The Many Lives of the Great Gatsby

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The Many Lives of the Great Gatsby by Elyse Sommer

The theater has come back to life with almost a dozen new productions recently opening over the course of less than two weeks and with more announced in the months ahead. As always, shows on  offer include a mix of plays and musicals -- some new, some revivals. Works in the public domain can  be adapted without writers or their heirs granting permission and receiving royalties.

 F. Scott Fitzgerald's oeuvre doesn't go quite as far back as Shakespeare's. Though his The Great Gatsby actually had an unsuccessful first outing in 1925, the book eventually gained status as a classic. And so, the mysterious Gatsby's narrative did have a full and diverse cultural life even before it entered  the public domain in 2021. I won't go into chapter and verse about the ramifications of copyright law. Instead, I'll begin this feature with a brief rundown of its history as staged, filmed and reimagined in print.

Gatsby on Stage

The first known stage adaptation was a drama by Owen Davis, who earlier received a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1923. The play was directed by George Cukor, later widely known as a film director. That version of The Great Gatsby opened to a successful run on Broadway in 1926 with several subsequent runs elsewhere.

The most inventive staging, to my mind, was the Elevator Repair Service Company's Gatz, presented at  the Public Theater in 2010.The eight-hour reading by a cast of terrific actors combined the pleasure of  reading the book and also experiencing theater. If you're too young to have seen it, you may want to   read my wonderful Curtainup colleague Les Gutman's review, which can be found at http://www.curtainup.com/gatzpublic.html

Last year, The Great Gatsby:The Immersive Show saw part of the Park Central Hotel done up to replicate the former Gatsby Mansion near Central Park. However, that show didn't hit the mark like the Macbeth-sourced Sleep No More that ran for years at the McKittredge Hotel. The Immersive Gatsby closed after a brief run.
 
 In 1999, the New York Metropolitan Opera commissioned John Harbison to compose an operatic treatment of the novel to commemorate the 25th anniversary of its music director, James Levine. Ballet versions of The Great Gatsby have included the 2009 performances by BalletMet Columbus at The Capitol Theater in Columbus, Ohio, and a 2010 production by the Washington Ballet at the Kennedy Center.

The novel also has been adapted into a series of radio episodes, starting with a half-hour-long episode for the CBS Family Hour of Stars with Kirk Douglas as Gatsby. The story also was read aloud as a 10-part BBC Radio Serial. The first of several short TV movies aired on the popular Robert Mongomery Presents series and starred Montgomery. Publishers also have released several versions of The Great Gatsby in graphic format, with a new publication coming along later this year.

And, yes, there have been Gatsby-inspired video games!

Gatsby Movies

The first Great Gatsby movie was a silent version of the above-mentioned early Broadway play, starring Warner Baxter and William Powell. Only a trailer of that movie still exists. But two later movies can be seen on your home screen. The first, from 1974, was directed by Jack Clayton and  starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow as Gatsby and Daisy, and Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway. I like Mia Farrow but not her Daisy. A more watchable Daisy can be found in the Baz Luhrmann-directed adaptation that starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. While the movie versions of The Great Gatsby understably made Gatsby the narrator, in the novel, it was Nick Carraway who narrated and observed. Consequently, the movies haven't bested the book. For me, it remains well worth a now-and-then reread. 

While Shakespeare always intended for his plays to be watched, Fitzgerald's intention was that audiences meet his characters on the page. But I've found Shakespeare difficult to read -- except after  hearing his language actually spoken and the charaxters visualized on a stage.

And Now -- The Great Gatsby Musical

Novels and plays have regularly been turned into musicals. Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew was a huge hit as Kiss Me Kate, and the durable hit, The Lion  King, is Shakespeare sourced. But The Great  Gatsby, while enjoying a diverse cultural life, has never been turned into a musical. That is, until now. Not one but two Great Gatsby musicals have been created at non-profit regional theaters known for having their premiere shows transfer to Broadway -- the Paper Mill Playhouse and the Boston  Repertory Theater. Both productions feature stellar creative teams and performers. The Papermill show has already made the move and hopes to be selling tickets at the Broadway theater for a long time.

The Boston Repertory Theater's team also has all the hit-making elements. But with the theater still  struggling to come back from the pandemic and the cost of tickets higher than ever, filling the seats in a big Broadway house is a challenge. And so, no matter how well cast and staged, only the most dedicated musical theatergoers are likely to see two singing Gatsbys. Thus, it remains to be seen if the  Boston Rep opts to transfer its production.

I do tend to prefer dramas to musicals, so if I were still Curtainup's editor and critic-in-chief, I'd  probably check out the Gatsby musical (or musicals) but assign the review to one of  my backup critics. I certainly would not miss seeing and writing about the revival of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt or the  great Paula Vogel's new play Mother with Jessica Lange, Celia Keenan Bolger, and Jim Parsons that's  coming to the Hayes Theater in June. I'd also check out the latest version of Ibsen's Enemy of the  People, sadly more relevant than ever.

