LISTENING TO THE GREAT GATSBY By Peter Filichia
Although the title is printed in gold, on a black background, it also offers one tiny dollop of a different color.
There’s a shining burst of green situated atop the first “T” of THE GREAT GATSBY.
It’s on the just-released original cast album, too, of the new musical playing on Broadway – and at the Broadway Theatre.
No, this green light isn’t a tribute to Elphaba. Ninety-nine years ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald made it an important symbol in his novel about the very rich and privileged and those who’d like to be.
Now, as theatergoers take their seats and see a scrim picturing Long Island Sound, they’ll notice a green light going on and off. Bookwriter Kait Kerrigan, composer Jason Howland and lyricist Nathan Tysen were wise to include it.
We usually associate green lights with traffic signals that say “go.” We get the impression shortly after the curtain rises that the sophisticates stopped at nothing (including red lights) to get to Jay Gatsby’s lavish parties. There, they’ll do plenty of drinking and dancing – two time-honored musical theater ingredients.
In “Roaring On,” Howland provides the jazz that echoes this era dubbed “The Jazz Age.” Tysen has these smart-set members explain that now that “The Great War has been won, the bacchanalia has begun.”
Not for Gatsby. “He opens up his place,” sing some guests, “and then disappears without a trace.”
One of his neighbors sees him early on. He’s Nick Carraway, a would-be writer who wouldn’t be a bond salesman if he didn’t have to make a living. The Minnesota native is, pardon the expression, green in comparison to these upper-class wealthies that he’ll soon encounter.
As Tysen describes, Nick manages to see Gatsby “standing in silhouette” and “reaching ‘cross the water, his arm stretched to the sky.” Yes, Gatsby is looking longingly across the water and sees that green light that shines near the home of Tom and Daisy Buchanan.
Nick will get to Daisy first, for they are cousins. Once he visits, she follows the grand tradition of previous musical theater characters Dolly Levi and Yente in trying to matchmake.
She sees Nick as a logical partner for avid female golfer Jordan Baker. Through Howland’s jaunty melody, Daisy sings that Jordan’s an “Absolute Rose.” She insists, in a clever Tysen lyric, that roses “sometimes look best when they’re arranged.”
We get a good hint of how Daisy feels about herself when Tysen has her say, to Howland’s doleful melody, that “If I’m a rose, I’m a rose under glass.” But she does predict that Nick “will be an absolute rose – like I used to be.”
Tysen’s use of the past tense is apt. Daisy isn’t wearing rose-colored glasses when assessing her marriage; she knows the bloom is long off the rose, and that Tom is cheating on her.
Jordan’s pretty cynical, too, about the people with whom she’s associating and their “New Money.” Howland’s brass-tacks melody nicely underlines Tysen’s observation that “the rich are riche and the money is nouveau.” Agreeing with her is the slimy Meyer Wolfsheim, who’s not irrelevant to Gatsby’s fortune.
Once Gatsby discovers that Nick is related to Daisy, he immediately puts our newcomer on the guest list. Gatsby and Daisy had a history before Tom came on the scene, and after “Daisy slipped through my hands,” the then less-than-wealthy “went full-tilt and rivaled Vanderbilt for her.” Howland provides a powerful melody worthy of the character’s passion.
Tysen offers “green” in another context, for George Wilson, who runs a gas station, admits that he’s green with envy of the people he services. And to whom does he address his song “Valley of Ashes”?
Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.
Correction: Wilson makes his complaints to the billboard that advertises Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, the oculist who rented it before he retired. You knew that this would be in the musical, for the logo of eyes peering from the sign is, along with the green light, one of GATSBY’s most famous images.
Oh, if that billboard could talk! It’s “seen” that Myrtle, Wilson’s wife, cavorts with Tom while her husband’s back is turned. And while it is, she’s not above telling the latter that she and Tom are having an affair.
Tysen has smartly adapted Fitzgerald’s observation that on Myrtle’s wedding day, she was impressed that her gas station husband-to-be bought a suit for the occasion – only to learn that it was a “Second-Hand Suit.” As she mourns, “His dreams were all a mirage and now I live above a garage.” Howland offers a carefree melody that underlines her absolute lack of guilt.
Meanwhile, Jordan asks Daisy about her past with Gatsby. Yes, he was the love of her life, but she thought he’d perished in the war. So, she settled for Tom “For Better Or Worse.”
(In fact, worse.)
As for Gatsby, Daisy realizes that “There’s an open door where there wasn’t one before – and I wonder what he’d do if I walked through.”
She’ll get her chance, for Nick arranges a meeting between the two.
Funny that the guy who was supposed to be the recipient of matchmaking has now become a matchmaker for the original matchmaker.
What Daisy could probably never imagine is how serious and concerned Gatsby is when anticipating their reunion. Howland and Tysen convey that nervous energy when Nick tries to minimize the meeting as “Only Tea.”
Once Daisy arrives, Gatsby admits to his obsession, and Daisy knows that “My Green Light,” though faint, has kept him awake at night – that it’s “blinking permission, sending a code granting admission to follow a road.”
What Gatsby wants to know, though, is “If I save you, will you save me, too?”
That will be easier said than done, as readers of the Fitzgerald novel can tell you. So can filmgoers from the ‘40s or ‘70s, or those who have witnessed the TV and film versions seen this century. One could say that that green light that has been winking at Gatsby may be mocking him.
That leads us to Gatsby’s “Past Is Catching up to Me.” That term usually means the sins and crimes of yesteryear have a way of resurfacing and ruining their perpetrator. Tysen has a much, much smarter way of handling the situation.
As for Nick and Jordan, each warns the other “Better Hold Tight.” Before we find who’ll loosen a grip, even Wolfsheim gets his moment in a song that may bring to mind one of the more delightful ones in AVENUE Q.
Perhaps in time this GREAT GATSBY will match that 2004 Tony winner’s long-run success. For the foreseeable future, many theatergoers may be mighty happy that this new musical got the green light.
Peter Filichia can be heard most weeks of the year on www.broadwayradio.com. His new book – BRAINTEASERS FOR BROADWAY GENIUSES – is now available on Amazon and at The Drama Book Shop.
