the great gatsby — broadway

if ryan mccartan had a nickel for every time he ended the last scene of act 1 in a bed belting his face off and about to have sex, he'd have at least two nickels

well well well. the theater kid in me was bound to rear its head at some point. i saw the great gatsby musical on broadway on 7/2/25, and BOY did i have thoughts!!

a bit about me: i’m not really a theater kid, more of a band kid, and in high school i did a mix of playing flute in the pit and dancing onstage in the ensemble. on a scale of 1-10 of musical theater fannishness, i would give myself a solid 7. i am not an actor and not a dancer, but i am a musician and a bit of a writer and most importantly an elite bullshitter, so you should definitely trust my opinions all the time. psalm, if you’re reading this, you’re allowed to call me a fraud. only psalm, no one else

the consensus is that gatsby is not a good show. indeed, this is best bad musical i’ve ever experienced. this show relies heavily on the plot and aesthetics of the source material but fails to deliver on the morality. combined with a mediocre book, incongruous music, and inconsistent characterization, the great gatsby is flashy but about as substantial as the 1920s lifestyle it tries and fails to critique — that is to say, not at all.

spoilers below i guess if you didn’t read it in high school

short recap of the great gatsby for your information: set during prohibition, bachelor nick carraway moves to long island next to nouveau-riche jay gatsby, who makes his money as a bootlegger and is obsessed with daisy buchanan, a girl he dated pre-war who is now married to old-money asshole tom buchanan. nick and daisy are cousins. daisy tries to set up nick with her single friend jordan baker. tom is cheating on daisy with myrtle, who is married to mechanic george wilson. nick helps facilitate daisy and gatsby’s affair. it all comes to a head when daisy, gatsby, tom, nick, and jordan have a fight in a hotel room in the city. daisy and gatsby drive back while she is upset, and daisy fatally hits myrtle with gatsby’s car. tom shifts the blame to gatsby, so george wilson goes to gatsby’s house and shoots gatsby/kills himself.

an even shorter recap: nick and gatsby are two naive “honest” people from regular backgrounds who get caught up in the immoral, sinful, hedonistic old-money world. sincere characters are abused and taken for granted. it’s tough to be a woman

highlights

(before i dig in) (mostly about the cast because i have nothing bad to say about them)

• when the lights came on on michael maliakel, i gasped… HE IS SO HOT… i don’t recall seeing a south asian actor in a lead non-race-specific* broadway role, and i was quite happy to see that they did race-blind casting, given that nick and daisy are cousins. more asians in theater please please please. i think this is finally the decade we’re going to see asian people win tonys for roles that aren’t specifically meant to be asian

  • *ie. not aladdin, which he just played. we left the theater and immediately saw a huge aladdin billboard with his face on it though

  • gratuitous six-pack flash that had me clutching my armrest. holy shit michael maliakel is so attractive

• actually the entire cast is excellent. elena ricardo went on as daisy and did a fantastic job!! sam pauly in person is as big as she sounds in the soundtrack. ryan mccartan is ryan mccartan. everyone was perfect

• extremely impressed by the sheer size of the ensemble (14 people) and how much they were given to do!!! even more impressed by the number of set pieces they rolled out. i would love to be a fly on the wall in what must be complete controlled chaos backstage, between the set pieces and the 5+ costume changes per ensemble member. also the dance talent in this ensemble is off the freaking charts

  • LOVED THE FEATURE DANCERS SOLO 10/10 NO NOTES

• i liked their bringing out the orchestra onstage in the big act 2 diegetic party + huge dance scene. it’s clever that they wrote the scene change music to omit the wind players who have to travel back to the pit

• ryan mccartan looks and talks like chuck bass.

plot and character arcs

• halfway through the second act, i realized i was bored. initially i thought it was the pacing, because there are definitely songs that don’t advance the plot. no, the problem is deeper than that. the show moves weirdly because the songs present incomplete character arcs and do not gel together between characters!

• GATSBY: i thought they kind of made a muck of his character. at best, gatsby represents relentless optimism, and his accumulation of wealth is not due to greed (like everyone else) but due to his purer primary motivation of love. his I Want songs, “for her” and “past is catching up to me,” support this idea. they do make him entirely one-dimensional though, so there really isn’t any emotional payoff when nick tells him shortly before his death that he is worth a lot more than the rest. like, no not really, not that he’s demonstrated. gatsby isn’t a good or bad person, he’s just obsessed and in love, and to comment on his goodness made me ??? gatsby is not the emblem of the wealth problem here, daisy and tom are

• WOLFSHEIM: it would make absolutely no difference if you cut his character. i’m not sure why they elevated his character into such a villainous role in the first place if he never really follows up on the villainy? i guess his character is supposed to remark on gatsby’s depravity in making his money through illegal means? except the crime is bootlegging liquor, but not a single character in the show seems to be against alcohol + nobody in 2025 thinks that bootlegging bankrupts your morals anymore? more importantly, none of wolfsheim’s threats mattered because they are not what killed gatsby in the end. you cannot set up an evil guy and then just have him disappear!

