The Great Gatsby. Directed by Marc Bruni, libretto by Kait Kerrigan, Jason Howland, and Nathan Tysen, performances by Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada, The Broadway Theater, 2024.

We have never reviewed a theatrical production in these spaces, although we have made a few stage notes from time to time about productions we were involved with. This is different, though, because we have reviewed numerous works related to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. This is going to take a little different approach. It is not so much a review as an observation about the adaptation.

We saw the show at the Broadway Theater in New York. It is on its first run and still has the original cast. It got the audience on its side right from the beginning. After an overture with some dance, Nick Carraway begins the narrative exactly as the book does: “In my younger and more vulnerable years…” but when he tells how he ended up on Long Island, he says, “Manhattan was too expensive.” That got a big laugh from the New York audience. I think that won the audience over.

We should note a couple of things. First, The Great Gatsby entered the public domain in the United States three years ago. Since then, there have been multiple editions of the book and a few other adaptations, of which this musical is the best known, if not the best. Second, any stage or film adaptation ought to be a spectacle because Gatsby’s parties were. This is no exception.

This musical has lots of visual appeal. The sets echo an art nouveau style which works well. The costumes dazzle. The costumes for the dance and party scenes must contain over a million sequins. The choreography was great. A couple of the dance numbers were by themselves worth the price of admission, especially the two numbers that tapped and a clever dimly-lit song and dance number featuring gangster Meyer Wolfsheim (Eric Anderson) called “Shady.”

The entr’acte and outdoor set piece was an evening view across the harbor with an occulting green light. Two songs focused on this, both sung by Gatsby and Daisy, one called “Green Light” and one called “Go.” In all the time I have taught the novel, and the amount of literary criticism I have read about it, it simply never dawned on me that the green light can simply represent (among other things) a traffic signal telling Gatsby to go. We see it more as a symbol of longing and something unattainable (as in the classic baseball essay “Green Light, Green Monster”). But we see that Gatsby has worked some things out in his mind, and he truly wants to go and pursue his lost love.

Now I have seen most of the Gatsby films over the years except for the 1974 one with Redford and Farrow. I believe this adaptation was superior to any of the films for one reason—the acting. There also was a touch of humor. The spectacle was equal to the 2013 film with DiCaprio. Partly because it was a live performance, one could sense real chemistry between Gatsby and Daisy (Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada).

The three main actresses all did an effective job. The role of Daisy is difficult to do well. The film versions tend to portray her as a pretty face, an image that Gatsby falls for. Here both the writing and the acting made Daisy’s personality come alive. In the scene at the Plaza Hotel right before the accident when Daisy cries out to Gatsby, “Oh, you want too much!” it hurts. We know that Tom Buchanan is a cad and a brute, but Gatsby has put more pressure on Daisy than she can handle. She is real, though in the end she “sounds like money.”

Dariana Mullen, who played Myrtle Wilson, also was quite effective. We see her torn between her husband’s plan to settle down out West and her relationship with Tom, which she knows in her heart will go nowhere in spite of the exciting escape she has with him.

The role of Jordan Baker (Samantha Pauly) was either rewritten or more heavily adapted from the novel. In the 1925 novel there is only the insinuation of sex between Daisy and Gatsby because they spend afternoons alone together. In this production, Jordan comes on strong to Nick and the implication is that their relationship is also sexual. There is nothing in the novel to hint that—not that Nick reveals a whole lot about himself in the novel.

I noted in another review that all the film productions (except the missing 1926 silent film) of The Great Gatsby portray Daisy as a blonde, even though the book says she had brown hair. Well, in this production she is neither blonde or brunette. She has black hair. It is a minor observation and does not detract from the show at all. One could argue that it was closer to the original.

One interesting touch which makes the stage adaptation more compact is that George Wilson’s garage becomes a transshipment point for Meyer Wolfsheim’s bootleg products. Also in this version Wolfsheim puts more pressure on Gatsby to produce. In the novel, he seems more proud of the fact that he made Gatsby what he is. Still, that adds some dramatic tension to this show.

The 2013 film version was criticized by some because with one exception none of its music was from the Roaring Twenties. There was no jazz to speak of. While all the songs and music are original to this Broadway production, they sound like they could have come from the nineteen-twenties. Many are jazzy, some with tap dancing. The mellower songs have more of a timeless appeal that could have been from any era. The music works.

The way that even popular Broadway musicals affect the culture has changed. Through at least the 1960s, popular theater songs became pop hits. I can think of songs like “Ol’ Man River,” “Some Enchanted Evening,” “Do, a Deer,” or “People.” That does not appear to be the case any more. I had a number of students who loved Hamilton, for example, but I do not recall them singing songs from the show. A song from this show that caught the audience was a vigorous dance number, “Roaring On,” with the line “The party never stops.” The song “Shady” certainly was the most distinctive in the way it was danced with the dancers all wearing fedoras and dark dusters on a dimly lit stage.

In the novel, Gatsby first kisses Daisy on a sidewalk where there are no trees so he can see her in the moonlight. This version says he first kissed her under a weeping willow. The lighting suggesting a weeping willow drooping from the ceiling is clever, if not a spectacle itself. That works also because of the well-established symbol of the willow as sorrowful, and, of course, it foreshadows weeping to come.

The spectacle includes a couple of cars, Tom’s blue roadster and Gatsby’s yellow Rolls. The edge of the stage converts to the side of a swimming pool with the subtle use of aqua-blue light and some pool ladders. And, yes, there are fireworks. Just as I am sure for safety reasons the automobiles were electric (stage notes say the chasses were from golf carts), the fireworks were projected. All told, it was quite a show.

As a bonus to readers and students of The Great Gatsby, the next entry is a set of links to various features that may help you appreciate the book more, including the songs mentioned in the book.