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    Review: A New ‘Great Gatsby’ Leads With Comedy and Romance

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    This musical adaptation, now on Broadway, is a lot of Jazz Age fun. But it forgot that Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel endures because it is a tragedy.Jay Gatsby — self-made enigma, party host extraordinaire and talk of the summer season in West Egg, Long Island — doesn’t carry his insecurities lightly. The facade of his wealth-drenched life is a grand and precarious creation, and propping it up requires constant vigilance.His is new money, so he has to prove his worth to the snobberati. Thus his pathetic habit of showing that photo of himself in his Oxford days to people he has barely met. Or, more endearingly, his over-the-top insistence on glamming up the humble cottage of his neighbor, Nick Carraway, when the lost love of Gatsby’s life, the fabled Daisy Fay Buchanan, is coming over for tea.In the new musical “The Great Gatsby,” which opened on Thursday night at the Broadway Theater, the grass outside the cottage is groomed, flowers are everywhere, and a fleet of servants is ferrying food. And Jeremy Jordan’s Gatsby is an adorably panicked basket case, second-guessing in charming comic song his plan to ambush Eva Noblezada’s Daisy with a reunion.“She is late, so I’m off to go scream in a jar,” he sings, but Daisy arrives before he can flee. Unsuavely, he topples into some greenery.It’s a perfectly winsome scene, and a highlight of this ultimately underwhelming new adaptation, which has a book by Kait Kerrigan (making her Broadway debut), music by Jason Howland (“Paradise Square”) and lyrics by Nathan Tysen (also “Paradise Square”). Comedy and romance are strong suits of this production by Marc Bruni (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”), which ran in the fall at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey.There are plenty of big dance numbers, too (by Dominique Kelley), with some standout tap. The 1920s costumes (by Linda Cho) are fun to look at, Daisy’s in particular: all those handkerchief hemlines, wafting on air. Gatsby’s yellow Rolls-Royce and Tom’s blue coupe drive onstage, extravagantly. And while the fireworks we see in the distance are projections, other sparkling pyrotechnics are delightfully real.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Gun & Powder’ Review: Twin Vigilantes Stake Claim to the American West

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      The musical traces the story of Black twin sisters who pass as white, and exact their own form of justice for the crime of slavery, in 19th-century Texas.The title of “Gun & Powder,” a thrillingly original new musical about mixed-race twin sisters who cut a path through Texas in 1893, refers to their travel essentials: a shrewd parting gift from their sharecropping mother and a touch of makeup to brighten their toasted-ivory complexions.The legend of Mary and Martha Clarke, who purportedly robbed white people while themselves passing for white, stretches back generations for the show’s book writer and lyricist, Angelica Chéri. She based this rousing Western, now playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., on her great-great-aunts. (“But you know how family stories do,” sings a gospel Greek chorus of narrators, “so we believe the story is mostly true.”)With a wide-ranging, powerhouse score by Ross Baum, “Gun & Powder” refashions a classic myth of the American West — white men who fancy themselves above the law — into an irresistible revenge fantasy: Mary and Martha, who go from toiling in the fields to coolly stealing money made off their ancestors’ backs, aren’t outlaws but vigilantes, exacting justice for the crime of slavery.It’s another triumph that their extraordinary history, directed with vibrant panache by Stevie Walker-Webb, assumes the form of a big-throated American musical filled with star-making roles for Black women.Mary (Ciara Renée) and Martha (Liisi LaFontaine) seem much alike at first, driven by a shared affection for their mother, Tallulah (Jeannette Bayardelle), whose white lover left her brokenhearted with their daughters and under another white man’s boot. The bond among the three women forms a compelling emotional throughline, and there’s stirring harmony among the actors’ dynamite vocals.Jeannette Bayardelle, center, with Renée, left, LaFontaine, right, and other cast members. The production features belt-heavy R&B numbers that the cast sends soaring, our critic writes.Jeremy DanielWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Great Gatsby’ Review: A Musical Take on Tragic Desire