  • “shady” is the equivalent of mean girls “sexy” except meyer wolfsheim is not a plastic and didn’t earn this song and nobody gaf about him!!

• NICK: oh nick carraway… you could’ve won a high school original oratory competition… unfortunately they make him deliver fitzgerald’s openers and closers as written. other than the campy monologues, nick’s character is a bit inconsistent. for most of act 1, they have him as an awkward outsider whose voice literally squeaks as he speaks, but when gatsby feels awkward in “only tea,” suddenly nick is the smooth suave guy who reassures him? suddenly he’s super charming to jordan? to be fair, he stays pretty awkward for the rest of the show. and to be fair again, he does fulfill his role as a bystander who only reacts and barely gets involved in the rest of the drama. so no real changes to nick i guess

  • i loved that nick happens to be significantly taller than all the more powerful male characters — adds a layer of doubt to tom and gatsby when they have to threaten him while looking up

• JORDAN AND NICK B PLOT: i disliked this most of all.

  • first of all, nick and jordan don’t really get together in the novel because nick is gay, but whatever, i guess that’s not the point

  • in the musical, they have a little romantic subplot where the gender roles are flipped and jordan takes the lead, being the one to initiate their kiss and the one to propose marriage. when the two of them discuss marriage in “better hold tight” and “for better or worse (reprise),” they question whether their reversed roles can lead to a successful relationship under existing societal expectations of marriage. the end of their relationship should give us an answer. instead, nick breaks up with jordan for her stance in encouraging the cover-up of myrtle’s death — ie. an aspect of her character that addresses the immorality of the wealthy, which is a part of Plot A, not the marriage-ambiguous feminist Plot B. jordan’s place as a part of the establishment sets her ending up as collateral damage due to Plot A while leaving Plot B entirely unresolved. like, are we pro-feminism or not. do we believe in the structure of their relationship or not. who knows! they definitely dgaf!

• DAISY: they attempted to give her interiority but ended up making an even bigger mess of her. she sings a lot about how she is trapped in her marriage because she is a woman (valid). but after not paying attention to her baby daughter and not knowing how to take care of her the entire show, she delivers this misplaced number (after the drama of gatsby’s death, which dilutes how long we get to be sad about it) about how sad she was to have a girl baby? like, i kind of get it: it’s easier for daisy to conform to what they expect from her, but she is Not passing on the tenets of feminism to her daughter lol

  • i’m curious how eva noblezada played her. elena ricardo is very classic ingenue (she played sophie in mamma mia some time ago), but eva has a kind of steeliness to her. i wonder if she sold daisy’s feminism more. there’s no saving the end of the book though. they need to cut “beautiful little fool” omg that’s not even where daisy says that line in the book

  • this is like waitress “dear baby” or dear evan hansen “so big/so small,” except those songs make sense because those shows are about parenting and this show is about how daisy and tom are the worst parents ever

• MYRTLE: if you isolate myrtle’s character arc solely to the songs that she sings (which, actually, is the only time they mention her anyway), she makes more sense than anyone else. she starts off as an outsider who Believes in Capital and craves a spot in tom’s world, disappears for half the show, comes back pregnant, and has her big revelation that tom is an asshole like one minute before she dies. at least they keep her musical style — simple, naive, crass — pretty consistent

• GEORGE WILSON: why are his religious soliloquys giving walmart jean valjean

• tldr the writers attempted to add dimension to most of these characters but failed to complete their character arcs

sound, music, lyrics

• …at least it’s not a jukebox musical

• the music is just kind of unmemorable. it’s very classic musical theater structure: I Want songs for multiple characters, multiple romantic duets, a funny duet, a diegetic party scene, a song where a bunch of people bring their own melodies in to yell at each other, a finale song that recapitulates the opener. however, some lyrics line up really awkwardly with the melodies, and other than the overarching jazz theme, there isn’t much coherence between songs.

