7:30 p.m. Wednesdays. 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays. 4 p.m. Saturdays. 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Also 7 p.m. March 9. Through March 16. $22-$35. Georgia Ensemble Theatre, 950 Forrest St., Roswell. 770-641-1260, get.org.
Bottom line: Fitzgerald classic gets lovely treatment.
When Nick Carraway calls on his cousin Daisy Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby,” she tells him in her lost-little-girl voice that she is “p-paralyzed with happiness.” After all, she’s floating on a pink cloud of gaiety and excitement that only the very rich and the very beautiful can enjoy: the magnificent Long Island homes, the endless parties and booze, the gorgeous clothes, the perfect children.
But Daisy, as we will soon come to understand, is paralyzed in a way that degrades the soul.
Married to a mean, vicious man, she pines for the love of her life, who has come to gaze at her from across the bay. Things will not go well for the characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s great American tragedy. But amid the ugliness and the violence and the carnage, it’s a lovely thing to have a shimmering, breathless Daisy like the one Elizabeth Wells Berkes brings to Georgia Ensemble Theatre.
Working from an adaptation by Simon Levy, director Tess Malis Kincaid delivers a chilling, jazz-haunted treatment of a novel that feels almost preternaturally designed for the stage. “Gatsby” is a memory tale told from the point of view of the naive observer Nick, so it feels perfectly right and organic for Nick (David Plunkett) to gauge the story from the distance of the past.
Plunkett (whom I first saw in “Seminar” at Actor’s Express) feels natural as the preppy kid from Yale, come to make his fortune in the pre-1929 world of hot jazz and bathtub gin. Over time, he will be disabused of his innocence and lapse, perhaps, into the cynicism of a failed romantic. Plunkett’s Nick comes across as somewhat tender and fey, while his supposed love interest, Jordan (played with a delicious smarminess by Rachel Garner), is brash and mannish. There’s an interesting sexual dynamic encoded here — two possibly closeted characters whose dispassion and deception ultimately turn to disdain.
Likewise, under the genteel manners of this gilded social milieu simmer fierce competition, jealousy, anger and revenge. Just watch the way Bryan Brendle’s Tom (Daisy’s husband) slowly loses his grasp on decorum. Both Tom and his vulgar mistress, Myrtle (Stacy Melich), flaunt their indiscretions, as do Daisy and Gatsby (the towering and suave Jason MacDonald). But it’s Gatsby and Daisy who win our sympathy. He is flawed. She is foolish. But they are lovers for the ages.
On the design side, Phillip Male creates a monumental multilevel set that captures in free-flowing style the grandeur of Long Island; the seediness of Myrtle and George Wilson’s gas station; and the taint of Tom and Myrtle’s Manhattan love nest. (Robin Bloodworth, incidentally, plays George as a welter of sadness and despair.) Alan Yeong dresses Gatsby in elegant white suits, Daisy in stunning flapper gowns, Jordan in her golf-y get-ups, Tom in polo outfits and Myrtle in garish unflattering frocks — all appropriate to motive and social rank. In another nice touch, composer Jason Polhemus creates incidental music for clarinet and saxophone, which performer Chris Otts imbues with mystery and sorrow.
In the end, Georgia Ensemble’s “Gatsby” is a handsome production with some first-rate performances and some supporting ones that feel a little thin. Not everyone here can match the depth and sophistication of Berkes’ Daisy. That she gives so much, however, is often quite enough.
