The Incomplete Guide to The Great Gatsby and Tim Key
In which Vanessa and Elliot see different versions of people yearning to recreate the past.
The Great Gatsby
By Vanessa Burke
When F. Scott Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, it was poorly received. Fitzgerald felt like the audience didn’t understand it - back then, it was supposedly seen purely as a crime fiction story. It was the US military’s distribution of the book to its armed forces that elevated its profile, and allowed for its ascendance into the literary classic canon.
Now a staple English class read, the symbolism behind the green dock light, the eyes of a prominent advertisement, and classic phrases about “a beautiful little fool”, people who “smashed up things”, and “boats against the current” bounce around collective generations’ brains. That doesn’t mean there’s no room for error in interpretation though.
The Great Gatsby Musical is the latest incarnation of the story, traversing the Atlantic from Broadway to the West End. It comes with the welcome gift of Corbin Bleu in our framing narrator Nick Carraway, and otherwise stars Jamie Muscato as Jay Gatsby, Frances Mayli McCann as Daisy Buchanan, Amber Davies as Jordan Baker, Joel Montague as George Wilson, John Owen-Jones as Tom Buchanan, Jon Robyns as Meyer Wolfsheim, and Rachel Tucker as Myrtle Wilson.
The cast and the ensemble shine in their intricate and flashy choreography - a worthwhile challenge to stand out against the elaborate screen-dominated set design. Expenses were not spared on costume, props or indeed any production aspect. That said, it’s not entirely transportive, as the stage can feel quite sparse in various scenes where tight formations and sparse set pieces are employed.
A Story of Lost Souls
It’s not quite clear who this musical is made for either. The principle of musicals is that as characters break out into song and dance, it’s a reflection of heightened feelings. Often, this verbalises an internal monologue, which we need to understand the motivations of characters. But with a symbol-laden text like The Great Gatsby, also told by a first-person narrator (to what extent he is reliable I will not judge), this musical lays bare feelings or thoughts that aren’t supported by the source text - to say nothing of the shifted order of scenes to build entirely different perceptions of characters!
Take for instance the characterisation of Jordan Baker. This interpretation starts with Jordan claiming feminist ideals to Daisy, contrasting their positions in life. By the end, of course, she must part company with Nick, as she does in the novel. Yet even through the book’s lens of Nick’s perception, Jordan is consistently never seen as more than opportunistic of other women’s push for their rights.
Daisy, too, clamours for more sympathy, declaring to Nick in a private moment that she wanted nothing more than her baby Pammy to be a beautiful little fool when Pammy was born - at the end of the show! Moving this from Chapter 1, or what you’d imagine an early scene of the musical, attempts to excuse Daisy’s refusal to take responsibility for her actions by reinforcing her role in an unchangeable social class, rather than letting Nick’s accusation echo that her and Tom are truthfully just careless people.
A misunderstanding of who Gatsby is and why he ultimately loses his tenuous grasp on Daisy is likely a casualty of the necessary runtime of the musical, but does no more to improve the reception of the story. These changes feel like sops to modernity (along the poppy sound to some songs), but clash oddly with the melodramatic delivery of the juvenile lyrics. Sniggers occasionally rippled through the audience, whether because of staging choices or bizarre song lines.
While this production won Tony Awards on Broadway, it doesn’t impress me much. Then again, I was also no fan of the Baz Luhrman film, much to my husband’s chagrin. Perhaps this story is simply one best suited to bring to life in the theatre of the mind. If you disagree, you can buy tickets to The Great Gatsby Musical, performed at the London Coliseum, with prices starting at £20 (including booking fees).
The Ballad of Wallis Island
By Elliot Wengler
Based on his short film of the same name from 2007, The Ballad of Wallis Island is a film eighteen years in the making for director James Griffith. It’s a buddy comedy where the characters are confined to the titular Wallis Island - the brutal reality of nature is that its beauty is also something of a ploy, a trap.
That makes it sound like a horror: it isn’t. The Ballad of Wallis Island is utterly charming and delightful, with winning performances from Tom Basden, Tim Key, Carey Mulligan, Sian Clifford and Akemnji Ndifornyen.
Herb McGwyer (Basden), a washed up folk singer now trying to fund a pop music career, has been contracted for a small gig on Wallis Island, a small island off the Welsh coast. It’s so small that he’s having to stay, against his will, with the organiser, Charles Heath (Key). He is baffled by the island’s lack of proper harbour, its pathetically understocked shop - kept by the affable Amanda (Clifford) - and frustrated to learn that Charles has booked his former partner, Nell Mortimer (Mulligan) to play the gig as well. Charles then reveals that the gig isn’t a festival or anything so grand, he’s just a huge fan who had a spare million after winning the lottery twice, and badly wanted to see McGwyer and Mortimer reunited.
