#gatsby on broadway

[wren-is-a-wreck]

Gatsby during Only Tea is me trying to plan any kind of event or scenario

“Hehehe DROWN ME IN THE BAY”

“Mr Gatsby? It’s seven oclock in the morning?”

“Today’s the DAY. Hehehe”

“IM OFF TO GO SCREEEAM IN A JAAAARR”

Dude is so relatable

[tofangirlonly]

I am running exclusively on three hours of sleep and Jeremy Jordan.

[deadcrowcalling]

OH MY DUCKING GOD I JUST FOUND OUT MY MOMS FRIEND GOT TO SEE THE GREAT GATSBY ON BROADWAY AND JERJOR STAGEDOORED AND SIGNED HIS FUCKING PLAYBILL

[beetlepuff]

Putting my flopped tweets on here cause i have no mt oomfs

I NEEED ppl to yap ab this with pleak

[the-kestrels-feather]

Okay I'm gonna say it: I hate Jeremy's Gatsby speaking voice I'm sorry

[baatheblacksheep]

Me whenever a new musical goes on broadway:

[biteofboredom]

"fuck it we ball" *cries to oddly specific musical theatre songs*

[miss-galaxy-turtle]

Is the Gatsby musical an accurate retelling of the original novel? No.

Does it romanticize the fuck out of Gatsby and Daisy? Yes.

Is the idea of the green light being a metaphor for romantic love entirely missing the point? Yes.

Is it a really, really fun time with gorgeous music, beautiful visuals, and a wildly talented cast? You're goddamn right

[theatreism]

JEREMY JORDAN timeline (broadway, off-broadway & west end)

[scarletcomet]

Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada as Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby (2023)

[wren-is-a-wreck]

Guess what today is!!!

(Hint: it’s 7 o clock in the morningggg)

[personinthepalace]

I shouldn’t say that *adorable laughter* - Jeremy Jordan from bwaygatsby instagram

Edit: this video was deleted and replaced with this new one

[deadcrowcalling]

thinking about new money from the gatsby soundtrack

[teenytinysandwiches]

The Great Gatsby lyrics explained.

[rainedonwithyou]

[the-kestrels-feather]

So through listening to Broadway Gatsby's songs they've released an uh... Truly unhealthy amount of times, I've come to the realization that I like it as a show but not as a Gatsby adaptation, and that I also think that Gatsby as a book is fundamentally gonna be REALLY hard to work into a musical

Before I get too far into this I want to specify I'm specifically talking about Gatsby on Broadway in this post. I don't know much about Gatsby: An American Myth outside of a few production photos and a video I'll talk about in a second, so I don't feel super qualified to talk about it. Second, I'm gonna link Wait in the Wings' fantastic video right here. It mainly discuses An American Myth, but I think he makes a lot of great points about Gatsby as a musical that I'm pretty sure I'll end up parroting at some point and I don't wish to pull a James Somerton. Also I should add I have not SEEN Gatsby. I'm broke and live in the Midwest so that's not possible right now, I'm basing this solely off what is publically available online, a friend who did get to see it, set photos, music, and WITW's other FANTASTIC Gatsby video.

But so I wanna say again, I do really like Gatsby on Broadway based on what I've seen. I love Eva Nobelzada, the set photos are BEAUTIFUL, I wish the music that was released was jazzier seeing as it's the literal JAZZ AGE but I like it overall, and Jeremy Jordan is... Also there (he's fine and I think he's very talented, but like if I were able to go see it he wouldn't be the reason I went to see it. JJ Stan girlies please don't come for me), but in terms of like. How faithful it is to the novel, I think it's kind of fundamentally just. Not Gatsby. And I don't think that musical theatre specifically will ever create something that is. I think if Gatsby was a straight play specifically it would work better. The OG novel hides so many things and has a fundamentally unreliable narrator and has so much subtext, and I think that putting it into a medium where characters have to reach this heightened state of emotion where they reach a point that words fail and they have to sing their feelings doesnt realky lend itself well to that. That's part of the reason love stories work so well in musicals, and I think why Gatsby Broadway seems to be focusing on the love story.

There's also the fact that creating theatre that's critical of the Wealthy class for Broadway is... Extremely hard to say the least. Lindsay Ellis goes more into this in her Rent video, but Broadway is a business first and foremost and moreover is a business funded by the wealthy people who can buy tickets. I know that's obviously not a universal assumption, but whether we like it or not at the end of the most of Broadway is funded by the wealthy people buy $200+ tickets. And making any piece of art that is critical or alienating to that group is going to be, shall we say, a bit of a hard sell. Gatsby at its core is a criticism the American Dream and the idle rich. I just don't think a musical that attempted to hit those plot points well would've ever done well commercially, or if they'd tried to I don't think it would've come across as anything other than largely toothless. The only musical that has been on Broadway in the last few years that I can think of that has achieved mainstream success and hasn't closed within the year that does it fairly well is Hadestown, and even that one had its more anti-capitalist edges softened before it transferred to Broadway. So they choose to focus on the love story, no matter how tragic and at the end of the day not a love story it is.

I don't know if any of this makes any sense or if lit Tumblr (or even theatre Tumblr for that matter) will see it as a valid take, I mean, I also personally think 2013 Gatsby movie was pretty good, so I don't know if that decimates my credibility or not, but I needed to word vomit this out