When the green spotlight shines on Joshua Rouse’s Jay Gatsby in Mirrorbox Theatre’s These Gilded Souls, it feels like we’re looking at a corpse. The harsh light casts his plaintive, wide-eyed expression into a hollow-cheeked skeleton, as if the light has drained him of his vital spark and left nothing behind but desperation. Appropriate, then, that we see him only in flashbacks, watching a man we already know to be dead.
These Gilded Souls, the Great Gatsby adaptation/continuation by playwright Aly Kantor, is currently playing at Mirrorbox Theatre in Cedar Rapids, starring Seth Hoffman as Nick Carraway. Nick has returned to West Egg to scatter the ashes of the wife he married and lost in the years following the events of the novel. If you don’t remember the torment of high school English, the story follows Carraway as he finds himself snatched up into the area residents’ high society lifestyle. Most importantly, he meets Jay Gatsby, the mysterious nouveau riche who throws elaborate parties every weekend at his palatial mansion. Nick finds out that all this is a desperate attempt to grab the attention of former flame Daisy Buchanan, whom he once loved as an impoverished soldier. When he finally does reconnect with Daisy, the glitter turns to rust and the party comes to an end.
Hoffman does a good job with Carraway’s monologues. As the narrator, he has several monologues throughout the play to set the scene or reminisce, framing the events of the novel as an older, less naive version of the fresh-out-of-the-Midwest Carraway of the book. It’s a lot to carry, and despite some slight awkwardness in his delivery, Hoffman handles it gamely.
The play sticks to the plot of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, though there are extra scenes that can feel slightly anachronistic or, sometimes, thuddingly didactic. Admittedly, the book itself is not subtle (the green light is the American Dream, everybody), but it felt that too often the additional scenes and dialogue were direct where the book implied. For instance, Nick and Jordan Baker’s queerness, hinted at in the novel, is much more explicit. Too often, however, it can feel like it’s played for a joke, a quick gag at Nick’s expense in sly asides. It does create an interesting subtext to Nick’s willingness to assist Gatsby in pursuing Daisy, serving as a surrogate for the relationship he craves with Gatsby. It also makes Nick seem more bitter in his present-day self, a spurned never-loved lover reeling off a dead man’s faults.
The direction makes the most of the space, using light to divide the small stage up into complex tableaux. I was struck by how big the space felt and how many different narrative threads could play simultaneously. I also enjoyed the use of the character Owl Eyes (played by Cassandra Laas) — a small gag character in the novel — as a ghostly observer throughout the play. Owl Eyes becomes a bespectacled replacement for the eyes of T.J. Eckleburg, observing the action with the cold stare of God.
My only quibble with the direction is during the fragmented and chaotic party in the first act. In the brief fragments of the party, I felt that the inertia dropped when the lights snapped off, moving time forward in a jump. I would have liked to see a more frenetic mounting of the action until it all collapses in a sudden act of violence.
Still, the party scene captures perfectly the undertone of Gatsby’s exploration of East Coast wealth — the pathos of the lives of the characters. They’re all wealthy or dragged into wealth’s glamorous wake, the glittering, happy rulers of the world. But here, they are nothing more than a pile of sloshed, mumbling wrecks.
One standout performance was McKayla Sturtz as Daisy Buchanan. Her nervous, let’s-all-get-along energy felt very real to the character, who, in the end, can make no decisions of her own. When she submits to becoming a prize for the two men vying for her, it feels like a true tragedy. She excellently plays the part of a woman suffering as her own will and desire crumble in the face of social expectation.
Sarah Michels plays her self-assuredly malicious husband Tom. Michels, in a broad, almost rectangular suit, conveys the “hulking” menace of the character with odious smallness.
Rouse’s Gatsby, on the other hand, radiates stilted self-awareness. Every “old sport” feels like a nervous tic, a way to reaffirm the character he has forged for himself. It works for a lot of scenes, especially the ones in which he actually interacts with Daisy or when Carraway harangues him for being a “child.” Still, I would have liked to see the charisma of Gatsby as well, the smooth confidence, to drive it home when that mask slips.
Dana Jensen’s Jordan Baker is also a character whose personality is hidden behind a mask, which can be a delicate balancing act. I felt in the first act her performance occasionally tipped from disaffected and wry to a vaudevillian mugging. She recovered in the second act, as more of the real parts of Jordan started to emerge. Still, some more coldness may have provided a counterpoint to her position as the play’s comic relief.
I was also particularly moved by Steve Anderson’s performance as George Wilson. Wilson is a mechanic whom Tom torments, sleeping with his wife, dangling financial help and mocking him behind his back. When he snaps, it’s chilling to watch as Anderson roars and weeps, transforming himself into a man driven to his limit.
The set of the play is simple: an arch at the back of the room with topiaries on either side represents Gatsby’s mansion. Sections of the stage in front of it shift and change to apartments, mechanics’ garages and roads in which cars careen. This sparseness was especially striking during the party scenes at Gatsby’s. Guests circulate in riots of colors and shrieks of laughter in knots on the floor, but it still feels eerily empty. As Jordan Baker says, “Big parties are so much more intimate.”
Is it intimacy that Jay Gatsby gets in his first fumbling dance with Daisy? As he staggers in the middle of the floor and the guests back away to the corners of the room, is he getting what he wanted? Or is he alone on a bare stage, desperate, beating against the endless current until his arms give out and he is swept away to drown?
Shows run through April 6 at Mirrorbox Theatre in Cedar Rapids.
