By Guilherme Meletti Yazbek
Before the curtain rises, The Great Gatsby – A New Musical already begins to build its world. The sound of waves and distant seagulls drifts through the Benedum Center while the audience settles into their seats. Framed by the illuminated Art Deco proscenium, a luminous seascape stretches before us, its vast blue horizon interrupted only by the iconic green light glowing across the bay. I felt my breath quietly shift: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s world seemed poised to emerge. Yet as the evening unfolded, it gradually became clear that while this Gatsby understands glamour and spectacle with remarkable precision, it struggles to recover the emotional ache that made the novel endure.
If the production ultimately falters, it is certainly not for lack of visual ambition. Paul Tate dePoo III’s scenic and projection design constructs an astonishing succession of environments that continually reshape the stage with fluidity and scale: from Gatsby’s imposing Art Deco mansion to Nick Carraway’s modest-ish cottage, from the desolate gas station in the Valley of Ashes to the sublime seascape separating Gatsby’s estate from the Buchanan residence. Cars glide onto the stage, architectural layers continuously reconfigure the playing space, and projections extend the world far beyond the proscenium. The result is visually sumptuous and often genuinely breathtaking. Like many contemporary Broadway spectacles, however, the production’s reliance on high-definition projection occasionally leaves little room for theatrical imagination. The extraordinary visual apparatus becomes the production’s quiet paradox. The same spectacle that elevates the evening gradually begins to eclipse it, as the emotional and musical foundations beneath this magnificent theatrical architecture struggle to sustain comparable weight.
The production’s emotional architecture, however, proves considerably less persuasive. Jason Howland’s score frequently relies on familiar Broadway mechanisms of intensification—expanding crescendos and extended fermatas that repeatedly signal emotional arrival. Yet these gestures gradually lose dramatic force as the musical material beneath them rarely rises to meet them. No melody lingered in my memory after the performance, and many numbers unfolded as sung dialogue in which text and score rarely seemed to deepen or illuminate one another. Moments seemingly built toward catharsis often arrived with technical precision but never quite reached me. One notable exception is “For Her,” Gatsby’s declaration of love to Daisy (Senzel Ahmady). Ironically, the number derives much of its emotional force not from the central romance itself, but from Gatsby’s interaction with Nick Carraway, which briefly allows vulnerability and intimacy to surface beneath the spectacle.
If the score struggles to sustain emotional intensity, the central relationships face a similar challenge. Gatsby and Daisy never fully acquire the gravitational pull necessary to anchor the evening. Their forbidden longing remains strangely distant, resulting in scenes that feel present on stage without quite landing in the body — I watched it without once holding my breath. Jake David Smith brings evident craft to Gatsby—sudden vocal inflections, flashes of nervousness, and unexpectedly clumsy physical gestures that illuminate the character’s social unease with occasional charm. That craft surfaces most clearly in ‘For Her,’ where vulnerability briefly breaks through. Yet across the evening, the performance never fully coheres. The comic and the tragic registers sit side by side without quite integrating, leaving Gatsby’s longing more illustrated than felt. Smith is clearly capable; what remains missing is a surrounding production that might have drawn him somewhere deeper.
Joshua Grosso fares better as Nick Carraway, offering a grounded narrative presence and one of the evening’s more convincing performances. Yet the adaptation’s treatment of Nick as narrator feels surprisingly intermittent. After establishing him as storyteller in the opening moments, the production gradually allows the narrative perspective that defines Fitzgerald’s novel to fade from view.
Thankfully, the evening finds firmer ground in Dominique Kelley’s choreography. Drawing from Charleston idioms while incorporating contemporary textures and broader physical vocabularies, the movement language carries a distinct stylistic identity of its own. Pliés, rhythmic claps, sensual shifts through the torso and neck, and moments of tap infuse the production with a kinetic vitality that the score and dramaturgy lack. Particularly memorable is a tap sequence in the second act, one of the few moments all evening when I felt something shift in my body, reminding the audience of the ensemble power musical theater can achieve when movement is allowed to take center stage. Markedly effective are the ensemble sections, where movement briefly transforms spectacle into embodied energy. Curiously, however, these moments remain scarcer than one might hope. Marc Bruni’s direction repeatedly returns attention to scenic spectacle and narrative progression, limiting the space in which Kelley’s choreography can fully unfold. One leaves the theater wishing Kelley’s movement language had been allowed to occupy a larger share of the evening.
The Great Gatsby – A New Musical unquestionably achieves the level of technical precision expected of contemporary Broadway spectacle. Scenic transitions unfold seamlessly, projections operate with cinematic fluidity, vocal demands are met with remarkable control, and the visual world remains consistently polished. Yet precision alone cannot sustain dramatic effect. I did not sigh. I did not cry. My breathing never changed. Despite the production’s undeniable craft, emotional intensity rarely materializes with comparable force. Passion remains distant; grief never fully lands; violence arrives muted; longing, paradoxically for a story built upon longing, struggles to take hold. The result is a production that dazzles the eye far more readily than it moves the heart.
A century after its publication, The Great Gatsby continues to invite reinvention. New readings, new media, and new theatrical languages remain not only possible but necessary. This adaptation unquestionably understands spectacle: glamour, scale, visual opulence, and the seductive architecture of excess are all rendered with extraordinary care. What it struggles to recover is the emotional emptiness—and the critical complexity—that made Fitzgerald’s novel endure in the first place. The ambiguities surrounding class, wealth, longing, and the mythology of the American Dream remain largely overshadowed by the production’s commitment to visual splendor. The green light still shines across the bay; the parties remain magnificent; the dream persists. Yet the longing beneath it all—the ache that transforms Gatsby from social spectacle into tragedy—remains strangely out of reach.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh Cultural Trust PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh presentation of The Great Gatsby – A New Musical is at the Benedum Center now through May 31, 2026. Tickts are available at: https://trustarts.org/production/100770/the-great-gatsby
Guilherme is a Brazilian theater and dance critic, practitioner, and scholar whose practice moves between criticism, performance studies, and contemporary artistic practices. He is a PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. www.guilhermeyazbek.com
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Reviews
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