• okay tenor central………… i loved ryan’s belting i loved michael’s head mix i loved the baritones getting up there too

• there seemed to be sound mixing issues. forget ensemble member solos; most of the time, i couldn’t even make out what the leads were singing over the ensemble. on top of that, the balance within the ensemble was weird. it often sounded too strong in the middle, lacking the top and bass voices. it destabilized the structure of the songs where the lines split up from unison to more and more harmonies. like, if all we can hear is the harmony then this build-up becomes ineffective

  • the hotel argument scene, “made to last,” was incomprehensible between the 4-5 mics

  • i think the issue with the ensemble is that many songs are written in a weird middle vocal range, which means singers can’t project as well nor make their enunciation more clear

  • i watched more clips and here is a west end medley (starring corbin bleu!) where the leads are really crispy. i wonder if i would have liked the show better if i could understand the words

  • i uhh perhaps have proof of the mixing being weird from my seat hahaha if you catch my drift… dm me

• “beautiful little fool” = That Song in Every Musical That No One Likes

• certain lyrical/melodic choices just don’t go together

  • “finally the PAAAAAAAAST………………… iscatchinguptoooome” — bro just let him end on the long note. crunching up the end of the song completely flattens the momentum!!

  • “i think that it's dandy that he keeps a brandy handy” — i cringed

  • the entrance of the first “you got the eyes of god, doc” in “god sees everything” — there is no way to make him sound like he comes in on pitch or in time, because the chord doesn’t change until after this phrase

  • this is a bit nitpicky. the green light melody is the same as “all you see is sky” from dear evan hansen, which is on the edge of being too recognizable

    • i always think of musetta’s waltz / RENT

  • i wrinkled my face at the tuneless gliss in “tonight let’s misbehaveeee” and then it got stuck like that. this is literally the first line of the show

• there’s a lot more but now i’m just being mean

staging, lighting, costumes

• okay. i was on the FLOOR i was so impressed

• i don’t think i’ve ever seen this many different sets(? scenes? idk the term exactly) in one show. very curious about the props set-up. i like lists so i am going to list the more involved ones:

  • gatsby mansion exterior

  • gatsby mansion interior

  • gatsby bedroom (with the shirts like the 2013 leo movie)

  • nick cottage exterior + shrubbery

  • wilson gas pump (with the big dr. eckleburg eyes lol i bet they had a fun time painting that one)

  • seedy love hotel

  • plaza hotel

  • daisy living room

• there are multiple actual drivable prop cars. one ensemble member, as the hotel valet, literally backed the car up and pulled away backstage. when the car isn’t moving, the rims light up to simulate movement. SO COOL

• i think they pour and drink actual liquid onstage

• costumes were fantastic!!! everyone had so many to change into

• i was generally blown away by the size of the ensemble and how much there was going on in the background, from gatsby’s multiple servants to how extra the featured dancers were being. was it necessary to move the show forward? no. was it one of the redeeming qualities of the show? absolutely. was it emblematic of the extravagance and excess of the era? actually maybe that was the point

i’m curious what the plans are for gatsby after it eventually leaves broadway/west end. for a show that isn’t very impressive, it sure looks difficult to put on. even if other productions put on a reduced set with a smaller ensemble, even if they cut some of the dance breaks, the show demands at least nine good singers with moderate-to-difficult solo songs, five of them men. it is a bit sad to me that ostentatious shows like this have received so much funding and are able to continue to persist on broadway, mostly on the strength of the IP, while smaller original shows open and shutter in like three months.

okay i’ve been writing this for way too long

in conclusion, the show tries to do way too much and ends up with an incoherent mess and no central plot or moral, which is crazy because this is literally the great gatsby and every year tens of thousands of teenagers do a better job interpreting the meaning of the novel on their AP Lang exam

final: 7/10

my favorite scenes:

1. only tea

2. the met

3. la dee dah with you

4. one-way road

miscellaneous thoughts i had while writing:

• is jamie muscato the ryan mccartan of west end? how many ryan mccartan roles has jamie muscato also sung. do they know each other. wow i started following jamie muscato when i was 13

• seeking west end corbin bleu as nick carraway bootleg

  • i might be the only person who remembers this, but is there rehearsal footage of corbin bleu as frank abagnale jr from catch me if you can at arena stage in dc… this production was delayed two years due to covid but it’s unclear from the press releases if he ever went on as frank. i’d like to hear him sing “butter outta cream”

• michael maliakel is lowkey too hot to play nick esp in comparison to all the other stuffy rich guys onstage. jordan fisher i have a perfect next role for you. please leave moulin rouge and allow that godforsaken show to close

• the pool scene is really unserious + the audience did laugh. sorry ryan mccarthy

• ALSO WE WERE WALKING ON THE STREET SHORTLY AFTER THE SHOW ENDED AND DEZ DURON PASSED IMMEDIATELY TO MY RIGHT