#too busy staring at his gayass

[starl1tsky]

ok so. boston gatsby musical. overall? i enjoyed it, had a great time watching it, etc.... HOWEVER. cons first then pros. and then stuff i had mixed feelings on.

a) they took gatsby's teeth out. he was wayyy too nice. also not charismatic enough. like i feel like a gatsby should suck the air out of a room bc you're too busy staring at him. like those gayass vampires from the vampire show. anyway he was dorky and like sweet and shit and im like that is NOT jay gatsby!!!! that is a musical theater mfa.

b) daisy was also a yass queen white feminist instead of like. the ideal that gatsby obsesses over which like ok, fleshing out female characters, wtver, but daisy SUCKS SO HARD like she killed that girl. did daisy buchanan successfully utilize girl power when she vehicular manslaughtered her husband's mistress. also they were leaning so hard into the class thing that it might've been better to like uh idk TALK ABOUT CLASS??? BC DAISY IS ALL ABOUT CLASS SHE IS LITERALLY THE REPRESENTATION OF THE UPPER CLASS?????

b part 2) they also changed it so that daisy actually totally did want to marry gatsby and her mom forced her to marry tom which imo removes a lot of nuance from the story like??? its not a fucking love story????!!! daisy was NOT about to marry gatsby when he was poor like. let's not try to make daisy something she isn't.

c) ok so they basically made it so gatsby was Native American and like pretending to be white and that in and of itself is NOT a con, i think that's an interesting way to deal with the whole new money/reinvention thing. HOWEVER it felt very shoehorned in bc it was literally only mentioned in the last song when gatsby's dad came to bury him. and then the finale was like #landback which is all well and good but again let's maybe try and have one cohesive theme (class tensions) before we try to add things into the final two songs. because that is not the place to add themes.

d) this isn't so much a con as a ???? but jordan??? what the fuck was she doing there. she like was an exposition drop for nick like twice and then she just stood there and had a verse in like two songs and made out with people. the actress was very hot so it was okay but like. what was she doingggggg.

e) i LOVE florence + the machine however. the music was GOOD, objectively speaking but i would have appreciated a little more variety. the tap number was great tho, 10/10. also loved the damage that you do, that was a good one. "what of love and what of god" felt like, a good florence + the machine song but a heavy handed musical theater song like. giving dust and ashes. great song, but jesus christ josh groban calm the fuck down.

PROS:

a) ok i know i said gatsby wasn't charismatic enough BUT. in the meyer wolfsheim number, he was tap dancing and it was INCREDIBLE. so what i think is that they just should have had him dance more, bc the actor was an INCREDIBLE dancer and that would've given him the gatsby charisma and magnetism. so that's a directing/staging issue not an actor issue. like as far as i remember he only properly danced in that one song.

b) i did appreciate how they fleshed out myrtle and her husband, it was very well done and added significantly to the class tension themes of the original novel

b part 2) HOLY SHIT SOLEA PFEIFFER THE WOMAN THAT YOU ARE. also the husband ATE. the two of them were really extraordinary, standout performances.

c) nick was very charming, they did fourth wall break/monologue type things and it worked quite well i thought. he had a great voice, would've loved it if they gave him more to do but...

d) i mentioned this before but GOOD LORD the meyer wolfsheim tap number was fantastic. best part of the whole show imo

e) honestly the tom was very good. like detestable and i wanted to punch him in his face the whole time but. he was quite good. and i said it before but the damage that you do ATE.

f) very sexy. lots of hot people dancing and making out with each other.

ok now things im unsure about.

a) look. nick carraway is a homosexual. you know this; i know this, however, i don't think he's aware enough to be like "yeah i'm fucking gay and in love with gatsby" like he is gay, he is in love with gatsby but like i do not think he knows that. he idolizes gatsby because he doesn't have the vocabulary or the self knowledge to know that he's in love with him. also babe if you know you're gay and you know you'r ein love with gatsby and gatsby is trying to get with you for his first song and a half, WHY ARE YOU HELPING HIM GET WITH THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE WHO HAPPENS TO BE YOUR COUSIN???? make it make sense. but yea i think making nick gay is the right choice and even having him make out with dudes is the right choice and yea maybe he even knows he's gay but i really don't think he knows he's in love with gatsby. and also nick didn't narrate quite enough and when he did he wasn't quite unreliable enough.

basically i just LOVe the great gatsby and while i did enjoy this musical i just didn't like it as much as the book. so i guess my expectations were too high. also i found it ironic and depressing that in a musical where the adapters added so much about modern politics and tried so hard to modernize the politics of the original novel, the ushers STILL managed to be racist to my mother. yay a.r.t!!!!!