Thursday, October 24, 2024

Gatsby Is Greater than Ever!

 
by Pa Rock
Theatre Fan

I was in line for two hours this morning at the famous notorious well known TKTS sales area which blocks Broadway at 47th Street in New York City, waiting patiently to score discount tickets for matinee and evening Broadway shows for today.  Our plan was to see the suffragette play "Suffs" in the afternoon and the old Carol Burnett classic "Once Upon a Mattress" for this evening, but with TKTS, a person has to be flexible.  I came away with a pair of evening tickets for "Once Upon a Mattress," but had to settle for "The Great Gatsby" for the matinee.  (I have read the novel of the same name by F.Scott Fitzgerald twice, and seen the two most recent movie versions of the material, so I was not expecting to be impressed by whatever Broadway was trying to achieve with a staged rendition of "Gatsby," but boy howdy was I surprised!)

The current Broadway version of "The Great Gatsby" is a helluva a good show!  The sets and special effects are amazing, the singing and dancing dynamite, the acting first-rate, and the script and original music are woven together in such a way that they actually enhance and tell Fitzgerald's simple, yet complex, story in a more poignant manner than the author was able to achieve with just the printed word.

I wasn't familiar with any of the cast, but that did not hinder them from becoming, to perfection, the people that Scott Fitzgerald gave literary life to a century ago.   The players are all extraordinary actors, and each of the main characters belt out songs with enough force to  entertain passers-by on Broadway out in front of the theatre.

The production is a stunning visual experience with flappers and dandies dancing their way through the roaring twenties, classic cars driving across the stage and through the amazing sets, and even fireworks going off on stage!

It is such a damned good show.  Scott and Zelda would have loved it!

And Pa Rock certainly did!

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