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Draft:Adaptations of the Great Gatsby

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Florence Eldridge and James Rennie in the first stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby, 1926.

Since the publication of The Great Gatsby in 1925, it has been frequently adapted into different media.

Stage

Plays

The first known stage adaptation was by American dramatist Owen Davis,[1] which became the 1926 film version. The play, directed by George Cukor, opened on Broadway on February 2, 1926, and had 112 curtain calls. The production delighted audiences and garnered rave reviews from theater critics.[2] A successful tour later in the year included performances in Chicago, August 1 through October 2,[3] with additional stops in Brooklyn, Baltimore, St. Louis, Denver, and Minneapolis.[4] The playscript was first published in 2024.[5]

In July 2006, Simon Levy's stage adaptation, directed by David Esbjornson, premiered at the Guthrie Theater to commemorate the opening of its new theater.[6]

2010 saw the debut of Gatz, an off-Broadway production by Elevator Repair Service.[7] The show is structured around a live reading of the entire novel, which a businessman has found on his desk. Staged with a dinner break and two intermissions, the experience runs for eight hours.[5]

Beginning in 2015, The Great Gatsby: The Immersive Show was London's longest-running immersive show, at seven years. A New York performance of the show occurred in several rooms of the Park Central Hotel in Manhattan. It was also performed in Ireland, Wales, Belgium, and South Korea.[5]

The Great Gatsby: A Live Radio Play premiered in 2022. The show is not broadcast over the radio, but rather, features actors on-stage pretending to be radio performers in 1942.[8]

Musicals

The Yale Dramatic Association performed the first musical production of The Great Gatsby in Summer 1956.[9][10][11][12] For the production, Aubrey L. Goodman adapted the novel and wrote the lyrics for 14 songs by Robert E. Morgan, and the show was performed in the University Theatre at Yale University to sold-out performances.[13][14] The cast included a young Dick Cavett.[15]

A UK musical adaptation by Stage One in 1998 received considerable press coverage.[16]

In 2023, The Great Gatsby: A New Musical, with music and lyrics by Jason Howland and Nathan Tysen and a book by Kait Kerrigan announced a one-month limited engagement at the Paper Mill Playhouse.[17][5] The Broadway tryout began its previews on October 12, 2023, followed by an official opening night scheduled for ten days later. The production concluded on November 12 of the same year. Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada starred as the leading roles of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, with Samantha Pauly and Noah J. Ricketts as Jordan Baker and Nick Carraway.[18]

Gatsby: An American Myth, with music and lyrics by Florence Welch and Thomas Bartlett and a book by Martyna Majok is set to have its world premiere the American Repertory Theater.[19] On May 25, 2024, the show will begin previews and will open officially on June 5 of the same year. It will run for about 2 months with a closing night set for July 21.

Other stage performances

The New York Metropolitan Opera commissioned John Harbison to compose an operatic treatment of the novel to commemorate the 25th anniversary of James Levine's debut. The work, called The Great Gatsby, premiered on December 20, 1999.[20]

The novel has also been adapted for ballet performances. There was a ballet adaptation in 1991.[21] In 2009, BalletMet premiered a version at the Capitol Theatre in Columbus, Ohio.[22] In 2010, The Washington Ballet premiered a version at the Kennedy Center. The show received an encore run the following year. The Comedy Theatre of Budapest created a musical.[23]

Film

A lobby card advertising the lost 1926 Gatsby film version
A lobby card for the lost 1926 film adaptation
The 1926 film trailer—the only extant footage

The first movie version of the novel debuted in 1926. Itself a version of Owen Davis's Broadway play, it was directed by Herbert Brenon and starred Warner Baxter, Lois Wilson and William Powell. It is a famous example of a lost film. Reviews suggest it may have been the most faithful adaptation of the novel, but a trailer of the film at the National Archives is all that is known to exist.[24] Reportedly, F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald purportedly loathed the 1926 film adaptation and walked out midway through a viewing of the film at a theater.[25] "We saw The Great Gatsby at the movies," Zelda later wrote to an acquaintance, "It's ROTTEN and awful and terrible and we left."[26] The film is now considered lost.[24]

