What drew you to staging The Great Gatsby?
Sarah: “The Great Gatsby is a book I have loved for many many years and with the 100 year anniversary of its publication this year it felt like the perfect time to create a fresh, new production.
I worked in Scotland for 5 years and come back often to visit family and friends, so when Elizabeth Newman took over Pitlochry Festival Theatre we immediately started talking about what we might do together. Elizabeth and I had had a really fruitful relationship of co-productions when she had been at Bolton (I’d directed Look Back in Anger for her and she had come to Derby with Educating Rita) so I also really wanted to work with her as I knew our artistic sensibilities aligned. What I didn’t know was that she was a writer but when she offered to write the adaptation and I read some of her work I realised she was perfect for it as she understood how my work really is very fluid and she understood how to push the story forward in a way that allowed me as a Director to be at my best.”
Why do you love this story? Are you attracted to the glitz and the glamour of the era?
Sarah: “Not really! For me it’s not about that at all. Of course I can see why that might attract some, its an era that makes for a stunning visual, no better realised than in Baz Luhrman’s film but for me it’s the story and the theme of class which really speaks to me.
It feels like it’s a story about hope and the destruction of hope, of course many call it a critique of the American Dream but for me it also speaks to a UK audience. It is a story of a man who comes from a background of limited means and no matter what he does, no matter how he tries the establishment still rejects him.
Of course many people would say “But Gatsby is a criminal, a bootlegger and maybe worse, he should be rejected” but for me he is a working class man who is just trying to use whatever tools are at his disposal to get what others have simply because they are born to privilege. But the establishment will simply not allow him to thrive in the same way. And that feels really relevant. It feels relevant to our society in the UK as much as it does to America and it feels relevant to now as much as it did in the 1920s.”
Why is it a story for now?
Sarah: “If we look at the political landscape of both America and here what we have are these very rich establishment figures pretending that it is possible for anyone to climb the ladder and grasp “the dream” but actually it is often stacked against us unless we come from money, have the security of money and the cultural capital that goes along with privilege. Quite often it is still the case that the status quo will always win out in the end. This is really underlined by the end of the book when the three people who literally pay for the story with their lives are those from the poorer backgrounds –Myrtle, Wilson and of course Gatsby.
So I really feel like it’s a story for now and a very important one. There are lots of ways I can draw parallels of this to our industry too… but I’ll leave that for another day!”
What research did you do for this production?
Sarah: “The research phase is something I really relish as a Director. I will usually start this a year in advance of getting into the room and so for this I was reading F Scot Fitzgerald’s letters and writings. The biography of his life and the biographies of the many people he based some of the characters on.
It’s so interesting to me to understand how he himself had the access to power and influence but wasn’t from within that sphere himself so he could really analyse that and of course I draw parallels between his life and the one in the book. I fell into many many joyful and fascinating research rabbit holes!
Then I found this really quite brilliant historian, Sarah Churchwell, who is really an expert on this novel and on Fitzgerald and she’s written a brilliant book called Careless People which really sets the novel in its time and context and explains the influences on Fitzgerald at the time of writing. I can’t recommend that book enough.
What I found with her writings and papers was that her thoughts really chimed with how I saw the novel and it felt like I could use them to be in conversation with my ideas in a really helpful way.
I’m delighted that Sarah will be joining us for an event at Derby Theatre where we delve into all of this a little deeper.
Another highlight of this research period was sharing spotify playlists with Shonagh and Elizabeth and a very stylish pinterest board with Jen!”
How did you use music to bring this adaptation to life?
Sarah: “Shonagh Murray is a truly talented Musical Director who has arranged these period songs so beautifully but in a way that is fresh and new. And then alongside these period numbers we have also added some modern numbers which Shonagh has arranged so they sit comfortably within the era. You’ll find these always come or are linked to Gatsby. That’s because not only does he bring modernity but we also want our audience to be set adrift a little when he is on stage- we want to unnerve them. “Do I recognise that tune, is this authentic? Or not?” should be the feeling.
Shonagh and our band of talented actor-musicians have created a beautiful soundtrack which they play brilliantly together and its augmented by some spine tingling sound design by Ivan Stott which really helps to locate us and move us through the story. “
The Great Gatsby is on at Pitlochry Festival Theatre from 27 Jun – 25 Sep 2025.
