QueenAlice said: "I appreciate that so many here are speaking from the heart of artists and academics, but truly - credit must be given where credit is due-- an if you think like a producer, you can see the greatness about what they have done here. The people behind this show have taken a public domain novel everyone reads (but most don't really remember) and have fixated on the two things the story conjures in most people's minds: the time period and the opulence. They have leaned into that, played up most people's desires for musicals to be romances, given it a simple but very catchy score, cast two incredibly popular young leads, and gone balls to the walls as commercial entertainment. As I've said elsewhere, if you look at musicals adapted from source material going all the way back to OKLAHOMA and CAROUSEL they are tonally completely different from their original stories. This adaptation of GATSBY, I predict, will have long life after its Broadway run - schools and colleges will certainly perform it regularly. And I think the cast recording will also prove very popular, especially among the WICKED crowd."
I don't think the criticism of the show should be boiled down to solely dismissing it's goals. To me, it did not deliver an entertaining show or a particularly catchy score. Perhaps one could've achieved what you described, but the story as told was not particularly compelling (even more a result of the broad direction which put the characters in complete different stories than the writing itself), and the songs, while not atonal, did not really stick in my ear and often had some downright cringeworthy lyrics.
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