Glitz, Glamour, and the Green Light: The Great Gatsby Dazzles at The National Theatre
F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age masterpiece has been transformed into a spectacular Broadway musical, and Washington, DC theatergoers have only until May 24 to catch it. The Great Gatsby has arrived at The National Theatre on the heels of its 2024 Broadway run and 2025 European premiere, and it brings with it enough glitz, glamour, and sheer theatrical spectacle to fill every gilded room in Gatsby's mansion.
The show features a book by Kait Kerrigan, music by Jason Howland, and lyrics by Nathan Tysen, all under the supremely confident direction of Marc Bruni. It follows the familiar story: Nick Carraway, a Yale-educated Midwesterner, arrives on Long Island in the spring of 1922 to seek his fortune as a bond salesman. He soon finds himself pulled into the orbit of the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby, whose legendary parties mask a singular obsession — winning back Daisy Buchanan, the socialite he loved and lost years before. What unfolds is a portrait of desire, reinvention, and the moral hollowness lurking beneath the surface of the Roaring Twenties, all set against a backdrop of bootleggers, love triangles, and reckless wealth.
The production leans enthusiastically — gloriously, even — into spectacle, and on that front it delivers in extraordinary fashion. Scenic and projection designer Paul Tate DePoo III has conjured an Art Deco world of jaw-dropping beauty, complete with glittering set pieces and digital backdrops that shift seamlessly from Long Island mansions to the gritty Valley of Ashes. Two fully constructed, drivable vintage cars roll on and off stage. Sparkler cannons fire. Fog machines conjure misty waterways. A bubble machine floats iridescent orbs over the audience during Gatsby's legendary parties. Even before the house lights dim, the audience is treated to the hypnotic pulse of Gatsby's famous green light across the water, accompanied by the ambient sounds of waves and birdsong — an immersive opening that draws the viewer entirely into Fitzgerald's world before a single note is sung.
Linda Cho's Tony Award-winning costumes are among the show's great pleasures, draping the cast in satin, sequins, and period-perfect style while cleverly distinguishing the high-flapper era of 1922 from the WWI transitional years of Gatsby and Daisy's earlier romance. Dominique Kelley's choreography is equally dazzling — a sophisticated blend of contemporary isolations, classic flapper footwork, and an extended tap number that stops the show cold. Cory Pattak's lighting design complements it all beautifully, using rich color and atmospheric fog to shift mood with precision, silhouetting dancers in hauntingly beautiful tableaux and bathing the party sequences in jewel-toned excess.
The cast assembled for this national tour is uniformly superb. Jake David Smith brings enormous charm and genuine vocal power to Jay Gatsby, threading the needle between lovesick hopefulness and dignified mystery with ease. His solo "For Her," in which Gatsby stares across the water at Daisy's dock, captures the character's longing with quiet emotional truth, while his nervous, endearingly awkward humor in anticipation of reuniting with Daisy draws some of the evening's biggest laughs. Vocally, Smith is a force — his controlled, fluid tone and ability to sustain final notes provoke audible reactions from the audience.
Joshua Grosso as narrator Nick Carraway is a true standout, commanding the stage with warmth, wit, and a richness of voice that carries both the show's comic and dramatic weight. His drunken misadventures at Tom Buchanan's Plaza Hotel escapade — in which Nick gets swept up in Tom's not-so-secret bacchanal — produce some of the night's most joyful audience responses. Leanne Robinson as Jordan Baker is magnetic from her first entrance, embodying the spirit of the 1920s "new woman" with wit and independence, and her powerhouse turn in "New Money" is the kind of electrifying number that earns a production its standing ovation.
Lila Coogan brings tremendous energy and pathos to Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan's brassy mistress, and her solo "One-Way Road" is a brilliantly staged highlight. Will Branner plays the brutish, privileged Tom with pitch-perfect menace. Senzel Ahmady's Daisy is sweetly sung and emotionally resonant, particularly in the show's penultimate number, where she delivers a quietly devastating performance that draws genuine tears. And Edward Staudenmayer, as Gatsby's shadowy gangster associate Meyer Wolfsheim, opens the second act with "Shady" — a darkly comic, jazzy number that proves one of the evening's most delightful surprises.
Nathan Tysen's lyrics are clever and often poetic, drawing directly from Fitzgerald's prose. The use of "beat back, beat back" as a refrain early in the show, returning at the finale as Nick delivers the novel's immortal closing line, is a quietly brilliant bit of theatrical craft. Marc Bruni's direction keeps everything flowing with seamless elegance — scene transitions, set changes, and character entrances all blur together in a way that makes the show feel propulsive and alive throughout its roughly two-and-a-half-hour runtime.
This is a production that wears its ambitions openly and fulfills most of them with tremendous skill and heart. It is loud, lush, and great fun — a grand spectacle that celebrates the art of musical theatre at its most lavish. If you go hoping for glitz, golden parties, and a company of extraordinary performers at the top of their game, The Great Gatsby will not disappoint. Tickets are going fast, and the show runs only through May 24. Don't let the green light stay just out of reach.
The Great Gatsby plays through May 24, 2026 at The National Theatre, 1321 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC.