By Ben Norton, Guest Writer 

Actors made their return for the 31^st season of productions at the Aronoff Center on Sept. 15 with the vibrant musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby.”  

Written by Kait Kerrigan as a musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, “The Great Gatsby” follows the lavish and luxurious lifestyle of the New York upper class during the roaring 20s.  

Jay Gatsby, the protagonist, played on-stage by Jake David Smith, is a hopeless romantic who hosts extravagant parties on the property of his West Egg mansion in a desperate attempt to catch the eye of Daisy Buchanan, played by Senzel Ahmady, whose East Egg mansion can only be seen by a green light on their dock across the harbor.   

In the opening scene of the musical, the viewer is quickly greeted by the magnificence of Gatsby’s mansion, with an ornately choreographed number representing one of these parties.  

Following the opulence of this first act, Nick Carraway, our narrator and Gatsby’s cottage-residing neighbor, played by Joshua Grosso, takes the audience along as the story intensifies with tense relationships caused by several cases of infidelity between social classes.  

Grosso guides the viewer through the plethora of meticulously crafted art deco sets designed by Paul Tate dePoo III. The sets display scenes of each character’s immense indulgences and set the scene for the morally questionable actions of the upper class.  

These relationships mix the three main class structures of the story: Gatsby’s new money of the West Egg, the Buchanan’s old money in the East Egg and George Wilson and his wife Myrtle, played by Lila Coogan, residing in the Valley of Ashes, representing the lower class.   

These dynamic and fragile relationships soon turn sour, leading towards a tragic denouement that leaves the viewer in shock.  

The musical makes an incredible spectacle of the story, with the striking grandeur of the sets and the Tony Award-winning costume designs.  

When I attended the opening night, the crowd went immediately silent as the curtains lifted. From that point forward, the attention to the show did not waver. 

Kerrigan did a fantastic job making an entertaining show for the audience, who were certainly not disappointed. This attention-demanding show, however, came at the cost of sacrificing some of the details in favor of the larger themes of the original story. 

In the novel, Gatsby is quite the mysterious man; however, in the first scene of the musical, the audience learns almost everything we need to know about his character. Along with this, the music, which is supposedly setduring the height of the Jazz Age, is a loud bombardment intended to showcase the singing ability of the cast members. This musical faux pas takes away from the authenticity of the story, feeling more like an attempt to modernize a quintessential piece of 1920s American history rather than pay homage to the time in which it is set.   

Along with this, the viewer misses out on some of the important aspects of the corruption and hollowness of the era. Specifically, the T.J. Eckleburg billboard is only mentioned in one lazily placed line of the musical, which is a poor attempt to capture the integral theme that God sees all corruption in the story.  

Overall, however, the musical is a beautiful sight, keeping attention throughout. This sentiment is shared by the other viewers in attendance, who joined in a thunderous standing ovation to cap off the opening night. With all that being said, if you enjoy the story of “The Great Gatsby,” I would recommend seeing the musical at the Aronoff Center, which runs until Sept. 27.