Flashy adaptation of 'Great Gatsby' brings pre-COVID scale to Broadway

NEW YORK — The 2020s have not been especially roaring on Broadway.

Even as New York theater has survived the pandemic with a parade of productions and attendance near the pre-COVID years’, Broadway has also changed.

Ticket sales have sagged and grosses have failed to keep up with inflation. More suburban theatergoers, who may have more money to throw at shows, now seem to stay home, according to Broadway League data. And producers, who face a financial high-wire act even in the best of times, have made some not-to-subtle calculations.

Many of today’s Broadway productions — even the most tantalizingly innovative and impressively executed — are scaled down. Some have sets more reminiscent of small-town productions. Others, such as last year’s revival of “A Doll’s House,” hardly have sets at all.

Since Broadway reopened after closing for 16 months due to COVID, there have been only scattered attempts to conjure the ambitious, broad-shouldered Broadway musical of yore. The rare showy productions — including “The Music Man,” “Funny Girl” and “Sweeney Todd” — have mostly been low-risk revivals.

But in seeking to channel the glitz, glamour and grandiosity of New York’s roaring 1920s, a musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” has bucked the recent trend.

This “Gatsby,” driven by old-school ballads and backed by a producer who has said he’s not worried about losing money on Broadway shows, is brimming with bells and whistles.

Like Jay Gatsby as he woos his former lover, Daisy, the production team behind “Gatsby” plainly spared no expense in its drive to deliver 150 minutes of razzle-dazzle to theatergoers.

“When people think of ‘The Great Gatsby,’ they think of opulence and excessiveness and over-the-top and just glam for days,” said Cory Pattak, the planner of the show’s intricate lighting. “We really wanted to deliver on that.”

The goal, he added, was to create a show that feels “larger than life.”

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