The Great Gatsby (Hornchurch)

Jessop has reworked elements of Joucla's initial adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel. Coming into the auditorium, we are confronted with what looks like a bare room, perhaps in a warehouse conversion.

It's the first read-through for a new play; the actors greet each other and mill around until the director calls them to order.

Then, cleverly, we are immediately into the actual story as modern clothes are changed for those of the mid-1920s and a series of projections (Ben Jessop is the film producer) take us to the different locations.

Rodney Ford's set and costumes make perfect visual sense in this new context, blending the fantasy lives which these contrasted characters seem to live with the harsh realities of their mortal existence.

Sam Kordbacheh makes a superb Gatsby, drifting the character's amorality across the stage with the same insouciance as his elegant suit. He's matched by Ellie Rose Boswell's Daisy. Georgina Field is Myrtle, the wife trapped equally in her marriage to George (the excellent Sam Pay) and by her affair with Daisy's husband Tom (a lowering Sean Needham).

This is also the sexiest production I've seen on the Queen's Theatre stage – pole dancing, nudity and a very realistic love scene between Field and Needham. Donna Berlin's choreography is beautifully in period and expressive.

Nick Carraway is an ambiguous figure throughout; Callum Hughes suggests the natural voyeurism of a writer as well as the lack of moral fibre which keeps him at a remove – it's safer just to look on, not to participate.

Jordan is also something of an onlooker, something emphasised by Alison Thea-Skot's portrayal. Stuart Organ is properly sinister as Meyer, the man with an iron grip on the tap of those Prohibition years. The musical director is Steven Markwick – as usual, the entire cast plays a variety of mainly brass and woodwind instruments.

At the end, the production credits roll as they would for a film. This does, for my money, go on for far too long.

The Great Gatsby runs at the Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch until 3 May.