BROADWAY REVIEW: ‘Gatsby’ brings back Big Broadway but lacks heart

“The Great Gatsby” is what many people think of when they ponder a big Broadway night out: a familiar yet glamorous title from the Jazz Age, a star tenor in the titular role, songs of passion, obsession and resolve set to string-heavy orchestrations, and a massive Art Deco set cascading off the stage, which has the décor to match.

Those old-fashioned components might be enough for this title (now helpfully in the public domain) to find an audience.

There’s unceasing public appetite for the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American novel, a racy story of decadence, infidelity and lies. Every time I’ve seen some version of it — and there have been many — I’ve seen at least some audience members dressed to the nines in suits and gowns. People raise their game when they’re taking a date to “The Great Gatsby,” even if they’re far from Broadway.

That said, this new musical, as penned by Kait Kerrigan with music composed by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Dylan, makes you feel very little, except when Howland’s lush melodies are reaching their climax. Even then, the feelings that flow are more admiration for Howland’s craft than the kind of emotion that flows back into an embrace of story.

While it’s a massive show at the Broadway Theatre, Marc Bruni’s production, first seen at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse, doesn’t really convey the sense of flapper-age decadence that created the adjective “Gatsbyesque.” This isn’t an especially sensual show; no one seems to pulse with sexual desire, notwithstanding the huge bed that rolls onstage at one point. (As does an automobile).

Why the strange remove? A decision was made here to convert everything into dialogue and eschew the famous narrative voice of Nick Carraway (Noah J. Ricketts). It has the effect of making you wonder what Nick is even doing in the show, given his peripheral relationship to the central story of Jay Gatsby (Jeremy Jordan), Gatsby’s pursuit of Daisy Buchanan (Eva Noblezada) and the impact of that quest on Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski), Myrtle Wilson (Sara Chase), Jordan Baker (Samantha Pauly) and George Wilson (Paul Whitty).

Ricketts plays Nick as a bland, observational dude, not so different from Cliff in “Cabaret,” which makes some sense, but not so much when he’s shorn of his ability to share his thoughts about what he sees and experiences. Without that, stuff still happens, but little in this show helps an audience put it into any kind of fresh context.

There’s a lot of plot to get through, of course, and “Gatsby” covers the familiar ground reasonably well.

Howland is one of the most gifted young American composers, one still waiting for the right material to fully break out. He has written some lovely ballads for Jordan, whose voice soars to the back of the giant theater, and for Noblezada, who’s appealing but still needs more definition to fill out the role of Daisy.

Another problem with the book and the staging, though, is that it tends to treat everything on the same temporal level. Time does not slow down before the climactic accident and, while it sure comes as a surprise, it also verges on the unintentionally comic.

Dominique Kelley has created some serviceable party dancing, but the show, in my view, is under-choreographed. These are talented performers who could do so much more than what is mostly social dance, not so different from someone’s Gatsby-themed shebang.

The passion of Jay and Daisy somehow never moves. Jordan mostly plants himself and sings his face off, which is great as far as it goes, but the show’s lack of fluidity is a big problem.

Audiences don’t exactly need their hand held by Nick or anyone else through “Gatsby,” but given the familiarity of this territory, we do crave a distinctive point of view. Beyond exploiting this famously beguiling title, it’s never clear what this telling really wants to say.