‘Great Gatsby’ review: Broadway musical spoils beloved novel

Forget eastern eggs and western eggs. The creators of the new musical “The Great Gatsby,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, have laid an egg.

This song-and-dance version of F. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 Permanence, which speaks, among other things, of American excess in the wake of World War I, is completely exaggerated.

The gaudy barrage of reproduced folk songs by composer Jason Howland and lyricist Nathan Tysen (“Heaven’s Square”), distributed randomly to any character who wants one, goes off like a foghorn on the Long Island Sound.

The attractive Art Deco sets designed by Paul Tate DePue III are so lavish and oversized that I had flashbacks to when I saw “King Kong” in the same theater six years ago.

But now, the monkey is not a captive – your favorite novel is.

“Lower Gatsby,” directed by Marc Bruni, is an amalgam of many other shows that came before it.

While tapping into an impressive all-company number called “La Dee Dah With You,” the show briefly ventures into “Anything Goes” territory. Many other bombastic songs have the scale, if not the same tone, of gothic musicals, such as “The Secret Garden” or “Jekyll and Hyde.”

But what “The Great Gatsby” almost never mentions is “The Great Gatsby.”

The musical, a patchwork quilt of discordant styles that belongs in a box, becomes the latest in a long line of adaptations of this beloved novel to subvert a story that is more satisfying to read and imagine. It completely misses its intoxicating atmosphere, meaning and multi-layered characters.

One of the rare smart decisions of the night was the casting of Noah J. Ricketts as our man Nick Carraway, an una*suming Midwesterner who moves to a cabin on Long Island in West Egg’s “New Money.”

The actor has a beautiful voice and a naturally calm personality that belies the cartoonish East Coast impressions on display that are similar to how Katharine Hepburn acted as a driver.

Nick’s cousin Daisy (powerful singer Eva Noblezada) is married to Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski), and they live in artificial bliss across the water in upper-crust East Egg.

Rude Tom is having a not-so-secret affair with Myrtle (Sarah Chase), the wife of garage owner George (Paul Whitty). All-knowing Daisy sings a musical number in the garden about her rocky marriage called “For Better or For Worse.”

“worst?!” I believed.

Nick’s greatest interest is the mysterious resident of the mansion next to his house. This is Jay Gatsby, who happens to be Daisy’s old flame who she still misses.

As the enigmatic title character, Jeremy Jordan, when he’s on the song, sounds like a million bucks, even on moody numbers like “For Her” and “Past Is Catching Up To Me.”

But when he speaks, one has to adjust for inflation. The actor resorts to an ill-advised mid-Atlantic accent that is confusing to the ears. Instead of contributing magnetism and mystery, the shaky brogue turns a literary icon into an eccentric.

During the scene in which he reunites with Daisy, singing a stupid song called “Only Tea,” the musical suddenly turns into a hackneyed farce.

An army of servants arrive with trays and flowers as if they are about to begin singing “Be Our Guest.” Jordan Baker, Nick and Daisy’s sour sidekick (a detached Samantha Powley), performs sweet parts in perfect unison. Gatsby tries to hide from Daisy behind a small tree branch to laugh.

The multiple personalities pile up into a song later when we’re suddenly thrown into a silly, pa*sionate love story as the pair sing a moody duet called “My Green Light.”

Fortunately, the second act finds a more consistent and appropriate tone. We might hope so, as there have been so many deaths in quick succession.

Early on, the aforementioned tap dancing, choreographed by Dominic Kelly, was exciting, even if it served as a short-term distraction from many head-scratchers.

For example, an enormous amount of time and music is given to Myrtle and George, who are transformed into a sadder Adelaide and Nathan Detroit. Myrtle’s fate, so expensively arranged, is unintentionally funny.

There’s also a lot of sleazy criminal Meyer Wolfsheim (Eric Andersen), who has a jazzy song coming back from break called “Shady” that could have been cut. Why don’t we focus on enriching the main characters before giving everyone their five free minutes?

Theater and film rarely know what to do with “Gatsby.” They often decide, as this musical sometimes does, to focus on escaping to s*xy bars with flappers.

But the best version I saw was at Gatz, an elevator repair service downtown. Every word of the novel was read aloud over several breezy hours by actors wearing nothing but office clothes. The audience was dazzled, not by the raunchy love songs, but by the unadorned words of a great American novel.

Last year, New York got an immersive “Gatsby” experience that ends quickly. This summer, another Florence Welch composition will premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Ma*sachusetts.

The quality of the adaptation of Florentine singer and instrument remains to be seen. But even though Fitzgerald’s book is in the public domain, we must take it easy and give the green light to many more Gatsby novels.