Following the 1926 movie was 1949's The Great Gatsby, directed by Elliott Nugent and starring Alan Ladd, Betty Field and Macdonald Carey.[27] Twenty-five years later in 1974, The Great Gatsby appeared onscreen again. It was directed by Jack Clayton and starred Robert Redford as Gatsby, Mia Farrow as Daisy, and Sam Waterston as Nick Carraway.[27] Most recently, The Great Gatsby was directed by Baz Luhrmann in 2013 and starred Leonardo DiCaprio as Gatsby, Carey Mulligan as Daisy, and Tobey Maguire as Nick.[25]

In 2021, visual effects company DNEG Animation announced they would be producing an animated film adaptation of the novel directed by William Joyce and written by Brian Selznick.[28]

Television

Gatsby has been recast multiple times as a short-form television movie. The first was in 1955 as an NBC episode for Robert Montgomery Presents starring Robert Montgomery, Phyllis Kirk, and Lee Bowman. The episode was directed by Alvin Sapinsley.[29] In 1958, CBS filmed another adaptation as an episode of Playhouse 90, also titled The Great Gatsby, which was directed by Franklin J. Schaffner and starred Robert Ryan, Jeanne Crain and Rod Taylor.[30] Most recently, the novel was adapted as an A&E movie in 2000. The Great Gatsby was directed by Robert Markowitz and starred Toby Stephens as Gatsby, Mira Sorvino as Daisy, and Paul Rudd as Nick.[25][30]

Literature

Since entering the public domain in 2021, retellings and expansions of The Great Gatsby have become legal to publish. Nick by Michael Farris Smith (2021) imagines the backstory of Nick Carraway;[31] it was first written in 2014, but Smith's publishers waited to publish until 2021.[32] That same year saw the publication of The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo, a retelling with elements of the fantasy genre while tackling issues of race and sexuality,[33] and The Pursued and the Pursuing by AJ Odasso, a queer partial retelling and sequel in which Jay Gatsby survives.[34] Anna-Marie McLemore's queer retelling, Self-Made Boys: A Great Gatsby Remix, was released in 2022 and was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.[35]

Graphic novels

The first graphic novel adaptation was in 2007 by Nicki Greenberg, who published The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Adaptation in Australia. Because the original novel was still protected by United States copyright laws, this version was never published in the U.S. The second version, The Great Gatsby: The Graphic Novel, was adapted by Fred Fordham and illustrated by Aya Morton in 2020. In 2021, K. Woodman-Maynard adapted and illustrated The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, which was published by Candlewick Press.[36] This was the first graphic novel adaptation of the original novel to be published after it entered the public domain in 2021. In June 2021, Clover Press debuted the first of seven periodical comic books, faithfully adapting The Great Gatsby.

Radio

The Great Gatsby was adapted as a radio play in 1939.[4] In 1950, a half-hour-long adaptation for CBS' Family Hour of Stars starred Kirk Douglas as Gatsby.[37] The novel was read aloud by the BBC World Service in ten parts in 2008. In a 2012 BBC Radio 4 broadcast, The Great Gatsby took the form of a Classic Serial dramatization. It was created by dramatist Robert Forrest.[38][39]

Video games

In 2010, Oberon Media released a casual hidden object game called Classic Adventures: The Great Gatsby.[40][41] In 2011, developer Charlie Hoey and editor Pete Smith created an 8-bit-style online game of The Great Gatsby called The Great Gatsby for NES;[42][43][44] in 2022, after the Adobe Flash end of life, they adapted this game to an actual NES ROM file, which can also be played on their website.[45][46] In 2013, Slate released a short symbolic adaptation called The Great Gatsby: The Video Game.[47][48]