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      This new version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic remains largely faithful to the novel, but it trades subtle prose for a straightforward production.F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” requires no critical endorsement. His slim 1925 novel still takes up permanent residence in the book bags of students across the nation. Often it is crushed under tomes of greater size, but what “Gatsby,” lacks in length it makes up for in heart, opulence and tragedy. A new musical adaptation trades Fitzgerald’s subtle blend for a blunter approach.“The Great Gatsby,” now playing at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J., replicates its literary prototype. Jay Gatsby (Jeremy Jordan) is the elusive seigneur of a mansion in West Egg, a fictional Long Island town. His newfound wealth fronts lavish parties that brim with bubbly and gossip. He is satisfied by none of it.What Gatsby most craves is Daisy (Eva Noblezada), a product of old money who lives across Manhasset Bay with her adulterer of a husband, Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski). Gatsby hatches a plan to have Daisy’s new-to-New York cousin Nick Carraway (Noah J. Ricketts) move in next door to him, with the intent to lure Daisy. But the scheme results in calamity.Though the musical remains largely faithful to that plot, Kait Kerrigan, the book writer, takes liberties with the point of view. Her Nick is no neutral narrator ransacking his memories, but a morally upright man who condemns both Gatsby’s initial pursuit of Daisy and the flagrant behavior of other characters. While others indulge in whiskey and sex, Nick sings desperately about wanting to go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Under the direction of Marc Bruni (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”), all the characters get a moment like this to divulge their desires. The result is a more democratic story freed from Nick’s control, but also one stripped of compelling subtext and Fitzgerald’s enviable prose.Jason Howland’s swanky score follows suit. There are traces of contemporary influence (groovy rock refrains, pop music rhythms), yet the overall sound, particularly in the ensemble numbers (with rousing choreography by Dominique Kelley) conjures 1920s percussive swing. What Howland does best is compose solo songs that showcase his leading actors. When speaking, Jordan’s Gatsby is grounded and debonair, which makes it all the more thrilling when his voice scurries up to a delicious falsetto. Noblezada (“Miss Saigon”) captures Daisy’s longing with an emotive and powerful voice.Company members provide great support, particularly Samantha Pauly as the rambunctious Jordan Baker, Daisy’s unmarried best friend. Pauly taps into the skills she previously displayed in “Six,” carrying pop belts with a modern-day spunk that counter Noblezada’s ballads in a meeker tenor. It makes for two characters that effectively foil one another, but oddly belong to different decades.The design team’s choices do not suffer this confusion. Art Deco abounds in Paul Tate DePoo III’s scenery and projection, whether the geometric décor in Gatsby’s home to the haunting projections of the hazy Long Island Sound. Cory Pattak, the lighting designer, intricately balances darker emerald tones and bouncy bright ones. The overall effect, further complemented by Linda Cho’s dazzling costumes, is bewitching. More than once I wished I were sitting farther back in the audience because a production this lush, however unadventurous in narrative direction, deserves, like the novel, the long view.The Great GatsbyThrough Nov. 12 at Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes.This review is supported by Critical Minded, an initiative to invest in the work of cultural critics from historically underrepresented backgrounds. More

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      ‘Hercules’ Review: An Underpowered Hero in a Far From Perfect Package

