Filling the Frame

Some big stories may be better on a smaller stage

So many superlatives have been spilled in the name of Gatsby. It’s a story that “ranges from pure lyrical beauty to sheer brutal realism.” As a novel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is “simple and beautiful and intricately planned.” The story’s appeal springs from an enticing intersection of “witty hopelessness” and “vivacious self-destructiveness.”

But even amidst the laudatory commentary, there are cautionary asides: “Gatsby is about the superiority of imagination over reality,” says the Guardian, “which makes it very difficult to dramatize well.”

Indeed. As I left “The Great Gatsby” as presented by Quill Theatre on the expansive Leslie Cheek stage at the VMFA, I had a reaction similar to the “slight feeling of emptiness” Julinda describes in her review. Interrogating my feelings a bit, I’d say I wanted a clearer picture of who some of the characters were, Daisy most of all.

The release of the movie version starring Leonardo DiCaprio prompted a small explosion of critical reconsideration of Gatsby in 2013; the book was a failure when released but has since been lauded as the true Great American Novel. That impossibly subjective label aside, the book addresses sophisticated ideas while including plenty of glitz, glamour and mayhem to satisfy the masses, all in a compact plot that rolls out in robust passages of crackerjack prose.

Still, there are plenty of detractors and this Vox piece in particular points to some specific challenges and opportunities in staging Gatsby. “It is pleasant to look at, but you will not find any people inside,” the author complains. “[The characters] function here only as types, walking through the pages of the book like kids in a school play.”

The challenge then is for a director and her actors to flesh out what they are given to create fully articulated characters on stage and director Jan Powell does a great job with several of her players. In his Richmond stage debut, Kurt Smith carries off the title character’s single-minded focus on Daisy with panache. He’s strikingly handsome but with a hint of awkward vulnerability. It helps that, as a character, Gatsby has an emotional trajectory that’s articulated clearly enough for professional psychoanalysis.

Cole Metz is another stand-out. As Daisy’s bullying husband, Tom, he could be a simple racist asshole, but Metz effectively embodies a version of patrician entitlement that transcends that reductive description. Chandler Hubbard’s Nick provides the peephole into the inner lives of the other characters and he manages to be an fairly effective audience stand-in with his reactions to the plot’s machinations.

Any excuse to put the delightful Michelle Greensmith onstage is a worthy one after her amazing turn in last summer’s “Taming of the Shrew,” but the side romance between her character, Daisy’s friend Jordan, and Nick adds little to the proceedings. In striking contrast to the fancier folks, Tom’s side piece Myrtle as played by Amber Marie Martinez explodes with earthy energy, highlighted by costume designer Cora Delbridge. The prominent reds in Myrtle’s dresses stand out against the whites and washed out pastels of many of the other outfits.

In portraying the animating object of the piece, Rachel Rose Gilmour has an impossible task playing Daisy. It was instructive for me to watch clips of film versions of the character, with Carey Mulligan’s sad and ethereal depiction more entrancing than Mia Farrow’s oddly antic take. Gilmour is fetching and flirty and, in one of the later scenes, I found her protestation to Gatsby “you ask too much” to be the most revealing and compelling line of the show. The quandary of making Daisy something substantial may lie in what the Vox author calls “the travesty of [Fitzgerald’s] female characters -- single parenthesis every one, thoughtless and thin.”

But a bigger problem becomes clear after watching the movie depictions (clips from both the 2013 and 1974 movies can be found here). Though it centers on the love lives of a small set of New Yorkers, “The Great Gatsby” endeavors to capture a huge sweeping story, encapsulating everything from moral commentary on the decadent 1920s to broader ruminations on the endemic problem of the so-called American Dream. To address all of that, movie director Baz Luhrmann could fill the screen with ridiculous amounts of lavish revelry and then, when needed, draw the camera in tight for subtle intimacies.

Those contrasting frames can be depicted on screen and conjured in a reader’s mind but are harder to convey on stage. For this production, the VMFA stage is nearly bare except for a central rotating set piece and, while the party scenes crackle with energy, it would be hard (and expensive) to create the sense of overstuffed glamour that would be appropriate.

When the hard-hitting truth-telling begins, the scenes are too far from the audience to have a visceral effect. I couldn’t help but imagine whether this show would benefit from a setting like Virginia Rep’s Willow Lawn stage, where the audience could be easily swept away in a party’s extravagance in one minute but with close enough proximity to be immersed in the dramatic interplay that punctuates the final scenes.

