‘Gatsby’ is big and beautiful, but something’s missing

By Rich Fahey

BOSTON – It’s big. It’s bold. It’s beautiful. But in the end the national touring company of the Broadway musical production of “The Great Gatsby” at the Citizens Bank Opera House is largely a huge party that ends badly.

As handsome as the show is, the problem is that at its heart the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald the musical is based on has always been a stone-cold tragedy, a heartbreaking tale of an outsider with questionable “new money” trying to find his way back into the heart of his long-lost love.  

The Broadway production of the musical “The Great Gatsby” starring Jeremy Jordan that opened officially on April 25, 2024, has become a fixture in the New York theater district, grossing over $130 million to date. As of July 2026, it had played 908 performances – 881 regular performances and 27 previews —  in total at the Broadway Theatre.

No arguing with that. But it also garnered just one Tony Award nomination, with Linda Cho a well-deserved winner for Best Costume Design of a Musical.

Set in the summer of 1922, the adapted story centers on Nick Carraway (Joshua Grosso), a young bondsman who moves to Long Island’s West Egg and finds a cheap rental that makes him neighbors with the enigmatic Jay Gatsby (Jake David Smith).

He makes a visit across the bay to see his cousin Daisy Buchanan (Senzel Ahmady) and her husband Tom (Will Branner) in East Egg, an “Old Money” haven. Nick and Tom know each other from college and have an easy rapport.

There Nick finds Daisy, a new mother, desperately unhappy with her husband Tom, who is a controlling philanderer and, we later find, a brutish bore.

When the talk turns to Gatsby and the lavish weekly parties he throws, Daisy becomes skittish and Tom wonders aloud how he made his “new money.”

Nick and Jordan Baker (Leanne Robinson), Daisy’s longtime friend, attend Gatsby’s party, and he admits to Nick that everything he has built is an effort to lure back Daisy, whose father rejected him as a possible suitor five years before because of his social standing.

Both Jay and Nick are World War I vets and they bond over their experiences, and Jay asks a reluctant Nick for his help in putting Daisy back in his arms.

Grosso, a recent Norton Award winner for his work in The Huntington’s “The Light in the Piazza” is again up to the task, even doing his best to find and deliver the needed angst at the end.   Yes, that iconic green light on the Buchanans’ pier across the bay is shown early and often, even serving as a song cue for Gatsby and Daisy (“My Green Light”) at the end of Act I.

The voices in this “Gatsby” are true and strong but the score by Jasion Howland (music) and Nathan Tysen (lyrics) rarely rises above serviceable, with a few exceptions, one being when Smith expounds on his obsession with Daisy in “For Her,” reprised in Act II. And the scene where Gatsby “glams up” the cottage he has rented to Nick for his meeting with Daisy – “Only Tea” – is both comedic and romantic.

That’s because the book by Kait Kerrigan tilts more to the excesses of the Jazz Age and finding humor and romance than the ultimate tragedy, and it doesn’t do justice to several secondary characters who are, nevertheless, crucial to the show’s success. Take Tom’s loveless affair with Myrtle Wilson (Lila Coogan), the wife of garage owner George Wilson (Justin Scott Brown). As written here, Myrtle’s character becomes a tawdry one-note turn, and the character of the financially desperate George, also abused by Tom, is also underwritten.

Gangster Meyer Wolfsheim holds the secret to Jay’s sudden wealth and begins to lean heavily on him; he should be the most menacing of figures, but as played by understudy D’Marreon Alexander at a recent performance was something less than that.

Dominique Kelley’s choreography – which includes some explosive tap sequences – contributes to the Jazz Age vibe and lifts the production numbers.  

The production values are simply sublime and have been brought along on this national tour.  Paul Tate DePoo III’s Drama Desk-winning scenic and projection designs are a visual delight, as is the gilded Art Deco motif of the mansions.  Even Tom’s blue coupe and Jay’s yellow Rolls Royce make appearances onstage.

Given Kerrigan’s book, I don’t see how Director Marc Bruni could have delivered the American tragedy that Fitzgerald wrote. The principals do the best they can with the book and the score, but they can’t make up for what isn’t there.

Ah, yes. The green light on the pier of the Buchanan mansion in East Egg is front and center in the final moments of Carraway’s narration after Daisy and Tom’s “carelessness” has ruined several lives, and they have simply picked up and moved on to the next escape.

And, it is well noted, the adaptation features Nick’s iconic coda: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

In the midst of this emotional nadir, another party breaks out onstage. It seems the death of Gatsby, the collateral damage to others, and the destruction of The American Dream were just mere excuses for another Jazz Age party.

The national touring production of “The Great Gatsby.” Based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Book by Kait Kerrigan. Music by Jason Howland, lyrics by Nathan Tysen. At the Citizens Bank Opera House through July 19. Broadwayinboston.com