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      A new production of the Disney musical at the Paper Mill Playhouse falls short of inspiring awe.It always puzzled me why it’s taken so long for “Hercules,” arguably Disney’s most Broadway-ready animated film musical, to get a proper staging. Sure, it’s got lightning-hurling gods and thunderous titans running amok, but if the omnipotent entertainment company can make nannies and carpets fly onstage, it can certainly find a way to bring to life the myth of Zeus’ mortal son, whose daring deeds, its song “Zero to Hero” goes, make great the-a-ter.The Public Theater figured out a scrappy, low-budget way through its Public Works program in 2019: Alan Menken’s hit-after-hit score, with lyrics by David Zippel, handled the razzle-dazzle and Kristoffer Diaz’s book retooled the 1997 film’s story to focus on the importance of community.Now comes a sloppily revised iteration written by Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of the Young Vic theater in London, and the composer Robert Horn at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J. The story still follows the attempts by the earthbound Herc (Bradley Gibson) to achieve hero status in order to regain access to Mount Olympus after his spiteful uncle Hades (Shuler Hensley) strips him of his immortality shortly after birth. He still falls for the not-quite damsel-in-distress Megara (Isabelle McCalla), despite his trainer Phil’s (James Monroe Iglehart) advice, and to the accompanying tune of a quintet of soulful Muses.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.But while the Public’s version took its cues from a post-2016 society and earnestly questioned what it meant to be a hero — its Grecians hungry for affordable housing and stable social programs rather than a strongman to save the day — Lear deBessonet returns to direct a production that is surprisingly drab and lifeless.DeBessonet’s transitions are clunky and ineffective. Emilio Sosa’s costumes look borrowed, lacking godly luster above (Zeus and Hera are out of a Nativity scene) and classical taste below (mostly leggings and tunics, and an unconvincing toga for Hercules). Chase Brock and Tanisha Scott’s choreography can be bested by most cheer squads. With its towering Doric columns, Dane Laffrey’s set actually inspires some awe, but only when Jeff Croiter’s uneven lighting design makes it visible.Menken and Zippel’s original songs (“I Won’t Say (I’m in Love),” “The Gospel Truth,” among others) remain undeniable treasures, taking divine cues from gospel, but are blandly arranged by the five people credited with the score’s presentation, which has a blurry sound that may as well come from a backing track. The new material is less exciting, but at least orchestrated with a bit more ingenuity.The Muses (Tiffany Mann, Anastacia McCleskey, Destinee Rea, Rashidra Scott and the luminous Charity Angél Dawson) mine much-needed melismatic oomph from the material, but, aside from McCalla’s magnetic performance, they stand alone in that regard. The production’s biggest names, Hensley and Iglehart, passively traipse on and offstage.And as the near-superhuman wonder boy, Gibson’s uneasy stage presence results in stilted line readings and an unconvincing performance. Granted, his role — the title one, mind you — is barely a character here; a written characterization that’s hyper-infantilized even by Disney standards.The show is also rife with uncaring gaffes — an obviously Gucci-inspired tracksuit Phil wears is as incorrectly Italian as a joke about a local Times New Roman newspaper. Are the Muses, as they insipidly joke, our “literal Greek chorus” and thus the only ones able to break a fourth wall, or are those townspeople and, at one point Meg, also sometimes involving the audience?Everything from plot points to character beats unfold with little significance or cohesion, and the whole production feels under-rehearsed, underwhelming, and unimportant. How far we’ve fallen from Olympus.HerculesThrough March 19 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes. More

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      ‘The Wanderer’ Review: A Dion Musical Hits All the Familiar Notes

