Review: The Great Gatsby by Northern Ballet at the Lyceum, Sheffield

In New York City, tall grey sliding panels for skyscrapers bisect the busy streets, as commuters bustle through the concrete jungle.

Myrtle’s glittering party dress is the same shade of purple as the bruise from the backhander she’s dealt by her cruel lover Tom Buchanan.

The grimy gas station where cuckolded, oil-smeared mechanic George Wilson broods angrily on his frivolous wife’s infidelity is as dark and claustrophobic as his moods.

There are some sumptuously gorgeous sets, costumes, and lighting design in the Northern Ballet’s visually beautiful production of The Great Gatsby, at the Lyceum in Sheffield until Saturday.

The quality of the dancing is superlative, as always from Northern Ballet as choreographed by David Nixon CBE.

The subtle strength of some of Gatsby’s lifts, when our antihero collects his lost love Daisy into his arms and raises her high above his head, is breathtaking.

But the success of translating a book that relies so heavily on description and dialogue into the wordless medium of ballet is not so assured.

It would be useful to re-read the plot of The Great Gatsby – or at least be sure to buy the programme and have its synopsis open on your lap – before settling down to watch the ballet version of the story.

Act One begins by introducing the seven main characters, and an ensemble of gangsters in trench coats and trilbies to allude to Gatsby’s criminal past. Gatsby and Daisy are portrayed twice, young and older, in two different timeframes danced simultaneously on the same stage.

There’s a green flashing light on the horizon beyond the dock: perhaps it symbolises hope, or a longing for the past, or a distant lighthouse meant to guide our characters’ way? Unless you’ve read the book recently you may well have forgotten.

Daisy’s cousin Nick Carraway – narrator in F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel – is reduced to a smaller supporting part in the ballet and it is the interval before you realise who he is. Unless you’ve read the book or seen one of the films of late, you might not recall Jordan Baker, Daisy’s best friend.

She’s a professional golfer, of course she is: she swings an imaginary golf club with a self-satisfied smile every time we see her.

There is so much to pack in, characters with complex back stories, misunderstandings that build to murder, and in the end a lot of the detail – and some essential plot twists – are lost. The final tragic mix-up, over who was driving the yellow car, is easy to miss entirely.

First soloist Jonathan Hanks dances the role of Gatsby with grace and an understated power, but without words the mysteries of his past remain just that.

When there are words, when music is played on the gramophone or the dancers break briefly into song at Tom and Myrtle’s drunken party in their secret New York love nest, it feels jarring after so long immersed just in the movement.

It’s almost 100 years since the 1925 novel was published, and a decade since the Northern Ballet show premiered in 2013, and this 10th anniversary tour does evoke the Jazz era of roaring twenties New York wonderfully.

But unlike last autumn’s Northern Ballet offering The Little Mermaid, and despite the stunning Art Deco staging that ought to suit ballet so perfectly, it feels The Great Gatsby doesn’t lend itself naturally to dance. Marilla the mermaid was mute, having given up her voice in her doomed pursuit of love.

Every one of her anguished, pained emotions was, inevitably, expressed through movement and ballet was the perfect medium to depict her wordless torture.

The Great Gatsby on the other hand struggles without dialogue, despite the best efforts of an incredible international cast of dancers whose expert artistry outshines the limitations of their story’s depiction.The Great Gatsby by Northern Ballet is at The Lyceum, Sheffield, until Saturday, March 25