Powell knows how to pull an audience into a production: her Richmond premiere was a masterful "Macbeth" that squeezed the action into the alley between two banks of seats and her "King John" had a character emerging from beneath seats in the audience. This Gatsby sometimes feels remote, particularly when there's nothing happening in the downstage section of Reed West's two-level set.

The large stage does provide ample space for the second act opener, a doozy of a dance playfully choreographed by Jeremy Gershman and Kayla Xavier. There are moments of similar spry energy interspersed throughout this production and watching actors like Smith, Metz and Martinez do their work is worth the price of admission. However, as Fitzgerald says, “There must have been moments…when Daisy tumbled short of [Gatsby’s] dreams,” so too are there moments when this production falls short of expectations.

Sweet Immersion (or The Cake, The Critics and Cats)

I’m sorry that you won’t get to see “The Cake” at Richmond Triangle Players. Technically, the show runs through this weekend, there was even an extra performance added for Wednesday night. But unfortunately for you, all remaining shows are sold out, leaving you without the opportunity to see one of the least politically political plays on Richmond stages in a long time and also one of the most delightful.

As both Jerry and Julinda noted in their reviews, the show’s playwright Bekah Brunstetter is best known for working on the TV show, This is Us. Those unfamiliar may then expect her play to be treacly or maudlin given a limited understanding of the TV show.

But fans know that This is Us has consistently excelled at creating genuine three-dimensional characters then letting them play out often impossibly complex interpersonal dramas in a flawed, gripping and always entertaining way. Brunstetter brings that kind of skill to the stage with “The Cake” and its depiction of a devoutly Christian North Carolina baker uncomfortable providing one of her stand-out confections as the centerpiece for a wedding between two lesbians.

There was recently a small-scale hullabaloo on social media about critics (again) in Richmond and I have to say that the LA or NYC critics did not do a great job of capturing what makes this show so good, in my opinion. The New York Times specifically implicated This is Us when it said the playwright “can’t help embroidering her argument with contrasting complications and comic behavior.” I’m sorry but aren’t complications and comedy part of what makes theater more interesting than everyday life?

The Hollywood Reporter sniffs that “The play ultimately isn't very thought-provoking.” Huh. I found that the show challenges those most likely to see a show like this (particularly when produced by a theater company devoted to LGBTQ+ friendly programming) to have a less reductive understanding of anyone who might be confronted with a dilemma similar to Della's.

One review gave me a clue as to why the LA and NYC productions may not have worked so well. Jonas Schwartz’s TheatreMania review describes Debra Jo Rupp’s take on traditional southern baker Della as a “a frenzied, fast talker.” Luckily, the Richmond Triangle Players production has instead a masterful portrayal by Terrie Moore that is anything but frenzied. Besides being a great actress perfectly suited to inhabiting a character who is a sweet, emotionally complex southern belle, Moore has the benefit of actually being a sweet, emotionally complex southern belle. Nothing seems put on in her performance; charm and empathy practically pour out of her.

Also creating a nuanced character is Nicole Morris-Anastasi as Jen, the daugher of Della’s best friend who is still in some ways struggling to accept her homosexuality. Unable to have a “coming out” conversation with her dead mother, she can’t help but hear the condemnation she would expect if she could have it, an expectation that Della reinforces. I remember hearing the “I’m not gay, I just fell in love with a person who happened to be my gender” equivocations from people I know with a background like Jen's and Morris-Anastasi effectively externalizes the internal battle she is fighting.

Gordon Bass as Della’s husband and Zakiyyah Jackson as Jen’s fiance make the most of their positions on the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum. While their characters are forced to voice the more simplistic arguments, Brunstetter provides ample opportunities for each to project a winning humanity.

The folks at Triangle have decked out the theater with some pasty shop trappings and patrons have the opportunity to enjoy sweet treats when the show ends. These little touches speak to the subtle ways a production can be immersive. The recent movie version of “Cats” was horrible in ways that are practically innumerable but I think the biggest thing missing was that sense of immersion that made the stage show (particularly the original Broadway production) delightful. Theater is fundamentally three-dimensional and no movie can really create that kind of experience, even with the funny glasses.

There’s also another kind of immersion at play here, too: a cultural variation. Maybe “The Cake” works better when staged in the south where the sense of friction around these issues can be palpable. Director Dawn Westbrook brings a lifetime of familiarity with southern contradictions to bear in her guidance of her actors through this show, as does Moore in her depiction of Della. Though I didn’t see the LA or NYC productions to be able to fairly compare, perhaps it takes a certain kind of cultural immersion to transform “The Cake” from empty calories to a sweet, fulfilling treat.