The Great Gatsby comes alive in Hong Kong Ballet jazz production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic
- Artistic director Septime Webre pulls out all the stops with stunning visuals, gorgeous music and an abundance of good dancing
- Where it falls short as an adaptation of a great novel, it makes up for in sheer entertainment value
Hong Kong Ballet’s The Great Gatsby, artistic director Septime Webre’s adaptation of Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece, offers a Jazz Age extravaganza with stunning visuals, gorgeous music and an abundance of good dancing. If it falls short as an adaptation of one of the 20th century’s greatest novels, it makes up for it in sheer entertainment value.
Narrator Nick Carraway becomes involved with his neighbour, Jay Gatsby, whose lavish parties draw the spoilt denizens of upper class New York in droves while his background (and the source of his wealth) remain a mystery. It transpires that Gatsby is obsessed by his former love, Carraway’s cousin Daisy, now married to the brutal, arrogant Tom Buchanan. Other key characters completing a tangled web are the vulgar, voluptuous Myrtle and her pitiful husband, George. As Gatsby tries to win Daisy back, the threads connecting these five people converge to end in tragedy.
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The ballet is packed with Webre’s trademark high energy, technically demanding choreography, including much intricate and risky partnering. It’s a feast for the eyes, with Tim Yip’s gorgeous costumes (beaded frocks to die for) and clever video designs by William Kwok and Tobias Gremmler.
Above all, it’s a feast for the ears – an irresistible period score from Billy Novick weaves together 1920s classics (Irving Berlin’s poignant What’ll I Do is used as the love theme for Gatsby and Daisy) and original music, performed by his trad jazz ensemble the Blue Syncopations and featuring outstanding singing from Freddy Au Yeung (think Dick Powell) and E. Faye Butler (think Bessie Smith). Another nod to the era is a tap dance number of breathtaking virtuosity from Wong Tan-ki.
Large scale set pieces showcase the company’s skills as an ensemble. A brilliantly realised kaleidoscope of New York draws on silent movies with everything from a Keystone cop chasing burglars to the Salvation Army to a nun leading a crocodile of schoolgirls.
Gatsby’s legendary parties are suitably spectacular – a number for the men with their hands in their pockets set to Tommy Dorsey’s It’s Tight Like That is particularly good, there’s a rip-roaring drunken brawl and Butler (a force of nature) brings down the house with the raunchy I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl.
Webre has telescoped the plot into a series of snapshots: in the first act, this works pretty well, in the second, the complexity of the characters and their relationships are lost. The occasional use of a narrator (well played by Desmond So) helps, but narrative ballet should be able to portray even a complex story without falling back on this device.
The production misses the emotional power of the book’s conclusion. The staging of Myrtle’s death, which cries out for a coup de theatre, falls flat and it’s not made clear that it was Daisy, not Gatsby, who was driving the car that killed her, thus robbing the story of its final irony: that George shoots Gatsby for a crime he did not commit.
Crucially, the ballet fails to convey the book’s underlying theme, the selfishness and casual cruelty of the rich – in Fitzgerald’s words, Tom and Daisy are “careless people … they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money …”.
One problem is Webre’s insistence on making his characters dance almost constantly, using complicated steps where a simple gesture or glance might express much more. There’s also a certain amount of repetition and scenes like the tap sequence which, however enjoyable in themselves, hold up the story instead of advancing it.
While both casts in the lead roles produced some fine dancing, dramatic honours went to the matinee ensemble, where the dancers had better chemistry and came closer to Fitzgerald’s characters.
Venus Villa succeeded in evoking Daisy’s elusive charm and her detailed, intelligent acting did much to make the story clearer. Li Lin was a convincingly obsessed, romantic Gatsby and Leung Chunlong a charmingly naive Nick.
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Li Jiabo brought Tom’s vitality, swagger and ruthlessness to vivid life and Vanessa Lai Nok-sze was a sumptuously sultry Myrtle. As George, Shen Jie managed to keep the character’s emotions paramount even while performing extraordinary feats of virtuosity.
The Great Gatsby
Hong Kong Ballet
Lyric Theatre, Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
Reviewed: February 15 and February 16
