Stage Review - The Great Gatsby: A Literary Burlesque (Noveltease Theatre)

Stage Review - The Great Gatsby: A Literary Burlesque
Presented By: Noveltease Theatre - Seattle, WA
Show Run: April 18 - April 26, 2025
Date Reviewed: Friday, April 25, 2025
Run Time: 2 Hours, 25 minutes (including a 15 minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Anna Tatelman

Now that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is in the public domain, new adaptations are cropping up in every city and across genres, from the multiple musical theatre versions in New York to the touring ballet production. Luckily, as demonstrated by Noveltease’s reimagining of this classic text, The Great Gatsby continues to be both timely and ripe for new interpretations.

Noveltease, one of several resident companies at Theatre Off Jackson, has established a solid reputation over the past several years in their chosen niche genre: to create burlesque adaptations of classical literary texts. Since Gatsby is rife with the glamour, all-out parties, and (by the era’s standards) loosening of the Puritanical attitude toward sexuality, it’s a natural choice for a company that strives to heighten the movement, dance, and sensual elements of its source materials.

But Noveltease’s rendition of The Great Gatsby deserves to be celebrated for going beyond amping up the novel’s glitz and sexuality. This literary burlesque adaptation gets at the heart of the book (and, perhaps, of American culture then and now): that continual striving for a dream; that perpetual longing for a desire that, ironically, is more desirable to chase forever than to actually have.

In case you snoozed through your high school Language Arts classes, here’s a quick refresher on The Great Gatsby: our narrator, Nick, has recently moved into the “new money” neighborhood of Long Island. He observes one of his neighbors (Gatsby) alternating between throwing huge, lavish parties and gazing for hours at a green light across the water. That green light turns out to sit on the dock of Gatsby’s long-lost love, Daisy, who is now married to Tom, a man from an “old money” family. Since Nick and Daisy are cousins, Gatsby confides in Nick about his past and asks for Nick’s help in reintroducing him to Daisy.

As Gatsby is to learn, however, some dreams are better viewed from a distance. Adapter and director Lulu La Lune amplifies this theme by highlighting Nick’s own impossible chasing of a desire – in this case, a desire for Gatsby. While there are homoerotic undertones in the novel, they are never clearly brought to the surface, and neither is it ever fully clear why Nick feels compelled to tell Gatsby’s story as one more central than his own. It’s also a smart decision to fluctuate between moments of both genuine emotion and moments when those emotions are cheapened by pomp and circumstance, such as when we whiplash from Gatsby’s brutal death to the clamoring flashes of paparazzi cameras.

Noveltease’s The Great Gatsby flows between more traditional dialogue scenes and (as they refer to them) movements, in which the story is conveyed through dances, choreographed for this production by Fosse Jack. The best movements in this reimagining are propelled by extreme, often conflicting emotions: the opening, which is Gatsby’s funeral, becoming a cruel parody of grief as the mourners Charleston about the stage; a party in which Daisy and Gatsby continually find ways to happily dance together while the others play a sort of keep-away-game with Daisy’s suspicious husband; the final movement in which Gatsby’s soon-to-be-murderer presses through her personal grief and prepares to take action, while meanwhile Gatsby gives the audience a jazzy striptease. I also thought it brilliant how some of the movements toyed with our expectations about what burlesque should or can be, such as when Gatsby models all his luxurious shirts for Daisy, continually putting on new clothes rather than stripping everything off. The movements that felt less strong to me struggled to find a clear, driving motivation, like when Nick accompanies Tom to his mistress’ home and they throw a party. Given that this is a brand-new adaptation however, a few spots that could use further development are natural, and these spots didn’t diminish my overall enjoyment of the show.

With many theatres opting for smaller casts lately (because of understandable budget constraints), it’s refreshing to see a talented, ten-person ensemble on stage. Fosse Jack plays Nick and does an excellent job capturing our narrator through his body language, from their awkward fumbles over his own not-totally-repressed desire for Gatsby to their more posed, introspective moments. Rhys Daly as Gatsby is as charming and exemplary as a self-made American man living the dream should be, yet we can feel his lurking, slowly growing depression underneath. Portraying Daisy is Miss Elaine Yes, who captivates both Gatsby and the audience with her sweetness and sensuality while refusing to let Daisy give up her backbone and become a mere ingénue. Anya Knees embraces the unlikeable, chest-beating masculinity of her character Tom, offering a great contrast to the more empathetic Gatsby and Nick.

The razzle-dazzle and sophistication of the 1920s infuses all elements of this production: from the stacks of champagne glasses as lobby décor (props designed by Sailor St. Claire); to the set design (by Robin Macartney) with bold, Art Deco shapes and angles; to the elegant suits and beautiful flapper-dresses created by Kit Goldsworthy. Although the movements are set to mostly contemporary songs, many have been edited to sound more appropriate to the period, with added Charleston-esque sounds, jazz instruments, or record scratches (sound design by Fosse Jack). I also loved the shadow-screen and its use in some of the show’s most striking visual moments, like when Daisy is backlit by the green light or when Gatsby is murdered.

For one-hundred years, The Great Gatsby has been considered one of the defining American novels: a work that captures the idea that we are perhaps happier chasing rainbows than finding our pots of gold. Noveltease’s adaptation captures this theme by depicting some of its greatest emotional tensions through dance and emphasizing the narrator’s own chasing of the endless,impossible dream. With a talented large ensemble, solid production elements, and of course some alluring burlesque numbers, The Great Gatsby represents Noveltease at its finest.

The Great Gatsby: A Literary Burlesque, which was presented by Noveltease and ran on stage at Theatre Off Jackson, closed this past weekend, but if you’d like more information on the theatre company and their upcoming shows, please visithttps://novelteasetheatre.org/.

Photo credit: Danny Ngan