A final word about the difference between reading and watching. I recently watched the 2015 film version of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, which stars Carey Mulligan and is available to stream on Max. I found reading that novel, as part of a college literature course, to be rather dull and slow. However, Mulligan and her fellow actors brought the story, locale and era to rich and enjoyable life.  

P,S. After initially posting this blog, my good friend Simon mentioned the noorish 1949 movie version of The Great Gatsby, directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Alan Ladd and the wonderful Betty Field as Daisy. That movie did not make the final version of the blog, but I wanted to give it a nod, so I'm republishing with this note.  -- Elyse Sommer 

An Interesting but Worriesome Time to be Retired by Elyse Sommer

 

 An Interesting but Worriesome Time to be Retired 

by Elyse Sommer

Retiring from a super-busy career you love is not easy.  

Fortunately, everything I and my many good friends and colleagues  have written about since 1996 is still available to read via the archives and special Google search box links at the right side of   Curtainup's now frozen main page (www.curtainup.com).  

My interest in and love of the theater is not retired, though. Given  the entertainment world's new normal, with its blend of all  storytelling formats, my blogpost updates at  https://curtainupnewlinks.blogspot.com/ cover the entire cultural  spectrum.   

The way various screening platforms have given writers, actors and  directors a chance to create content strikes me as a new golden era  reminiscent of the golden age of dramas and musicals during the 1940s and '50s.

Unfortunately, the unrelentingly depressing news cycle has put a kibosh on that pleasure and has had me spend most of my time  looking for escape fare to read and watch. As it turned out, lots of  what I found not only diverted but also did what any well done  cultural content does: enliven, enrich and lead the viewer to other   worthwhile reading or watching experiences.

My search began with some golden oldie movies. The work of Nora Ephron and John Patrick Shanley proved to be as good, if not better than ever. If Ephron were alive, she would surely be writing and directing a sequel to You've Got Mail. Instead of the bittersweet  romance between a mega bookstore owner and a small neighborhood bookseller, she'd be dealing with the Amazon effect. Even the great  Ephron might find it hard to turn that into a romance. 

Rewatching Screenwriter Shanley's Moonstruck refreshed my  memory of Actor John Mahoney before his later and more famous  role in the Frasier sitcom. That led me to revisiting the series and its superb cast and genuinely witty dialogue. David Hyde Pierce, the  show's Dr. Niles Crane, is still doing great work on stage and screen.  But Grammar, the titular Frasier Crane, did not recapture the  original 's magic in his recently updated Frasier miniseries. Clearly,  it does take trial and error to find really solid feel-good fare.   

Naturally, it's satisfying to spend time with familiar and still impactful stories. But reassurance that fine new work is still being  created is also needed. Hurrah! It is! I've already written about Ann  Pachett's wonderful new novel in my recent blogspot feature https://curtainupnewlinks.blogspot.com/2023/08/thornton-wilders-our-town-gives-ann.html. Patchett is an awardwinning author. Lessons In Chemistry, another outstanding new novel by Bonnie Garmus, is a debut that has been adapted into a terrific streaming series. 

Though Robyn Carr is certainly a successful writer, I haven't read a  Harlequin romances since I was an agent for writers of that genre.   That said, Sue Tenney's Virgin River series added a delightful guilty pleasure to my on-screen escape fare. The outstanding cast and   Tenney's skillful adaptation had me hooked for all five seasons, with another one coming to Netflix.

For the many who want their entertainment away from home again,  the good news is that Broadway and Off-Broadway theaters have  plenty  of shows on offer and created and performed by a more  diverse talent pool than ever before.

Kimberly Akimbo, an intimate musical, had a trial run at the downtown Atlantic Theater. It actualy had another prior life as a   non-musical play (My reviews of those versions are in the    Curtainup archives). Another show with a prior history that did  remarkably well with the critics was a hokey musical called Shucked.   

But neither these or any other shows that have opened seem to have  the legs to sttck around for years. That brings me to the not-so -good  news: People have not been rushing back to the theater. Consequently, producers are struggling financially. With the cost of  putting on a show going up rather than down, deeply discounting  tickets to fill seats is good for savvy theatergoers but not the box  office. Even Phantom of the Opera ended its seemingly forever run.  So did the remarkably durable Here Lies Love in its way off the  beaten path location.  

A number of invaluable small theaters have closed, but many more  are carrying on ... with shorter seasons and smaller casts and  production values. Unsurprisingly, some of the big houses have   brought back sure-fire hits with ticketselling stars, like The Music Man with Sutton Foster and Hugh Jackman. What's more, The Lion King and Wicked, which have been running for years, remain  Broadway fixtures.  

To conclude, it will take time for the "fabulous invalid" to be truly  fabulous again. Since I've seen it recover from tough times again and again, I'm hopeful it will do so once more. Ditto, that our currently  uncertain world too will find a way to deal with weather disasters,  hate crimes and wrong-minded governance.