No matter how you cut it, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a big show. Not only is the period in which it is set, The Roaring Twenties, an age with larger-than-life personalities─Babe Ruth, Al Capone, Charles Lindbergh─but it is an age bookended by unforeseen and unforgettable calamities─the First World War and the Great Depression. It is an age of volcanic tension, of feelings suppressed both by the general hangover of Victorian morality and the more specific stringencies of Prohibition. What wonder is it that it should spawn an equal if opposite libertine landscape of speak-easies, flappers and jazz? But it is also Gatsby that is big: a character whose celebrity places him in that small company of individuals whose intellect, artistry, sanctity or impact endows them with an immediately recognizable single name: Jesus, Freud, Einstein, Rembrandt.
I make these observations because in its purest form the show demands spectacle: not necessarily an array of special effects, but a grandeur of set and cast that can mimic, if not capture, the swashbuckling period in which its action is set. Whereas Gatsby’s shadowy but ostentatious wealth should, if at all possible, be mirrored by his mansion, his wardrobe and his lavish parties, certain things featured in the novel, such as his sea plane and yellow roadster, are understandably too impractical to include as are several New York City scenes and locations whose brevity and questionable pertinence to a musical production render them expendable. But Gatsby’s over-the-top prodigality, dedicated to the pursuit of an ultimately irrecoverable love, is an ambience that is imperative to maintain.
That said, it still comes down to illusion. Gatsby is a character on a page, not anyone’s real-life Great Neck neighbor, and a creative troupe can imbue the show with a healthy dose of theatrical imagination in lieu of some mammoth and awe-inspiring set. All one has to do is listen, as Fitzgerald suggests, for a “tuning fork that ha[s] been struck upon a star,” then go out and stage it.
Ultimately, The Great Gatsby, stripped of its veneer, is a mere love story, and one of unrequited love at that. It falls into the tradition of sonneteers such as Wyatt, Spenser, even Shakespeare in which the beloved is seemingly always tantalizingly but frustratingly out of reach, and the show’s ballads are founded upon the conflict between passionate yearning and continued denial. Whether or not this show lives up to its namesake will be for actors and audience to decide, but I have tried to do justice to its most important and enduring element: not the spectacle of the ‘20s, but Gatsby’s adamant, irrepressible and undying love.
By far the biggest challenge of putting up Gatsby: The Musical is staging it. The novel has multiple settings, the majority of them indispensable. There is: Jay Gatsby’s mansion, exterior and interior; Nick Carraway’s eyesore of a cottage next door; the Buchanan showplace that is directly across the Sound; Wilson’s run-down garage; the speak-easy at which Gatsby meets Meyer Wolfsheim’s underworld cronies; and two separate hotel scenes, one the trysting spot for Tom Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson, the other the crucial confrontation scene at the Plaza which triggers the fatal sequence of events which concludes the novel: in short, too many changes for a high school, college or community theater to handle. However, as with every show that has shifts in location, there is a solution, and the advice offered on this page is not in any way prescriptive but intended more to “prime the pump” of creative thought and offer a jumping off point for the creativity of technical directors.
The first and most obvious problem begins with Gatsby’s mansion. The size, fly space and wing space of stages vary greatly, and attempting to recreate even a facsimile of Gatsby’s palatial abode seems doomed to failure─not to mention the fact that any large structure is bound to be immovable once established, essentially crippling any changes in setting. As I have previously suggested, I do not want to restrict the vision of technical directors who look upon this as a challenge. What I do wish to do is suggest possibilities, approaches that may open the door to even more imaginative solutions.
From my perspective there are three ways to stage Gatsby: The Musical: with a fixed set that permits versatility; with a primarily symbolic backdrop similar to the skene in early Greek theater behind which actors changed masks and costumes; and in the three-quarters or round which, other than key props, disposes of the set entirely. Though Option #3 initially seems reasonable, it creates its own set of problems. How, for example, do you move a hotel bed through the audience without running the risk of beheading someone? Option #1 has potential in that one could build two adjacent 8’ x 8’ x 8’ platforms centerstage as well as lower platforms which would simulate the bays of a garage, then be quickly covered by flats which might simulate the exterior of Gatsby’s mansion. This, I think, has potential, but it not only requires a relatively big stage but the storage of the various ‘facades’ that would denote a scene change, not to mention the props. Thus, after spending many a restless night wrestling with this dilemma, I believe Option #2 is the most practical. Consider a large, central flat, with a design that is appropriate to the show, one flanked by two other white ones separated by an entrance space and raked at 45 degree angles. As was suggested earlier in the paragraph, the center flat is primarily symbolic: in my conception, the omniscient spectacles of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg looming over an over-sized champagne glass in which silhouettes of flapper, gangster and jazz musician appear to be drowning. I know, the billboard featuring this image only appears in the Valley of Ashes, but this backdrop is making the statement that nothing anywhere escapes the eyes of the Divine and that the wages of sin are indeed death. I think that has possibilities.
In front of the flats I would recommend placing several platforms of various heights, ones that can be employed in multiple ways in different scenes. For example, a low, box-like platform can be the stage on which the singer performs in the speak-easy scene, but being covered quickly by a queen mattress and a couple of pillows, can become the central prop in the hotel scene with Tom and Myrtle.. Similarly, a taller, rectangular version can double as the bar in Gatsby’s party scenes and as the cashier counter in Wilson’s garage. The triad of flats also allows the minimalist properties to be concealed behind them, allowing cast and crew to move tables and chairs on and off-stage fluidly.
As for the New York hotel scenes, I would play them downstage, perhaps employing those portable triptychs that art teachers frequently use to display student art to provide the illusion of hotel walls. In this way these scenes can “nest” within the larger set. Often these portable presentation boards are on wheels, making them particularly valuable in getting them on and off stage expeditiously.
I certainly have no intentions of being a puppet-master when it comes to staging Gatsby, but I know that envisioning a show that has yet to be produced can be challenging, and what movie-makers have done─from the black-and-white Alan Ladd version to the rap-infused Leonardo DiCaprio one─is far beyond what one can do on an amateur stage.
So let your imagination run wild, and if you have a better idea─and I’m sure there will be some─suggest it and I’ll share it with people on the website. Video and photos will be especially appreciated.
I wish you the best of luck with your production.
– Richard Vogel