PRG supports Cory Pattak in transfer of The Great Gatsby to The London Coliseum

The multi award-winning new musical, The Great Gatsby, which opened at New York’s Broadway Theatre in April 2024, successfully transferred to London’s West End at the London Coliseum in April 2025 for a limited summer run that lasts until September.

The scenic and projection design and lighting are masterfully handled by the decade-long collaborative partnership of Paul Tate dePoo III and lighting designer, Cory Pattak. Pattak talks to PRG UK, the lighting, control and atmosphere supplier for the London production, about his inspirations and vision for the show and PRG UK’s part in transferring it to the West End:

“Everyone has their own idea of what Gatsby should be,” Pattak says. “In America especially, people have a strong connection to the story with its many themes and nuances, and arrive at the theatre with their own preconceived ideas. But first and foremost, they all expect the opulence and lavishness of Gatsby’s parties. We realised early on that it’s impossible to please everyone, so we decided to make the version we would want to see, and we seem to have satisfied the audience’s expectations.”

Bucking the current Broadway trend for minimalist sets, DePoo and Pattak adopted a maximalist approach to deliver a production of great scale and size, ensuring the audience receives ‘value for money’ and experiences that opulence and extravagance that they expect from Gatsby. “There’s no subtlety,” states Pattak. “This show does not hide in the shadows!”

On stage, The Great Gatsby is a glowing world lit up in golds, warms and tungsten where Pattak and DePoo use lighting to extend the scenery, and spill the video content into the scenery, blending all those elements together to make Gatsby’s world feel gold- encrusted and endlessly tall and wide, disappearing up into the flies and out into the wings. “On top of this we play with a lot of teals, blues and greens amid many references to the Bay (the other side of which lives Gatsby’s unattainable object of love, Daisy Buchanan) and the swimming pool (the cold light of which emanates up from the orchestra pit) which plays a critical role in the story. We augment this with lots of refractions and reflections.

Pattak and his team lost none of this opulence in transferring the show to the West End. “There were no sacrifices from the artistic point of view - we brought the full production and upgraded it,” he says “We were very lucky to find a venue in the London Coliseum that was so befitting Gatsby.”

This begins with the architecture of the Coliseum itself: “The Coliseum’s beautiful auditorium is quite possibly the most stunning I have ever seen!” states Pattak.

Unusually, the London Coliseum’s stage is a similar size to the Broadway Theatre, so no downsizing was required, leaving room for tweaks and upgrades to the original design. “We are always looking for places to improve, and made a few changes and additions with the help of PRG sourcing what we needed,” says Pattak. “Personally I feel the London version is the best looking right now. “We upgraded the way we controlled the haze, fog and smoke by integrating them into the London deck in a way I’m very pleased with,” continues Pattak, the atmosphere now provided by a mixture of MDG ATM APS haze generators, Look Solutions Unique and Viper NT fog generators and Cryo- Fogger low pressure generators.

Due to the Coliseum’s extra throw distances and the greater output requirement against the large amount of video wall, the team upgraded its main Broadway lighting fixture, the Vari

-Lite VL2600, to the VL3600 for London. “I was happy because it’s a brighter fixture and has more features, but there were some lighting positions where we couldn’t put a fixture that large, so some of our side light turned into ETC Halcyon Gold Ultrabrights, and some of our balcony rail fixtures became Ayrton Rivale Profiles which are smaller and lighter,” says Pattak.

Similarly, the Coliseum’s follow spot positions are much further away (125ft – 140ft) but the ceiling is not high enough for traditional followspots, so the team used 3 Robe iForte LTX long- throw versions (an upgrade from Broadway’s Robe iForte). “I believe these are one of the brightest on the market at present,” says Pattak, “but at times were barely bright enough against the video content, so we have to double or even triple up.”

In general, however, Pattak explains that the brightness of a fixture is less important than the colour matching. “We spent a lot of time matching and making custom colours, cue by cue, to blend the virtual scenery with the real scenery and trick the eye into thinking it was all one thing – it’s the lighting that makes that work. It was important, therefore, that we had fixtures in London that were capable of making and matching all these colours to the video, especially when using different fixtures, video tiles and paint treatment on the scenery from the Broadway show.

“Local availability and variations in a new venue always mean a few changes, and Ian Phillips from PRG UK was very instrumental in sourcing the right fixture replacements. He was really receptive to what we wanted – why certain fixture types were critical and what they needed to do - and worked with us to ensure that the replacements were physically and technically able to achieve what we wanted artistically.

“I really appreciate the amount of collaboration with PRG UK in tracking down the gear we needed to support the production in the best way possible. “I’ve had a longstanding relationship with PRG in the States (the New York branch supplied The Great Gatsby on Broadway) since I was Ken Billington’s Associate nearly 20 years ago,” says Pattak, “so I was happy to keep it in the family when transferring to London and very happy to work with Ian Phillips and Peter Marshall who couldn’t have been lovelier! It feels great to have my relationship with PRG extend across the Atlantic to the UK and, by knowing Ian and Peter, to grow that relationship going forward.”

“It was brilliant to support Cory and the rest of the team on this stunning musical,” confirms PRG’s Ian Phillips. “Every member of the creative and production teams we worked alongside made this show the success it is today, and we wish them the very best moving forward with whatever the show has planned next. “Continuing the fine work done by our colleagues over on Broadway proves that PRG truly is a global supplier to all theatre productions.”

PRG’s UK Director of Theatre, Peter Marshall, agrees: “It was an absolute pleasure to work with Cory, Paul and the entire design team on this very prestigious production.”

Pattak is also keen to point out the contribution of his West End team saying: “I had a really great UK team to help me and my US Associate Paul Vaillancourt. Tom Johnson and Oliver Thomas are really fabulous West End production electricians, my great UK Assistant LD Danny Vavrečka was recently Assistant LD on Starlight Express, so was accustomed to working on a big maximalist show, and UK lighting programmer, Dan Street, was also fabulous. We were very happy to work with them all.”

www.prg.com 

www.corypattak.com