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      A new production about the 1960s doo-wop idol follows the usual rise-and-fall formula. Still, the songs are wonderful, as is the angel-voiced ensemble.Sometimes, all a show needs is a harmonizing ensemble perched out of windows and fire escapes in a well-appointed street scene to win you over. That’s mostly what gets “The Wanderer,” a new jukebox bio-musical about the rise of the singer-songwriter Dion DiMucci, across the finish line. Despite its falling into the genre’s tiresome tropes, this long-gestating production, which opened at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey on Sunday night, succeeds on sheer sonic strength.Another story of a singin’ Italian American who could, “The Wanderer” features a divinely voiced Mike Wartella as Dion, best known by his first name. Bio-musicals have a formula that’s certainly “tried” but less convincingly “true.” There are Dion’s humble beginnings, with his initial backing trio, the Belmonts, named after the Bronx neighborhood where they grew up. There are flashes of glory — winning over, and eventually marrying, the new girl on the block (a sweet Christy Altomare). There are setbacks, of course, like Dion’s plunge into a heroin habit, maintained by a shady friend (Joey McIntyre of, yes, New Kids on the Block). And there are moments of writerly ridiculousness, like when a thunderous downbeat follows his tour-mate Buddy Holly’s suggestion that they charter a plane.Aside from the typically inoffensive rise-and-fall-and-rise narrative, Charles Messina’s book hands Dion a lot of vaguely righteous tantrums about being sick of the doo-wop that made him without ever exploring why it is he’d rather be performing acoustic, singer-songwriter sounds. The song selection, while appropriate enough for the show’s nostalgia, is composed almost exclusively of the same rock ’n’ roll classics Dion claims no longer represent him artistically.But, wow, do they sound good thanks to Wartella’s crooning vocals. The Belmonts, played by Stephen Cerf, Billy Finn and Jess LeProtto, work up an impressive amount of charm. But their a cappella charisma is virtually discarded after the first requisite recording booth scene, when the orchestrations go into full swing. John Shivers’s crisp sound design and Sonny Paladino’s terrific music direction present a paradox: the more complex the arrangements, the further they get from the story’s shaky insistence that all Dion wants is a guitar to crank out a simple tune. Even when his neighbor, amiably played by Kingsley Leggs, sets up a soulful number as an antidote to the ’60s hit parade, Paladino doesn’t allow one note to go unscored.At least two scenes try to lend the book’s forced arguments weight by having the music stop, onlookers staring in awe. For a tight-knit Bronx community, these neighbors sure get startled by every little development. Credit must be given to Jasmine Rogers as a neighbor’s daughter, whose appealing stage presence surpasses what little her character gets to do, and Joli Tribuzio, for imbuing Dion’s mother with an interiority the book does not.Beowulf Boritt’s scenic design, consisting mainly of Bronx streets, transcends its straightforwardness through old-fashioned craft. Revolving set pieces reveal jungle gym-like fire escapes and terraces, and an eye-popping scene set during the Feast of Saint Anthony gives Boritt and the lighting designer Jake DeGroot a chance to flex their candy-colored vision. Along with Sarah Laux’s costumes, the sets outshine Sarah O’Gleby’s busy choreography and Kenneth Ferrone’s unoriginal direction.“The Wanderer” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, nor does it present a back story that was begging to be told; Dion’s highs and lows weren’t unique. Had it come out during the wave of Boomer traps like “Jersey Boys” and “Million Dollar Quartet,” it might have been buried under sickly nostalgia, its weaknesses amplified through market oversaturation. But, call me a sucker for some good doo-wop, I was continuously charmed by this throwback-y musical and its angel-voiced ensemble.The WandererThrough April 24 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes. More

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      ‘Clue’ Review: A Whodunit That Looks a Lot Like a Board Game

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      This Paper Mill Playhouse production is a welcome throwback to an era of physical comedy.“Clue,” the campy 1985 film based on the popular board game, became a cult classic because of an all-star cast delivering delicious mile-a-minute quips. A new stage production, adapted by Sandy Rustin from Jonathan Lynn’s screenplay, with additional material by Hunter Foster and Eric Price, may not be the out-and-out hoot the film is, but the show is a very fun, very silly 1950s-set whodunit that strikes some contemporary parallels on the way to its grand reveal.As the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings drone on a television set, the eager-to-please butler, Wadsworth (an agile Mark Price), prepares for the arrival of his boss’s six guests, invited under undisclosed circumstances and each assigned aliases for the night.There’s a handsy shrink, Professor Plum (Michael Kostroff); the vivacious madame, Miss Scarlet (Sarah Hollis); and Mr. Green (Alex Mandell), a gay Republican who is hiding the fact that he didn’t vote for Eisenhower in the last election. These three play straight against the production’s broader comics: the dimwitted Col. Mustard (John Treacy Egan, with excellent timing); Mrs. White (Donna English), a multiple divorcée; and Mrs. Peacock (Kathy Fitzgerald, hilarious), a senator’s wife with a drinking problem who dresses like an American Girl doll. (Jen Caprio did the costumes.)They soon discover that their ties to Washington, ranging from the morally murky to the criminal, have landed them on the wrong end of a blackmailing scheme. After their host, Mr. Boddy (Graham Stevens), arrives, he adds McCarthyism blacklisting to their worries. The lights turn off, things — specifically a candlestick, a wrench, a lead pipe, a revolver, a rope and a dagger — go bump in the night, and Mr. Boddy winds up dead, with the dwindling survivors scrambling to make sense of it all.“Is this about the Red Scare?” Mr. Green whimpers. Released in the Reagan era, the film was a pointed satire of conservative hypocrisy. Though the stage version begins with a strong undercurrent of paranoia, which reads believably as both Covid-19 apprehensions and a paralyzing fear of outing yourself as possibly cancelable, it mostly drops politics once the “big scary mansion” high jinks get underway. The plot’s whodunit structure is a surefire farce setup, but given the state of U.S. affairs, the production could have used a stronger political backbone.Casey Hushion directs with a steady eye toward possible laughs, and Lee Savage’s set conveys an appropriately stuffy mansion, with hidden passages and falling chandeliers. The finely tuned cast scurrying about to convince a stray cop (Kolby Kindle) that the propped-up corpses are merely having a good time is a welcome throwback to an era of physical comedy that’s been mostly usurped by sarcasm.Wadsworth’s conclusive explanations — a clever take on the film’s notorious alternate endings, which played at different theaters — make a case that what was then dismissed as a marketing gimmick was actually an early predecessor of today’s multiverses. As those left standing rush to blame one another, in different possible scenarios, they mirror our own increasingly selfish desire to think our perception as being the correct one. Like the board game, and life itself, the play winds up making only one perception true — but thank goodness this one’s fun.ClueThrough Feb. 20 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Review: ‘Songs for a New World,’ Stuck in Another Time

