REVIEW: The Great Gatsby (Pitlochry Festival Theatre)

The Great Gatsby - ★★★★★ - Sensational

Pitlochry Festival Theatre: 27 June – 25 Sept
Review by Rebecca Mahar

Review commissioned by, and originally posted on All Edinburgh Theatre, 3 July 2025. Edited by Thom Dibdin.

The Great Gatsby is an extraordinarily difficult story to adapt, but Elizabeth Newman has done it, in a dazzling, hopeful, forlorn and febrile production, helmed by Sarah Brigham and co-produced by Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Derby Theatre.

Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel of the same name, The Great Gatsby is narrated by Nick Carraway, a writer and veteran of the Great War turned bond salesman, who moves to the Long Island village of West Egg to start afresh.

Nick Carraway is the fixed point in the sea of chaos that is Gatsby. He is, as Fitzgerald wrote, “rather ill at ease among swirls and eddies of people”. It is this aspect that Newman has seized upon in her adaptation, to great success.

David Rankine (Nick Carraway) and Oraine Johnson (Gatsby) in The Great Gatsby. Pic: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

Visit All Edinburgh Theatre to read the full review!

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