The Great Gatsby

The Pitlochry Festival Theatre,  02/07/2025

 The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, adapted by Elizabeth Newman

 

The Pitlochry Festival Theatre was almost full for this matinee performance, an amazing achievement for a theatre in a small town in Highland Perthshire. The theatre of course has a well-deserved and faithful following due to the excellence of the productions, the theatre itself and last but not least the helpful and welcoming staff.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote ‘The Great Gatsby’ in America in 1925 at the height of the Jazz Age. He is considered one of America’s foremost authors, mainly due to the success of ‘The Great Gatsby’. Elizabeth Newman adapted the play from Fitzgerald’s novel. Drawn to the book and the issues and ideas that he explored she has produced an interpretation of the familiar story for the stage which informed her audience and drew out the complexities and prejudices of the time. It was refreshingly not just all about the dresses.

To produce a theatrical version of such a well-known and well filmed novel in a highland theatre is no small feat but Elizabeth Newman and this marvellous cast pulled it off. The evocation of the Jazz age was perfect and also involved most of this multi-talented cast in a superb blues group which added another dimension to the evening. The flexible 2 tier stage set lent itself to the production and the producer suggested a jazz age bar, complete with moody music, for David Rankine, playing an excellent Nick Carraway, to begin proceedings and set the scene. We watched as his character, undergoing his own traumas and fascinated by Gatsby, was drawn inexorably into Gatsby’s frivolous sphere.

Robert Redford and Leonardo DiCaprio have both played the part of Gatsby and are hard acts to follow but Oraine Johnston as Jay was utterly convincing. He managed to portray the confidence and insecurities of his character, embodying the potential of The American Dream while discovering its limitations.

The play was deeply atmospheric from the very beginning, with the actors fully immersing themselves in their roles.  Fiona Woods as Daisy was pliant and vulnerable. Tyler Collins was utterly convincing as Tom, Daisy’s philandering unscrupulous stuck-up husband, with his ugly white supremacist beliefs, and I loved April, Nerissa Hudson’s portrayal of his mistress in her cheap red dress.

The action was dark in places but we were led towards the essence of the play:  the illusion of the American Dream and the moral decay beneath the glamorous facade of the Jazz Age.

The play drew to an end as it had begun, with Nick Carraway using a blend of sadness and hope to send us home.

 

Maggie Dick

Maggie Dick is a retired teacher from Glasgow now living in Strathspey. She plays flute and piano and is involved in several music making groups. 

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ENF Closing Concert