The Great Gatsby

Northern Ballet's artistic director David Nixon clearly thought so when starting work on this new production loosely based on the F Scott Fitzgerald classic.

It certainly manages to capture the style of the 1920s when the action is set, right from the opening "credits" where the seven central characters are introduced in profile from behind grey Art Deco panels.

Thus golf champion Jordan Baker (Hannah Bateman) swings a club and mechanic George Wilson (Benjamin Mitchell) rolls a tyre.

This stylistic motif continues in the flapper-girl dresses and Jerome Kaplan's set design which includes period New York street signs and a flickering green bootlegger light. And the period is clearly evidenced too in Richard Rodney Bennett's choice of music, which largely draws on jazz standards.

Yet there are times when the style isn't matched by substance. The two party scenes lack a real show-stopper routine and opportunities to play with the Charleston seem sadly limited.

Far more memorable is the intimate scene in which Daisy Buchanan (Martha Leebolt) and her former lover Jay Gatsby (Tobias Batley, pictured with Leebolt) relive their past.

They sensuously move in a room full of mirrors while the shadow of their youthful selves (Michela Paolacci and Jeremy Curnier) echo their moves, which are separated by a couple of seconds to signify the spatial and physical distance between them

Regrettably there aren't enough scenes of this quality to save the production, which is also marred by a lack of narrative drive.

Aficionados of the 1920s will want to see it for the fashions but everyone else may want to wait for the upcoming Baz Luhrmann film adaptation.

Tours nationally until May 28, details: www.northernballet.com.