public domain - noun - the state of belonging or being available to the public as a whole, therefore not subject to copyright.
On January 1, 2021, F. Scott Fitzgerald's comparatively brief, literary masterpiece, The Great Gatsby entered the public domain after 95 years of copyright protection. With it, the doors to Jay's mansion were opened up to permit party crashers (present writers) to enter and reek anarchic havoc indefinitely on a flawless classic that deserves to be preserved since perfection needs no improvement.
The other night, a close friend of mine invited me to see the premiere of the new musical The Great Gatsby at the Tony-winning regional theater, the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. As a Gatsby connoisseur, I gratefully accepted, hoping for the best.
On the plus side, the show's cast list reads like the Broadway version of Who's Who, and the production values are excellent, completely comparable to that of any present-day Broadway musical. The music is pretty much Disney-esque (think "Frozen" here). Surely, the producers must have high hopes to realize a continuation of the show on the Great White Way after the limited engagement at the Paper Mill ends in December. The entire run, apparently, is sold out, which is most unusual for a local New Jersey theater. For The Great Gatsby: The Musical, the buzz is loud and boisterous. But is the reality? Sadly, no.
Considering what it is, a musical loosely based on Gatsby, the title is all wrong. It should have been called, "Jay and Daisy, Nick and Jordan." Why? Perhaps ignorant of the original, yet conscious of the contemporary trend to erase the ugliness of history in favor of "woke" ideology, the updated version pays little attention to Fitzgerald's organization of events, realigning key moments and lines of dialogue so that they just do not make any sense contextually. It also reimagines the main characters (a buffoonish Jay; a manipulative, vengeful Daisy) as well as relatively insignificant secondary characters, changing them to significant ones by reconceptualizing their personalities, and adding contemporary dialogue to make all of them scarcely credible given the setting of the 1920s. Forget about Nick's first person narration as well. Meyer Wolfsheim enters on occasion from stage left as somewhat of a stage manager–for what reason, I have no idea. Further plot complications are also included (Myrtle Wilson winds up pregnant with Tom's baby, which makes Daisy guilty of double manslaughter), but definitely not needed. The jostling, rearranging, reimagining and adding amount to chaos. Yet apparently, the audiences are eating it all up, awarding the piece with standing ovations night after night. Do they not see that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes? "Ignorance is bliss." I'll say so.
No doubt, the money from the box office receipts will continue to pour in, bolstering this parody of the original. If Fitzgerald were still alive and seated in the audience, he might have enjoyed it, but don't forget that he had a sense of humor (he married Zelda), needed the money desperately, and most likely would have been roaringly drunk at the performance. My guess is that the masterminds of The Great Gatsby: The Musical might be fans, not of Scott but of Mark Twain, embracing his idea that it is "easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
My hope is that the laws of public domain will be edited so that classic literature will be protected from slanderous imitation indefinitely. Tip for writers: Be original. Come up with your own ideas for musicals. Don't borrow from the greats just for the sake of the all-mighty dollar. You'll most definitely come up short, maybe not in this climate, but in the long run when people finally wake up to see that the Emperor is actually naked, recognizing what they might have thought was ingenious is actually rubbish.
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