Who is popular today?

Immersive LDN A revitalised, socially distanced version of the F Scott Fitzgerald novel keeps the jazz age alive with song, dance and spectacle
Last year, in the “before”, The Great Gatsby was reimagined as an immersive show inside Jay Gatsby’s mansion, with the audience as its jazz-age revellers. Now, in the “after” of pandemic lockdown, the adaptation returns in a socially distanced incarnation. But how well can it encapsulate the commotion and decadence of that rollicking party amid London’s tier 2 restrictions?
At first its headiness feels nervy and forced, but the audience interaction and unrehearsed intimacies of immersive theatre are ultimately a welcome antidote, and balm, for our times. We are seated inside the costume party, albeit at a safe distance, and the production gets in motion with song and spectacle in its central, sprawling space, whose shabby chic could easily pass for the inside of Gatsby’s faux Hôtel de Ville home. Even our face masks do not appear out of place amid the masquerade-style subterfuge. Continue reading...