If ever there was a show of two halves, this was it. At the interval I was toying with the idea of sneaking out (and that wasn’t just because the people sitting next to me had spent the first ten minutes consuming an entire takeaway meal). By the end I was dabbing away tears and cheering as each actor took a bow.

How did this miraculous conversion take place? What was so wrong, and what so right?

It was only too clear that a huge amount of work had gone into this production. The set is an impressive Art Deco creation, there’s singing, dancing, and a bold twist on the original book. But in the first half it just doesn’t come together.

The deliberate anachronism of using modern songs to populate the aural landscape of 1922 wears its Luhrmann heavily on its sleeve, and the clash of flappers and 70s crooning, for me, simply jarred. The dancing seemed superfluous and exposed: this wasn’t a musical, so why did it briefly behave as though it was one? Half the audience politely clapped like you do at the end of a song; the other half didn’t, as it just seemed awkward. At the climax of the first half there’s a mini-ballet between Gatsby and Daisy that represents the joy of finding each other again. It was well performed, but watching it verged on the embarrassing, like stumbling across your father mowing the lawn in a mankini. I wanted to cry, “Why are you doing this?” The atmosphere of a convincingly narrated story was all it needed – and for Gatsby and Daisy to kiss.

The central, and guiding, creative decision of this adaptation was to make Gatsby a woman: not just played by a woman in the cause of gender-blind casting, but a female character in the world of the story. In places this creaked and stretched credulity (as when she off-handly explains that she fought in the First World War by dressing up as a man, and everyone was fooled). In others it adds depth and a fresh perspective to how we read the text. It means that Daisy’s secret life, hidden from her husband Tom, is not just about an affair with another man, but about the essence of her own identity. And Fitzgerald’s Gatsby undeniably has a sexual appeal that reaches out to the narrator Nick as well as to Daisy. In truth, it feels like a natural and smart creative decision.

But gender-swapping isn’t a substitute for theatrical style, and the first half felt if anything slightly longer than the entire original novel. Late lighting cues, pieces of scenery being hefted around, and overlong scenes added to the sluggish mood.

And then the second half started. The smell of my neighbours’ takeaway had finally dissipated, and the entire experience assumed a new level of focus, passion and – above all – drama. Gone was the dancing, and in its place we had intense confrontations. Gone were the meandering scenes, and now we had a story that built with pace and tension.

Ethan Bareham’s Nick the Narrator was a perfect piece of casting. Watching him and Gillian Konko as Gatsby reminded me of Charles Ryder and Sebastian Flyte in Brideshead Revisited: one awkward, polite, fascinated; the other charismatic, effusive, bent on self-destruction. Eleanor Dunlop was brilliantly poised and icy as Jordan. Flynn Hallman, in a tiny role as Gatsby’s father, moved me to tears. But the show was almost stolen by Fitzroy ‘Pablo’ Wickham as George, the gas-station owner who becomes the deliverer of retribution at the climax of the play. As he pointed his gun in mingled panic and rage, not only the other characters but everyone in the audience froze in fear.

At the end of the day, The Great Gatsby is of course one of the outstanding novels of the Twentieth Century. It doesn’t need too much interference. Bringing it to the stage is in itself an exciting and worthwhile idea. Ultimately Peter Todd’s and Mina Moniri’s adaptation finds its voice, and makes for a powerful, thrilling and moving show. Sure, it takes a while to find that voice. But it’s worth the wait. Don’t leave at the interval.

It’s once again student drama season, which means a succession of hits, misses and hidden gems filing in and out of the Burton Taylor Studio. But for Scar Theatre, their production of The Great Gatsby took to the Oxford main stage this Wednesday, where it will remain until Saturday night.

Opulence and excess play an enormous role in The Great Gatsby, so the upgraded space is fitting - and very much put to use. There’s a live jazz band, a large art deco-style staircase, projectors, and at one point huge puffs of confetti rain down on the audience. This is all stunning, although perhaps more indulgent is the runtime, which clocks in at two hours and forty-five minutes. The book is a slim little tome, and the play could probably have been cut by at least a third and still been effective, perhaps even more so.