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      Jason Robert Brown’s show is beginning to show its age, but Carolee Carmello’s deft performance lifts an otherwise straightforward revival.MILLBURN, N.J. — Jason Robert Brown is a composer-lyricist who knows how to write the perfect audition song: an entire character arc in a tidy, self-contained package that allows a performer the opportunity deliver a complete story.It’s a skill that is evident in even Brown’s first staged show, “Songs for a New World,” from 1995 and given a new production that opened Sunday at the Paper Mill Playhouse here. Somewhere between theater and song cycle, it is a collection of piano-driven pathos generators with plenty of wistful character beats, loosely structured around watershed moments in which “the things that you’re sure of slip from your hand.”Directed by Mark S. Hoebee, however, this straightforward revival keeps the show’s wide-eyed yearnings intact without taking the past quarter-century of change into account — its new world now seeming older. Each number stands alone, and you don’t have to look too closely to notice that the heaviest of them are shouldered by the production’s sole Black cast member, Roman Banks. One is titled “On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1492”; others are about a dead soldier, a basketball player surrounded by disadvantages, a man imprisoned.To be fair, the casting here follows the same racial lines as the original production’s, which featured Billy Porter in Banks’s role. But consider the subjects of songs sung by his white male co-star, Andrew Kober: leaving a fiancée, being in love, reuniting with a partner. It makes for a dated artistic vision that plays into tired stereotypes of Black pain in a show that does not otherwise explore race.A great performance can transcend the material, though, and in this production, these moments belong to Carolee Carmello. She lends her vocal deftness to the cabaret standard “Stars and the Moon,” and goes full “Cabaret” with the Kurt Weill sendup “Surabaya-Santa,” in which a scorned Mrs. Claus straddles a chair and bids her bearded lover goodbye. Her powerful, textured voice beckons listeners even as it resonates up to the rafters. And her first solo, the comedic “Just One Step,” smartly mines humor from preposterously elongated vibrato.Mia Pinero and Banks are young and talented, but not assuredly able to drive home the powerful numbers they are given, though Pinero was at her finest in “Christmas Lullaby”; Banks, in “King of the World.” Kober, with his hands permanently in his pockets and a shrug fixed on his shoulders, seems to actively resist any real engagement with the audience. (It doesn’t help that he’s tasked with the least interesting songs.)Kelly James Tighe’s set design rightly places the pianist front and center, behind which the orchestra plays — wonderfully, conducted by Sinai Tabak — on a platform with steps at either side of the stage for unfussy, simple entrances and exits by the cast. The choreography, by Kenny Ingram, is agonizingly literal: predictable in the way musicals are often mocked with bouncy, handy moves. At one point, Carmello dances to “The Steam Train” with a locomotive “choo-choo.”You can almost forgive the indignity of that, though, whenever she begins to sing. If this “Songs for a New World” production feels wobbly in its search for brighter lands, she is the X that marks the spot.Songs for a New WorldThrough Nov. 7 at Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More