While the title of my blog is Mo Money, Mo Problems, this post might be stretching from the connotative topic. Since April 2021, the public has been aware of a work-in-progress Broadway adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. However, at the beginning of this month (September 2023), we officially received a cast list for this upcoming musical. Specifically, A-list Broadway celebrities Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada have been cast to take on the roles of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan, respectively. Specifically, I wanted to compare Jordan and Noblezada’s biggest Broadway roles to these new upcoming roles, as assuredly they are being paid more money to take on characters with significantly more problems.
I had first been introduced to Jeremy Jordan by his portrayal of Jack Kelly in Newsies. My school had decided to perform this musical during my 8th grade year, so I had become very familiar with this work very quickly. Ironically, I would also argue that Newsies is Jordan’s best-known work, which might have some aforesaid bias incorporated into this thought. Jack Kelly is a seventeen-year-old newspaper boy from Manhattan, New York. He is extremely poor and protests for change within the unfair newspaper industry through strikes. He even claims that he has “no folks anywhere.” He falls in love with the main antagonist’s daughter, who reciprocates the same affection and becomes instrumental in assisting the protagonist take down her father. Jack doesn’t necessarily achieve financial prosperity, but he receives prosperity in the social and romantical aspects of his life. Gatsby, on the other hand, also came from a background of relative poverty. However, rather than striking and working with a community, Gatsby turned to illegal methods to obtain financial prosperity. His love interest ended up working against him alongside her preexisting relationship to her antagonistic husband, Tom Buchannan, which is where the stories of Jack and Gatsby truly diverge. In the end, Jack obtains social and romantical prosperity (and a happy ending), while Gatsby only maintains his financial prosperity (and a fatal ending). In the beginning, Jack was lonely while Gatsby would throw extravagant parties at his house, always being in the presence of at least someone. In the end, Jack was socially prosperous while Gatsby ended up practically alone (except for Nick). These characters might have started from the same place, but both took drastically different paths to attempt to fulfill themselves, ending with very different results for both.
My introduction to Eva Noblezada had initially been through her presence in the Jimmy Awards, but then I came to know her as Eurydice in Hadestown. While I had never been familiar with the musical, I have seen bits and pieces that allow me to make this comparison to Daisy Buchannan, alongside a prior knowledge of basic Greek mythology. Eurydice was a young, impoverished girl who was destined for a doomed romance. While looking for food, she was bitten by a snake and perished, leaving her husband Orpheus to attempt to save her from the underworld. As she enters the underworld, The Fates chastise the audience for judging her for choosing self-interest over love. Orpheus is notably attracted to her beauty, but he overcome by doubt and breaks his promise which condemns her to Hadestown, and the whole story loops. There are many parallels between this role and story with The Great Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan. Daisy, for one, is attractive not only because of her beauty, but unlike Eurydice, because of her wealth too. I feel as though Eurydice mirrors Gatsby’s character more than Daisy’s, which is ironic as Noblezada will be coming to play such a contrastive character. Orpheus betrays Eurydice, just as Daisy betrays Gatsby. However, both Eurydice and Daisy notably choose self-interest over love, and it’s ironic that in Hadestown the audience is chastised for judging her decision. With The Great Gatsby, the audience is left with nothing but resentment for Daisy when she consistently acts with emphasis on self-interest rather than love. Eurydice was destined for a doomed romance, just as Gatsby was, and it’s very ironic how this character contains many aspects of both Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan. Even so, in the song “Wait for Me (Reprise),” Eurydice is found singing, “I’m coming, wait for me” (Hadestown 2:48), which is definitely something Daisy would never be found saying. It will definitely be interesting to see how Noblezada will tackle the challenge of playing a character that intricately incorporates the qualities of both of the two leading roles (Orpheus and Eurydice) of her most well-known works.
Overall, I’m very excited to see how Jordan and Noblezada will come into the roles of Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchannan. They’ve had a respectable amount of experience with characters sharing the same complexities as Gatsby and Daisy, so I’d imagine they will be delivering award-captivating performances. With this being said, based on the assumption that these new roles will bring more money (and hopefully awards), both Jordan and Noblezada will definitely have to dig deep to display the complexity of Gatsby and Daisy’s overwhelming problems.
Hadestown Original Broadway Company. “Wait for Me (Reprise).” Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/track/3RwvO1Mit858RMmFVtREBU?si=a586e7ca84a74d8c.