This is partly due to the adaption's insistence on including every notable quote from the book. Nick (Ethan Bareham, perfectly capturing the character, plays him as both wide-eyed and astute), our narrator, employs the framing device of recounting this formative summer to his psychiatrist, and while this works well overall, there are perhaps one too many asides that would be better blended into the drama of actual scenes. This is further underlined by Bareham’s Nick being at his most affecting when with a scene partner.

The USP of writer-directors Mina Moniri and Peter Todd's production is that Julia ‘Jay’ Gatsby is a woman: not just played by an actress, but the character of Gatsby herself is female. The queering implications of this are oddly fitting. Gatsby’s always been a tragedy of attempted self-invention, romantic dreaming and the limits of class mobility facing up against old money’s morals and social clout. A sapphic twist on the tale rings true.

Since the book’s release in 1925, there have been countless think pieces speculating on Nick’s sexuality. There’s the classic queer ambiguity to his uneasy admiration of Gatsby - does he want to be Gatsby, or be with him? There’s a scene early on in the novel, where, leaving a drunken orgy, Nick departs with another man, Chester Mckee, and it’s strongly implied they spend the night together.

Here, this is illustrated through a lingering kiss and offer of a lunch date with McKee (Bailey Finch-Robson). This goes a long way to explain Nick’s feeling of kinship with the female Gatsby: no longer a bromance, in this version the pair’s common ground is that they’re both queer strivers in a world disdainful of such things.

However, this momentary gayness is never addressed again - Nick quickly takes up with Jordan (Danielle Nnene), Daisy’s aloof and gamine golfer friend, often read as queercoded herself. Jordan’s role in the book works as a contrast to Daisy’s strict adherence to the passive feminine ideal of the day. In this version, Gatsby herself already fills this role and makes Jordan somewhat redundant. I found myself wishing they’d genderswapped Jordan as well and committed further to their queering of the narrative.

As for Gatsby herself, Gillian Konko is masterfully cast, playing the role with a butter-smooth transatlantic accent and hypervigilant showmanship. It’s all there: charisma with an edge of artifice, layered over a brittle and naive worldview. Lily Carson as Daisy is excellent too, charmingly breezy and emotive, muffling quiet desperation with loud cheer. It’s easy to see how Gatsby would have put her on a pedestal. But while the chemistry is there, the underlying implications of their lesbian relationship aren’t properly lived in. Gatsby still brags to Nick about ostensibly winning medals fighting in the war while disguised as a man, and Jordan still recalls Gatsby courting Daisy five years earlier while dressed as an officer. This feels hard enough to believe logistically, but could at least ring true emotionally if Gatsby had a butch swagger about her, but Konko’s Gatsby is portrayed with a high-femme polish, aggressively poised in a cocktail dress. I wondered why they didn’t change these small details to fit.

Daisy and Gatsby’s love, forbidden here not only because of class differences but also the sexual morals of the day, changes the nature of the story as well. In the original novel, Daisy is trapped between Tom’s bullish, objectification and Gatsby's idolising love. She’s the perfect Barbie for his dream house, but a trophy is still an object. When she says ‘The best thing a girl can be in this world is a beautiful little fool’, you feel it like a punch to the gut. But a female Gatsby changes the dynamic and makes Daisy’s struggle more about internalised shame than simply external sexism. Once again, I wish this had been explored more somehow.

To quickly get my remaining gripes out of the way: the halfhearted dance scenes felt odd and obligatory, the jazz band’s use of modern(ish) music distracted and on the technical side, the lighting cues occasionally faltered.

However, that’s not to say it was unsatisfying. There’s a rising propulsion to the second half and plenty of drama. And several stand-out performances, there’s Bareham, Carson and Konko, but Roman Pitman also steals scenes as Tom. Tom is so often portrayed as simply an entitled brute, here Pitman finds the louche, smirking side to him that transfixes. And as doomed mechanic George Wilson, Fitzroy ‘Pablo’ Wickham delivers the emotional powerhouse performance the role requires.

At one point, Jordan says ‘I love large parties - they’re so intimate. At a small party, there’s no privacy’ - a fitting summary for this entire production’s MO. Scattered amongst the maximalist sensibilities, there are many arch deliveries and tender moments that shine like the beads on a flapper’s dress. The energy is infectious and oddly, butterflies-in-your-stomach enchanting the same way the novel is. It’s a long haul with some sadly unexplored possibilities, but I think you’d be missing out not to grab a ticket.