Review: ‘The Great Gatsby’ Is Now an Immersive Play—or Is It a Party?
Nick Carraway is seeking suggestions for the perfect seduction move.
“Glass of champagne,” one of these reporters replies in a far more panicked tone than they have ever considered a glass of champagne. A moment later, a little group of us are with Nick (Rob Brinkmann), Myrtle Wilson (Claire Saunders), and Tom Buchanan (Shahzeb Hussain), as the latter two cavort—both behind their married partners’ backs. Hussain has Buchanan’s brutal bluffness down pat. Our little group are laughing one minute, then mortified, then a little freaked out, and soon sworn to silence over what we have seen. And then it’s on to the next strange encounter.
Such is the world of Immersive Everywhere’s production of The Great Gatsby—The Immersive Show (booking to Dec. 3). Outside the Park Central Hotel on New York City’s Seventh Avenue, a few blocks south of Central Park, it is a steamy Saturday afternoon. Inside we are asked to line up on a red carpet, and then ushered downstairs into the “Gatsby Mansion,” as in Jay Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s suave avatar for the Jazz Age. Some audience members are in their 2023 civvies, some are dressed up in full dapper, Flapper glory. Vanessa Leuck’s costumes for the performers are slick, spiffing, and sexy.