A lot of Ballad asks us to read between the lines: exactly why Herb and Nell broke up in the first place is a mystery that’s there to intrigue. And Charles is constantly fascinated by why a folk songwriting duo of such prowess could possibly end their partnership, professional, romantic or otherwise. Wallis Island is a perfect trap, with Herb unable to fix his flooded phone as Amanda doesn’t stock rice: the idea that a phone can be fixed this way baffles the islanders a lot. It’s a happier, offline life than the pressure that Herb puts on himself to make a living from music: fearing that he’s not commercial enough. Nell, meanwhile, has her own life and much more charm than the embittered Herb, and her husband, Michael (Ndifornyen), is happy to try and enjoy the island for birdwatching. Herb can’t appreciate anything around him.
It’s not one of those movies that serves up scenery porn just because it can. It’s a windy and weather-torn small island with not a lot going on. We barely see anyone beyond Charles, Amanda and the daily boat going to and from Wallis Island. It’s beautiful in the way that islands around the British coast can be, untouched by man, offering a Wuthering Heights-esque reflection of its characters.
Your enjoyment may vary. Charles is the primary source of all the comedy, with an endless barrage of dad jokes and puns, to the annoyance of Herb but to the enjoyment of the audience I was part of. If you know Key best as Sidekick Simon and his difficult humour from Alan Partridge and enjoyed that, then you’ll dig this. It’s like an older Simon, with a lot more depth. Tim Key was somewhat wasted on The Witchfinder as an arsehole, whereas here his eccentricities delight rather than frustrate. You quickly side with him and his desperately happy desire just to watch one more gig from his past, even though he has set up a nightmare scenario for our protagonists.
I’ve seen some people calling it the best film of the year so far, which might be a bit much. Its 104 minutes could have been 90, but, in a way, the slow pace is a perfect reflection of Herb’s experience of being trapped on the island with this eccentric madman. It’s a story about love, but not a love story. Love for the past, love for a friend’s work, love for music, and a desperate yearning for the past. I loved it.
The Ballad of Wallis Island is in cinemas now.
An Incomplete List of Tim Key programmes
By Elliot Wengler
Tim Key is sometimes described as comedy’s best secret, despite him appearing in a supporting role in just about everything from Stath Lets Flats to Inside No. 9. I feel silly calling this section “An Incomplete List of Tim Key programmes”, given that one of his poetry anthologies is called The Incomplete Tim Key, but great minds and that. Here’s the Tim Key stuff you either remember him really well for or need to refresh yourself.
Newswipe
For a generation of British Comedy fans, their first encounter with Tim Key would have been in his intense and dark poetry segments on Newswipe with Charlie Brooker (2009-2010). In these segments, he seemed to be in a desolate wasteland or bunker, with slow and sardonic satire about bankers and Gordon Brown. They complimented the rest of Brooker’s show and his few minutes here and there were weird and wonderful treats: it felt like you had genuinely encountered him at a poetry open mic pointing at the dark times with bite.
Tim Key’s Poetry Programme
Tim Key’s Poetry Programme is exactly that, a near complete archive of all his poetry and comedy, on BBC Radio 4. His regular collaborator, Tom Basden, provides the music.
Alan Partridge: Sidekick Simon
First appearing on Mid Morning Matters as Alan Partridge’s sidekick, Simon Denton has now become a staple of the Partridgeverse. It’s a fantastic power dynamic, with Simon clearly the funnier and more down to earth of the pair, but unable to set himself apart. Simon is desperate for Patridge’s approval, whilst also trying to escape his boss’s shadow. The character returned in Alpha Papa and This Time with Alan Partridge.
This Time With Alan Partridge is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK.
Taskmaster
Appearing in the first season of Taskmaster, and credited in all episodes since as ‘Task Consultant’, Tim Key set the stage in his first appearance with many of the classic Taskmaster tropes. Highlights, or, lowlights, included terrible prize and gift contributions like book tokens, rampaging through a watermelon, and trying to cheat his way through a bath-emptying task. He set the template for many contestants to come and managed to use the show to display his sheer comic talent and insanity for all to see.
Taskmaster is available on Channel 4 and Youtube outside of the UK.