“The Great Gatsby” on Broadway

A few weeks ago, we took a quick trip to New York. As one is wont to do on such a trip, we partook of a Broadway show during our stay in the city. My daughter chose the show, and she kept going back and forth between a few different ones. She said if Parade was still on Broadway she would have wanted to see that, but since it wasn’t on Broadway anymore, she had to make a decision between Suffs and The Great Gatsby. Ultimately, she chose The Great Gatsby because she wanted to see Jeremy Jordan as Gatsby and Eva Noblezada as Daisy. (Unfortunately, Jordan had another engagement the night we went, so Alex Prakken played Gatsby.)

If you know anything about me, you know I have a very love/hate relationship with Fitzgerald’s novel. I enjoy the poetic nature and style of the narrative and the story being told from Nick Carraway’s perspective. On the other hand, I despise the narrative because it focuses on a man who does everything in his life to get the woman who got away back. My dislike of the narrative stems, in large part, from the ways that we teach the novel and from the ways that we receive it. Many individuals focus on the novel’s representation of the Roaring 20s and its depiction of decadence and wealth. As well, they conflate Gatsby’s actions in the novel to fit a romantic ideal of a man attempting to regain the love of his life.