The Good Gatsby

Wait for ages? Buses? With the removal of copyright protection from F Scott Fitzgerald’s epic novel, we’re about to be bombarded by a – what IS the collective noun for multiple Gatsbys – a clutch, a slew, a bootleg-full?  They’re all appropriate to this enduring story of a showman and playboy from the prohibition era, and his hapless pursuit of first love Daisy Buchanan.

Some say things are best left alone citing the original perfection of the novel. Certainly Baz Luhrmann’s remake of the impeccable 1974 Jack Clayton movie which opens here on Boxing Day has big shoes to fill, DiCaprio replacing Redford and Carey Mulligan supplanting Mia Farrow. But before that, London can expect three June performances by New York Public Theater’s Elevator Repair Service company of ‘Gatz’ an 8-hour Oberammergau-styled marathon with an extended meal break, at the Noel Coward theatre. The other side of the Olympics, there’s a more compact musical version at the King’s Head, a ‘world premiere’ no less, from 7 August.

There’s music in the Wilton’s version too. When not portraying the principal characters, all eight actors don thick round glasses to identify themselves as the vocal backing group, singing a capella a whole lot of vo-do-de-oh-doh with very nice harmonies and some basic Charleston stepping. Unfortunately, as part of the immersive experience which fills the whole of Wilton's from the Green Room to the Chapel of Rest, in the interval and after the show the London Dixieland Jazz Band and a quartet of brilliant dancers provide the sort of display which contrasts the lack of band and full-on dance numbers in this ‘jazz’ Gatsby.

The acting’s mostly good – Michael Malarkey is a suave and covert Jay Gatsby, Christopher Brandon puts all the stuffing into Tom Buchanan’s city shirt, and Kirsty Besterman’s vitreous Daisy is far less waif-like than many interpretations: more Shirley MacLaine than Mia Farrow. We didn’t really have to get our A-level notebooks out to remember that The Great Gatsby is riddled with symbolism – at least two essays’ worth – for the collapse of the American Dream, the widening chasm between the haves and have-nots as the US headed into the Depression, the helpless dependency of the poor on religious symbols, and over all of them the green light on Daisy’s dock representing Gatsby’s hopes and dreams for the future.

Although ambitious, Peter Joucla’s production doesn’t convey these meanings, and for those who loved the movie or the book, something may be lost. Without giving too much away, there’s an important accident which due to the budget has to take place offstage and an incident with a gun which was feeble enough to cause laughter at what could have been a moment of real tension.

But with the jazz band in the bar, the dancers in the attic, a liberal supply of Hendricks’ and tonic from a fountain in the foyer attended by living bronzed naiads and Wilton’s filled to overflowing with people visibly enjoying themselves in their '20s Oxfam finery, such details can be overlooked and this really was a fine night out.


written for Londonist and published on 26 April 2012

Seville Partnership

PUBLICATION DATE 19 SEPTEMBER 2011
Written for londonist.com



At Londonist Towers, our fondness for Wilton’s – the last surviving ‘grand musical hall’ in the country – knows few bounds.  We love its raffish ‘beautiful state of disrepair’ auditorium, its varied repertoire and its super nice cheap bar.

The shabby chic auditorium is so adaptable and for this week’s performances of Carmen it could so easily have been a flamenco dancehall in early nineteenth century Seville.

It finds an ideal partner in soprano Kate Flowers’ dedicated Co-Opera Company.  Based in an unpromising industrial estate in Sydenham, like Wiltons it’s unsupported by any public funding but manages to offer intensive vocal training and workshops to promising singers through an inventive sponsporship scheme which anyone can join.

The singing is mostly excellent and the acoustic makes it all so clear and understandable – even for a Swedish Escamillo and Rumanian Carmen who emphasise the international scope of the company.  Some of the voices take time to warm up, but the ensemble pieces are as pleasurable as the arias with Tom Lowe, Catherine Rooney, Felicity Buckland and particularly Alex Duliba enriching their quartet of supporting roles with bravura performances, and Ian Beadle brilliantly and confidently doubling Zuniga and Morales.

This is a very ‘polite’ production: Carmen done by the West Wittering Young Conservatives, perhaps. Adriana Festeu looks and sounds more Samantha Cameron than a cigarette-factory spitfire, and despite his lovely and strongly sustained lyric tenor, Michael Scott is too scarily Boris Johnson to convince as headstrong soldier Don Jose.

It’s delightful to hear the voices supported by an excellent sixteen-piece orchestra but the acting lets the side down under William Relton’s awkward direction. It’s quite an achievement to mount Carmen with a cast of just nine, and they all work extremely hard, but  when you think how much more was delivered in the same space by the Union’s Iolanthe, it might do this company a service if they could hook up with some of London’s more imaginative fringe theatre directors to put a spark into the staging and characterisations.