References

Notes

Citations

  1. ^ Playbill 1926: Reproduction of original program at the Ambassador Theatre in 1926.
  2. ^ Tredell 2007, p. 95.
  3. ^ Tredell 2007, pp. 93–95.
  4. ^ a b Beckerman 2024.
  5. ^ a b c d Russo 2024.
  6. ^ Skinner 2006.
  7. ^ Brantley 2010.
  8. ^ "Theater Review: "The Great Gatsby: A Live Radio Play" at Legacy". Branford, CT Patch. 2022-09-29. Retrieved 2024-11-12.
  9. ^ Wilmington News-Journal 1956, p. 11.
  10. ^ The Reporter Dispatch 1956, p. 6.
  11. ^ The New York Times 1956, p. 21.
  12. ^ Tredell 2007, p. 109: "It was adapted for a musical at Yale University in 1956".
  13. ^ The Waco Times-Herald 1956, p. 24.
  14. ^ The Boston Globe 1956, p. 127.
  15. ^ Cast Albums 2024.
  16. ^ "Chronicle 17 Apr 1998, page 100". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  17. ^ Heckmann, Ann Marie (2023-07-25). "Jeremy Jordan & Eva Noblezada to Star in Paper Mill Playhouse's World Premiere of The Great Gatsby, a New Musical". Paper Mill Playhouse. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
  18. ^ "Full cast announced for Great Gatsby musical with Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada". 2023-09-06. Retrieved 2023-11-13.
  19. ^ "Gatsby at A.R.T." americanrepertorytheater.org. Retrieved 2023-07-30.
  20. ^ Stevens 1999.
  21. ^ "The Cincinnati Post 25 Oct 1991, page 28". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  22. ^ Grossberg 2009.
  23. ^ Kaufman 2011; Aguirre 2011.
  24. ^ a b Dixon 2003.
  25. ^ a b c Howell 2013.
  26. ^ Mellow 1984, p. 281; Howell 2013.
  27. ^ a b Dixon 2003; Hischak 2012, pp. 85–86.
  28. ^ Giardina 2021.
  29. ^ Hyatt 2006, pp. 49–50.
  30. ^ a b Hischak 2012, pp. 85–86.
  31. ^ Flood, Alison (July 15, 2020). "The Great Gatsby prequel set for release days after copyright expires". The Guardian. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
  32. ^ Flood, Alison (2021-01-29). "Vampires, Muppets and prequels: The Great Gatsby's new life out of copyright". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2024-11-12.
  33. ^ Wick, Jessica (June 6, 2021). "This Retelling Of 'Gatsby' Has Demonic Flair To Spare". NPR. Retrieved July 12, 2022.
  34. ^ Grossman, Mary Ann (October 30, 2021). "Readers and writers: Poet gives Jay Gatsby a new gay life with Nick Carraway in debut novel". Twin Cities Pioneer Press. Retrieved July 27, 2022.
  35. ^ Cerézo, Arvyn (September 16, 2022). "Longlists Announced for 2022 National Book Awards". Retrieved October 5, 2022.
  36. ^ Gurdon 2021.
  37. ^ Pitts 1986, p. 127.
  38. ^ White 2007.
  39. ^ Forrest 2012.
  40. ^ Benedetti 2010.
  41. ^ Paskin 2010.
  42. ^ Bell 2011.
  43. ^ Crouch 2011.
  44. ^ "The Great Gatsby for NES". greatgatsbygame.com. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
  45. ^ Hoey, Charlie. "Lots of false leads over the past 11 years, but we FINALLY tracked down an actual ROM dump for The Great Gatsby Game. Enjoy". Twitter. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
  46. ^ Smith, Peter. "11 years ago today, @flimshaw and I launched our hit Flash game The Great Gatsby for NES. Today we're launching it again... as an actual 8-bit game. Presenting The Great Gatsby for NES... for NES". Twitter. Retrieved 1 April 2022.
  47. ^ Kirk, Morgan & Wickman 2013.
  48. ^ Sarkar 2013.

Works cited

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