Theatre reviews; The Great Gatsby | This is a Gift

Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s centenary stage version of The Great Gatsby does justice to F Scott Fizgerald’s mighty​ novel, writes Joyce McMillan

The Great Gatsby, Pitlochry Festival Theatre ★★★★

This is a Gift, Pitlochry Festival Theatre ★★★★

Just over week ago the world’s super-rich offered a memorable display of their gilded lives, at the wedding in Venice of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos. As in past golden ages of vast private wealth, though, the luxury enjoyed by the rich seems to come at a price, and not only for those excluded from it.

The Great Gatsby unfolds seamlessly on a Pitlochry stage exquisitely opened up by Jen McGinley’s fine art deco set (Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan)

This is therefore a perfect moment for the launch of Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s centenary stage version of The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald’s mighty 1925 novel about the interplay of wealth, class and history among the rich of Long Island, in the years following the First World War.

In Elizabeth Newman’s powerful new adaptation, the narrator Nick Carraway, superbly played by David Rankine, is a young man subtly changed by his war service, and desperately trying to finish a first novel inspired by the story of Jay Gatsby, an immensely wealthy self-made man whom he met in Long Island in those years; and from the first moments of the play, Rankine captures Nick’s quest, his slight outsider status, and his real distress at Gatsby’s fate, with an empathy and intensity that draws the audience deep into his story.

It’s always a compelling tale, of course; the story of lovely Daisy Buchanan – married to a wealthy and faithless bully – and her intense connection with Jay Gatsby, a man of relatively humble origins who knew and loved her before her marriage.

And here, in Sarah Brigham’s flowing production, the narrative unfolds seamlessly, over two hours or so, on a Pitlochry stage exquisitely opened up by Jen McGinley’s fine art deco set, and to the sound of a superb jazz vocal score. The story is a tragedy, of course; and the reasons why Gatsby is finally unable to win Daisy for his own provoke deep thought about the enduring myths and failures of the American dream, in which Gatsby so profoundly believes.

Blythe Jandoo plays a young school-leaver in This is a Gift (Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan)

With Oraine Johnson delivering a compelling and fascinating performance as Gatsby, though, and Tyler Collins cutting straight to the heart of privilege and reaction that is Tom Buchanan, the main roles in the drama are in impressive hands; and the impact of the story, in Newman’s powerful version, is more exhilarating than downbeat, in its sheer determination to cut through the lies and illusions that surround these wealthy lives, and to tell something like the truth.

In the Studio Theatre, meanwhile, Kolbrun Bjort Sigfusdottir’s 80-minute monologue This Is A Gift could hardly come as a more perfect coda to Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. Set in 21st century Leith, the play is beautifully performed by Blythe Jandoo as young school-leaver Zoe, who lives with her single dad in some poverty, thanks to the fading fortunes of his little gilding business, which specialises in picture frames.

Everything changes, though, when Zoe arrives home one night to find a posh but dilapidated alcoholic collapsed on their doorstep, only to be rescued – after considerable kindness from Zoe and her dad – by a wealthy friend who offers to give Zoe’s dad anything he wants, as a reward.

Cue a modern-day version of the Midas myth, in which Zoe’s Dad half-jokingly asks for everything he touches to turn to gold, and soon finds that the gift – for all the wealth it brings – is far more of a curse than a blessing.

There are parts of the story which perhaps don’t quite make sense, even in their own exquisite magical-realist terms. In Sam Hardie’s perfectly paced production, though, the beauty of Sigfusdottir’s writing and Blythe Jandoo’s performance shine through; in a show that becomes a small but perfect hymn to life, and to how – in exchanging our lives and our living world for cold, hard gold – we never know what we’ve got, until it’s gone. The Great Gatsby is in repertoire at Pitlochry Festival Theatre until 25 September. This Is A Gift has two further Studio performances, on 5 and 11 September.