No other period of recent history quite captures the romantic imagination like the Jazz Age of the 20s. The name itself hangs heavy with sequins, champagne spray and the promise of the American Dream. This week at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, the era comes to life on stage with the Northern Ballet’s production of The Great Gatsby.
The ambitious production attempts to distill down to mere movement F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel. The novel is seen by many as defining the hedonistic haze of the 20s where the American Dream was pursued to a soundtrack of jazz and swing.
The plot pivots around the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby who seeks to rekindle lost love with his pre-war sweetheart Daisy Buchanan. But her fickle nature and aggressive husband threaten to spoil Gatsby’s grand visions. The love story snakes between New York and Oxford, inviting the reader to at once sup at glamorous parties and lunch with thuggish gangsters, before witnessing a blunt and bloody conclusion.
In the Northern Ballet production the title role is performed by the hugely talented Tobias Batley. The Mancunian was trained at the Royal Ballet School and Hammond School of Dance. Also taking centre stage are Martha Leebolt as Daisy, Giuliano Contadini as Nick Carraway, Jessica Morgan as Daisy’s love rival Myrtle and Kenneth Tindall as Daisy’s disgruntled husband Tom.
Also worthy of praise is Javier Torres whose tortured rendering of a desolate and cuckolded car mechanic brings a fierce poignancy to one of literature’s great tragic characters.
David Nixon, Artistic Director of the production explained how the enduring allure of The Great Gatsby lead him to put on the show: “This beautifully written novel first captured my imagination when I was in high school. It was coincidentally the same year the movie with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow premiered and I fell in love with the mysterious Gatsby, his unrelenting passion and obsession with capturing his one true love.”
Mr Nixon explains the Jazz Age period’s enduring hold on cultural imagination: “It was a moment in time when men and women were spared temporarily from the horrors of a World War, when they grabbed at freedom and liberation believing, naively, the American Dream was in their grasp… with elaborate parties until the wee hours of the morning, beautiful women in thin beaded dresses and head bands, laughing as they whirl around to jazz in the arms of handsome men in black tie and tails.”
The era was one last decadent fling before the country combusted into the Great Depression of the 1930s. Indeed, it was during this economic downturn that novel first gained popularity in the States.
After the horror of the austerity that followed, many clung to memories of the twenties as one final fling of abundance. Perhaps British audiences, still smarting with the bruises of the economic downturn, will feel a similar fascination with the idea of a culture living on the cusp of dramatic collapse.
The Northern Ballet pay extraordinary attention to detail in their bid to capture this hedonistic haze. Each ballerina sports the smokey lids, pencilled brows and narrow lips of the flappers. Equally, male performers look resplendent in linen suits and carefully coiffed quiffs.
Whilst the plot-heavy twentieth century novel might not, on its surface, appear to be an obvious choice for a ballet interpretation, the role of music and dance in the novel’s many parties makes for a successful translation. Indeed, the lengthy party scenes are where this performance really comes into its own, as bobbed women flash in sequined sequences across the stage; one big blur of jazz hands and gems.
Anyway, #NBGatsby AT Sadlers Wells Theatre is an absolute beauty of a show. In AWE of @northernballet dancers.
— Shappi Khorsandi (@ShappiKhorsandi) March 24, 2015
Principle dancer Javier Torres explains how they hope to marry traditional, classic ballet with moves of the time, “We had masterclasses in how to perfectly recreate the Charleston. We had them everyday for three hours until we got it just right.”
The frenetic energy of the jive pulses through the theatre as twenty dancers leap, launch and beat out their rhythm. The result is an infectious sense of the wild abandon and joy of the era, something which the novel and film can only hint at but never quite portray with this intensity. More than anything, it is this raw and raucous energy which makes this production such a roaring success.
@northernballet #NBGatsby at Sadlers Wells is wonderful. A company who can act as well as they move, & a brilliant orchestra. Fabulous. Go.
— Tom Goodman-Hill (@tgoodmanh) March 24, 2015
Whether you’ve already poured over the novel or the films, or are coming to it afresh, The Great Gatsby is fresh and invigorating theatre. At a glance it is pure escapism in its frivolity and shallowness. But its enduring message of national pride after recession, trauma and love have cemented it in cultural consciousness.
This performance will only add a further dimension to the classic novel and a cautionary tale to a country still smarting from economic collapse.
A world class production of such scale and quality is rarely seen in Islington. It is a real coup for Sadler’s Wells and a must for any theatre fan in the borough.
Great Gatsby The Ballet runs at Sadler’s Wells Theatre from 24th- 28th March. Ticket office: 0844 412 4300
