particularly like the song… or any of them for that matter. Written by Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen, they have that ubiquitous contemporary musical theatre sound and work well enough in context, but I found them all pretty generic and forgettable. One of the most banal was “Shady,” the second act opener that conveys the nefarious bootlegging behind Gatsby’s new money. Everyone swooshing about in dark trenchcoats and fedoras is more goofy than menacing. Sorry, Dominique Kelley (choreographer), your flapper sequences are very snazzy though.
As in the book, our narrator here is Nick Carraway (Joshua Grosso), an upstanding anchor in this tempest of 1920s debauchery, decadence and moral decay. The other main players are: his cousin, Daisy Buchanan (Senzel Ahmady), an opportunistic debutant in an unhappy yet financially stable marriage with the arrogant, abusive and unfaithful Tom Buchanan (Will Branner), the story’s entitled representative of old money; Jordan Baker (Leanne Robinson), a professional golfer and cynical foil for Nick when she falls into a romance with him; and Gatsby himself (Jake David Smith), the newly wealthy entrepreneur and hopeless romantic pining for his lost love, Daisy.
Jake David Smith in the First National Touring Company of The Great Gatsby | Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
Though Smith’s Gatsby is a bit more endearingly bashful than I remember him, nobody here stood out as especially persuasive or compelling. It isn’t the performers fault either. They get swallowed up in the massive scenery. Even in quiet, two-hander moments, they feel hard to access because, from a directorial standpoint, there isn’t much dimension to their interactions—so often, dialogue scenes are banal, with characters just talking in front of gorgeous vistas. Even the grand extravaganzas eventually feel flat. It’s a nitpick to point out how flimsy the actually scenery is as it wobbles and sways about, but the stagey artifice of this touring production, creeping in at the edges, does occasionally spoil the illusion.
One could argue, I guess, that the hollowness of the mise en scène is thematically deliberate, echoing the gaping void where human virtue should be, but I don’t think the production is playing on that level. It is, of course, quite detailed in its faithfulness to the motifs of the novel. Gatsby’s hopeful green light beckoning from across the bay is there. The on-stage and drivable cars are the right colours. The baleful “eyes of God” billboard is quite intensely rendered, though its symbolic weight is significantly undermined here by the sledge-hammer-to-the-head blatancy of the song “God Sees Everything.”
Though far more modest than the colossal, fireworks-laden exhibitions to come, the number that struck me as the most genuinely expressive and theatrically articulate occurs early on. As Tom and Myrtle carry out their affair in her sister’s apartment, the claustrophobia-inducing space looms around Nick like a seedy brothel. The furniture swirls around him as he dizzily flops and slithers about trying to extricate himself from the situation.
As deliciously overwrought as its aesthetics are—shout out to Linda Cho’s lovely period costumes, the fabulous hair and wigs by Charles G. LaPointe and Rachael Geier, and Cory Pattak’s sumptuous lighting—it all feels pretty empty and forgettable. I will give The Great Gatsby musical this: I enjoyed it a lot more than the source material at 17, that’s for sure.
The Great Gatsby
August 4 to 23, 2026
CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre
(244 Victoria Street)
2 hours, 35 minutes (includes intermission)
The First National Touring Company of The Great Gatsby | Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade