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The Great Gatsby is coming to Broadway | New musical starring Jeremy Jordan, Eva Noblezada
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Micky Jo
Cause honey I'll be seeing you down every road I'm waiting for it that green light I want it. Oh my God. Hey, old sport. Welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. My name is Micky Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm an international critic, content creator, pundit and theatre fan here on YouTube and I am very excited to bring you the news of a brand new Broadway bound musical. Because the Great Gatsby, which premiered at the end of 2023 at Paper Mill Playhous in New Jersey, has just announced that it is going to be heading to the Broadway theater Broadway New York this season. And this is particularly exciting for me because in the history of American regional musical theatre premieres announcing that they're going to New York, this is the first time ever that I have already seen the show by the time this is announced. That's very exciting to me because I already know what it's like, I already know what it's about and I'm going to share that knowledge with you today. So in today's video, though it is not an official review, I am going to be letting you know what this version of the Great Gatsby is like. And I say this version because if you didn't already know, there are actually two, both of which will be happening this year. Now, if you enjoyed today's video and you want to hear more Broadway and West End theatre news, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel so you don't miss any of my upcoming videos. I create reviews, I react to cast recordings, and I bring you juicy and exciting theatrical news and occasional rumours. Make sure you're subscribed and while you're at it, go find me on other social media platforms. I'm ickyjotheatre, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, the app formerly known as Twitter. In the meantime, stay tuned to find out everything you need to know about the Broadway bound production of the Great Gatsby. So some context then. The Great Gatsby is a 1920s American novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It's set in the Jazz Age and it takes place in Long Island, New York. It is narrated in the first person by the character of Nick Carraway, who has recently moved there and has yet to meet his mysterious landlord. But he hears increasingly more about him and the lavish parties that he throws at his mansion, the notorious Mr. Gatsby. In the meantime, Nick meets with his second cousin, the beautiful Daisy Buchanan, her husband Tom, who is a misogynist, and her friend Jordan, who golfs. We come to find out more about these characters. We find out that theirs is far from a perfect marriage and with the backdrop of an enormous wealth disparity in the Roaring twenties, the whole thing comes to be an impossible love story. It's an incredibly rich novel with a lot of evocative themes and iconic imagery. It's been adapted for film in the 20s, in the late 40s, in the mid-70s, and then most recently in 2013. The one that starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan was directed by Baz Luhrmann. It has also been adapted for the stage before. However, one of the reasons that we are seeing multiple Great Gatsbys happening at the same time in different parts of the US Both of which, it should be noted, have social media handles on Instagram calling themselves B Way Gatsby and Gatsby B Way is the fact that the Great Gatsby's copyright ended in 2021, so before either had opened, and one of them still hasn't because it's coming later this year. We knew there were going to be these two productions adapting exactly the same source material. Not since the Wild Party, am I right? But this one had the benefit of coming first. This was the Great Gatsby A New Music at Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey, which I went to see. Not only did I go to see this, I was actually at the very first preview performance and I'm going to tell you what it was like, so I need to preface this with some context. First of all, like I said, I'm not going to be reviewing because I saw the first preview. You don't review a first preview. And this was not just a first preview. This was a first preview of an out of town pre Broadway tryout. This show deserves to be reviewed when it opens properly on Broadway, and this was several steps before then. I will, however, tell you as much as I think I can about it, starting with my initial expectation, which was low. So we bought tickets to this. In fact, we planned our flights around it. We stayed slightly longer in New York than we were going to so we could see the first preview of the Great Gatsby, in large part due to the sensational lead casting it had at the time with Jeremy Jordan playing Gatsby, with Eva Noblezada playing Daisy, fresh from her run in Hadestown on Broadway. Both performers I had seen on stage before, but two people I will happily go and see in anything, especially if they're set in the intervening time between planning to see the show and seeing the show. However, they had this press call where they performed excerpts of the material that were shared on social media and the reaction to this was largely disappointing. Some of the lyrics combined with an ill conceived joke about removing a mask because the show is set in the years after the Spanish flu and there's a parallel with us being post pandemic, people just weren't feeling it. So when we headed to Milburn, New Jersey to go and see the show, I wasn't anticipating a car crash, or was I? But I was readying myself for disappointment. And I will never forget jumping to my feet at the start of the intermission, looking across the auditorium to my friend Kate, Kate Reinking, who was also there, because of course they were, and mouthing to each other at exactly the same this is good, because it is. This is a good show. I am happy to tell you that here today. This is a good show. You should be excited about this, going to Broadway. Is it a perfect musical? No. Few of them are, but this far exceeded the expectations that I had for it. Now this other version of the Great Gatsby that's coming later this year is going to be directed by Rachel Chavkin. It's going to feature a score by Florence Welsh of the Machine fame, who has not written for musical theatre before, but people are excited about that. Rachel Chavkin, who directed Hadestown, which had been written by Aeneas Mitchell, so again working with an exciting songwriter from the music industry sphere. And there are definitely reasons to be excited about that. This version has been directed by Mark Bruder, who is perhaps best known for having directed Beautiful, the Carole King musical, and features a score by Jason Howland and Nathan Tyson, whose work was last seen on Broadway with the ill fated Paradise Square, a show I know very little about. It didn't run long enough for me to be able to see it. The book is by Kate Kerrigan, who is one half of the contemporary musical theatre songwriting duo Kerrigan and Loudermilk. And if you hadn't made that connection, neither had I. I've just figured that out. What fell on the floor this did. This was an insert in the Papermill Playhouse program that was telling us it's also upside down, but was us. The song list for the show, it being the first preview, things change at the last minute. There was just one alteration of a song title in the second act. So about these songs, if you're expecting something that sounds 1920s or does the kind of thing that the Baz Luhrmann movie did, where it plays on this fusion of twenties and modern with the like, little party never killed nobody. Don't expect that, because that's not what it is. It's, for all intents and purposes, a musical theater style of score, which we like. We like the musical theater sound. There are moments that sounded a little 90s Disney credit song to me, which is no bad thing. And if I had to describe this version of the show, I would say this feels like Disney made a great Gatsby animated movie in the 90s. And this is the stage adaptation. The first song that really grabbed me is probably also the best one in the show. And it's a song that Jeremy Jordan sings in the first act as Jay Gatsby. It's called for her, and I'm going to let you wait and discover a proper recording of it by yourself. You can find it on YouTube if you're curious. But I want to let you know, it's very difficult for me to sit here and talk about this song and not sing it to you. It's. It's that good a song. Eva gets her turn later in the second act as Daisy, with a song called Beautiful Little fool, based on an iconic line from the book to describe the design and the aesthetics of the sets and the costumes. I would say if you've seen the Baz Luhrmann version, you already know what this is going to look like. But they did manage to achieve some very cool things on stage and it was a good use of screens rather than a reliance on screens, which I appreciated. I will say this because we bought tickets and this is a note that they can have for free if anyone, any powers that be in the Great Gatsby universe is watching this video. And I have already told someone tenuously attached to the show to pass this on. Here is one thing that I think would substantially change the show's success, because as it stands, Jeremy Jordan sings one of the first lines of the show as Jay Gatsby and then later has a really cool entrance in a party scene. And it is so incredibly clear to me that he should not enter until that later scene. That should absolutely be his first entrance in the show. It'd be a huge entrance applause moment. We want to applaud at that moment, but we've already seen him on stage, so per the rules of Broadway, we don't need to applaud the star twice. Hopefully I'm not the only one who noticed this. Maybe even by the end of the paper mill run this was changed. I don't know, but I am manifesting that by the time we see this on Broadway, and I mean we as a collective, I have no plans to be there when this is on. Currently, his first entrance will not come until a few scenes into the show. Let everyone talk about him first. Let him be enigmatic and mysterious and foreshadowed. Then he arrives on stage, we applaud, we lose our minds, he sings a great song, everyone goes home happy. In calling this the Disney version of the show, my meaning behind that is that it just kind of presents the material. It tells us about these characters and we see the love and we see the rage and we see the resentment and we see all of the necessary emotions playing out in the order dictated by the narrative. It's sweet. It's very funny, actually. There's a tremendous wit to this script. But since I'm praising it, I'm also willing to tell you about the other side of the coin, which is that we don't have a huge amount of inference into subtext or nuance. And if this wasn't based on a book that has been heavily adapted before, then that may not be a problem. But the fact is, we know that there is so much you can mine from the Great Gatsby story, and I'm not sure that all of that is unearthed in this version, but like I said, could have been substantially changed in between Jersey and Manhattan. But I can feel myself getting dangerously close to reviewing. So we're going to move on and I'm going to tell you everything we know so far about the Broadway transfer. The show has had its Broadway run green lit. Good job, David Gordon. I enjoy that joke. Okay. The recent New Jersey based Paper Mill Playhouse production of the new musical the Great Gatsby will transfer to Broadway, running at the Broadway Theatre. You heard that correctly. There is a theater in New York, on Broadway, literally on the street. Kind of the only one on that's actually on that street, to be honest, called the Broadway Theatre. It's where He Lies. Love recently was that sadly had to close back in 2023. And it's going to begin previews at the Broadway theatre from 29 March with an opening night set for 25 April. The writers are the same, the creative team is the same. Sometimes these things can change in between out of Town and Broadway. And the only casting that has been announced so far is that Tony nominees Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada will reprise their roles as Gatsby and Daisy, with complete casting for Broadway being announced in the coming weeks. Now, this may sound shallow but that alone, honestly, is reason to book tickets for this show. Because having Jeremy playing Clyde in a concert version of Bonnie and Clyde, having seen Eva do Hadestown twice, do Miss Saigon multiple times, I believe, and I'm going to assert it here, the two of them are both giving career best performances. They both certainly sound the best they have ever sounded. This score is great for each of their incredible voices. I mean, two of the strongest vocalists within the Broadway world, surely within the entire world, one could argue they're sensational. In this, Jeremy gets another Santa Fe moment with his Act 1 song, Eva. The layered acting choices that she's making, I'm not reviewing. I'm just telling you it's really good. If you're any kind of a fan of those two performers, you need to go and see this show on Broadway. You owe it to yourselves. Now, before I get consumed in the casting, I want to talk about the theatre this is going to. So this is going to the Broadway where I saw Her Lies Love. I saw it there twice. I have never been to this theater in a different configuration. If you don't know, Heli's Love ripped out the orchestra section and put in an immersive standing dance floor. I did get to sit in the mezzanine, but it was hard to get a concept of where the stage and the proscenium traditionally would be and how good a view this was. I've heard from friends that this is not their favourite theatre, but also this does disappointingly mean it's going to be converted back to a traditional proscenium. They're going to put the seats back into the orchestra and it won't be the Broadway home of the transfer of Guys and Dolls from London, which I was hoping for. But this is also exciting news. Whether anything gets changed about the theater's configuration and capacity during this time, we have yet to know. Maybe it will. Now, I will say, just because these two are the only ones that have been announced does not mean we won't see other paper mill cast members reprising their roles in terms of the initial release of the show. Those two names are really the only ones you need to lead with. And then you can get another buzz a couple of weeks later, announce the rest of the cast and another boost in ticket sales because everyone covers it again in the press. That's how these things work. So the rest of the cast contains Samantha Pauly of Evita here in London of 6 the musical original Broadway cast as Jordan Baker opposite Noah J Ricketts as Nick Carraway who has done some film and TV and some Broadway, has been Kristoff in Frozen and has been in Beautiful. They were joined by John Drojeski as Tom Buchanan, Stan Lee W. Mathis as Maya Wolfsheim and Sarah Chase as Myrtle Wilson. Now, if you know anything about the Great Gatsby, you know that this can be a really compelling breakout character and in this production is one of the roles I would like to see tinkered with with. In between the pre Broadway and the Broadway versions of the show, I feel like there is more they could do with Myrtle. Sarah can be heard on the original Broadway cast recording of First Date, the original Off Broadway cast recording of the Toxic Avenger, and may be best known for her performance as Cindy in the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Now, we have no reason to believe that any of these performers aren't reprising their roles unless some of them have gone on to other projects that I'm not aware of. And honestly, the most exciting casting is already confirmed, so there's not a lot of room to really dreamcast and speculate about the rest of this company. I would be very happy just to see all of those other performers returning to their roles on Broadway. To shout out the rest of the creatives involved, we have scenic and projection design by Paul Tate, Depo iii, costume design by Linda Cho, lighting is Corey Patek, sound is Brian Ronan, hair and wig design by Charles G. LaPointe and Rachel Gaia. Lovely wigs in particular for Samantha Pauly as Jordan Baker. I remember great wigs. Arrangements also by composer Jason Howland, orchestrations by Howland and Kim Scharnburg, music direction by Daniel Edmonds and music production by Billy J. Stein for Strike Audio. That is the team who is going to be taking this show to Broadway. Now in the next paragraph it says of the Paper Mill production, our sister site's critics said that's Theatremania because I'm reading this. And what's on stage? Well, old sports, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the finished product ultimately lays an east egg. That's a nod to where the show is set. Now, I don't agree with that. That was not my verdict upon the first preview. But like I said, I wasn't there anything close to the show's actual opening, so I can't give you an official review much as I they do say. However, nonetheless, it was sold out before its first preview and became the highest grossing show in Paper Mill history. There have been shows at Paper Mill Playhouse before looking at you hunchback of Notre Dame that sadly haven't made the journey to Broadway. And this venue, despite being geographically quite close to the Midtown Manhattan area, doesn't seem to be as much of a pipeline to Broadway as you might think. So for Great Gatsby to be pulling this off before the other Great Gatsby, I think is a tremendous achievement and it's going to give them a little bit of a leg up. Not to force these two shows to be adversaries competing for audience attention, but given that two Great Gatsbys are coming out this year, both alleging on their social media platforms that they're going to Broadway, a certain amount of comparison is going to be inevitable. Even at the end of this what's On Stage article announcing Great Gatsby going to Broadway, it says this Gatsby is unrelated to the musical written by Florence Welch of the band Florence and the Machine, which will have a pre Broadway run at the American repertory theatre from 25 May, which is a theatre that does feel more like a pipeline to Broadway. So to see how the rest of 2024 plays out re Great Gatsbys is going to be very interesting. But at the very least they are not going to be in the same Broadway season because this production that I'm telling you about today that has announced its Broadway run, this is going to be in the 2023-2024 season, meaning best Leading Actor and Leading Actress in a Musical. If Eva is leading, which I assume she is, just got a lot more exciting and it's yet another on the already long list of new musicals. For now, that is everything that I and we know about the Broadway bound Great Gatsby. But I'm excited. I'm very excited for this show to be heading to New York even if it's not a perfect adaptation of the Great Gatsby. There is lots to be thrilled about with this news and since not many people got to see it in Papermill, I am very excited for all of the musical theatre fans to discover it. This could really be another show like A Waitress that is going to really hit big with musical theatre fans. I mean just Jeremy Jordan singing that song. I keep talking about it, but that alone is enough I think to cement this show in musical theatre history to a certain extent. In terms of how the show will be received, we will have to wait and see. But if you got to see it at Papermill Playhouse, comment down below to let everyone know what you thought of it, what it was like and whether or not you're excited to see it on Broadway. For now, I hope that you enjoyed today's video. Make sure to subscribe to my channel for more theater news. More reviews of West End and Broadway shows coming very soon. And I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh, my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.