No One Should Laugh When Myrtle Wilson Dies And Other ‘Great Gatsby’ Hot Takes

This is not a review of the Broadway musical.

The Great Gatsby musical is playing on Broadway, and I’ve tried to avoid thinking too much about it. (I recently listened to an audio recording from a performance last year — naughty, I know — and wasn’t impressed.) Few books are as consistently misinterpreted as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel. Most adaptations treat it as a love story and senselessly romanticize Jay Gatsby, a tragic figure who ultimately drowns in his own shallow pursuits.

I didn’t dare hope that the new musical would offer searing satire, like Chicago and Cabaret. This will be Roaring Twenties cosplay. I also shrugged when I noticed that a Black actor (Noah J. Ricketts) was cast as Nick Carraway, the very WASP midwestern elitist disguised as an “everyman,” whose great uncle “sent a substitute” to fight in the Civil War. If wealthy, entitled white supremacist Tom Buchanan’s college buddy Nick is Black, then it obviously doesn’t matter if the actually white Gatsby comes from “old money” (economic code for “proven whiteness”). Nothing matters.

Daisy Buchanan herself is played by a woman of color (Eva Noblezada) and so is Jordan Baker (Samantha Pauly). Their whiteness is a persistent theme in the novel. Daisy talks about spending their “beautiful white girlhood” in Louisville, Kentucky, which at the time was under the iron grip of Jim Crow. One of my favorite passages in the novel is when Tom rants about “intermarriage between Black and white,” and Jordan casually replies, “We’re all white here.” It misses the point to suggest that Daisy simply “married well.” She was already a debutante from a wealthy Southern family.

A white actor (Sara Chase) does play Myrtle Wilson, which could have been an interesting flip on historical class positions, but I don’t think that’s the musical’s intent. Even smarter casting might’ve had actors of color as Gatsby, George and Myrtle Wilson, and white actors as the “careless people” from East Egg. That would’ve further reinforced the novel’s themes, and while the musical obviously isn’t the novel, it needs to actually mean something.

---

---

Look, I don’t want a big budget Broadway musical whose leads are exclusively white and the only roles for Black actors are “three modish negroes, two bucks and a girl” (yes, that’s Nick’s description of Black people who drive past him in a fancy car). I’m all for Audra McDonald as Mama Rose in an update of Gypsy, and I think William Jackson Harper would make a great Henry Higgins in a version of My Fair Lady (though he’s sort of done this already on The Good Place). Certain stories still work outside their historical racial context. The Chicago revival specifically removed the original’s direct references to Velma Kelly and Billy Flynn’s ethnic backgrounds. That’s not what the story’s about anyway. (Chicago also makes a point of stripping away any overt indication that’s set in the 1920s.) However, it would be insulting to mount a version of Cabaret that ignores white supremacy and racial hatred and focuses instead on an uptight American writer’s failed romance with manic pixie dream girl Sally Bowles. In the current Broadway production of Cabaret, Ato Blankson-Wood is the first Black actor to play Clifford, but there’s a historical basis for this that actually gives the story more urgency and elevates the stakes.

I saw an immersive version of Gatsby a couple years ago where Gatsby was Black but passing as white. That at least made some sense artistically, especially as Daisy remained white. Gatsby is not in love with a woman but rather an ideal, and that American “ideal” and all it represents is distinctly “white.” Unfortunately, it seems as if The Great Gatsby is more interested in romance than any true examination of race or class (and the intersection of both). The actual conflict is subsumed under flash and spectacle. Jay Gatsby would approve.

Class matters

Laura Collins-Hughes writes in her New York Times review, “[Gatsby] is new money, so he has to prove his worth to the snobberati” — again, people of color have never moved freely among the truly “snobby.” Emlyn Travis at Entertainment Weekly describes Gatsby as “a self-made millionaire and resident party god,“ but Gatsby isn’t a legitimate self-made man. This is like limiting descriptions of Vito Corleone to “self-made millionaire” and “devoted godfather.”

Tom Buchanan is correct that Gatsby is a “big bootlegger” who’s involved in all sorts of shady scams, from selling worthless bonds to suckers to fixing the World Series. Daisy probably shouldn’t stay with her abusive husband, but there was no fairy tale ending with her criminal lover whose fortune was built illegally. It’s also a giant house of cards, as Kevin Rose speculated in New York Magazine. Gatsby was tremendously over-extended and spent far more than he could have actually earned in so short a time.

Fitzgerald only shows us hints of Gatsby’s criminal activities, but there’s no question that Gatsby is a common crook if not an outright gangster. If Fitzgerald intended to dramatize a simple new versus old money story, he could’ve written Gatsby as a whiz at the stock market who exceeded his humble roots. People have argued that Buchanan’s money is no more “legitimate,” but that is a philosophical argument. Practically speaking, Buchanan isn’t a criminal. Gatsby is. A “big bootlegger” during Prohibition might’ve operated similarly to today’s drug kingpin, but modern audiences are more inclined to dismiss it as just selling willing adults booze. However, the bond scams were hardly victimless crimes. After Gatsby’s death, Nick takes a phone call from one of his criminal associates.

...Long Distance said Chicago was calling ... the connection came through as a man’s voice, very thin and far away.
"This is Slagle speaking..."
"Yes?" The name was unfamiliar.
"Hell of a note, isn't it? Get my wire?"
"There haven't been any wires."
"Young Parke's in trouble," he said rapidly. "They picked him up when he handed the bonds over the counter. They got a circular from New York giving 'em the numbers just five minutes before. What d'you know about that, hey? You never can tell in these hick towns …”
”Hello?!” I interrupted breathlessly. “Look here — this isn't Mr. Gatsby. Mr. Gatsby's dead."

“Chicago” is a clear reference to the heart of organized crime in the 1920s. “Hick towns” suggest that Gatsby has no scruple against conning those who can least afford it. He’s building his peculiar “American dream” off the backs of hard-working people.

The purest example of thwarted class mobility is Myrtle Wilson, a character Nick doesn’t glamorize like Gatsby or see as special like Daisy, arguably because of his own misogyny and snobbery.

Why does everyone forget that Gatsby and Daisy are murderers?

Collins-Hughes notes that “the darker elements of The Great Gatsby prove more elusive, which blunts the impact overall.” That’s an understatement. She praises Noblezada for giving “Daisy steel at her center that further ensures she isn’t a manic pixie dream girl, even if the incurably dreamy Gatsby perceives her through gauze.” She credits the book’s author Kait Kerrigan with deepening “Daisy and Jordan, who, with their talk of the limitations of life for women, sound practically Suffs-adjacent.” Unfortunately, the girl boss treatment doesn’t extend to Myrtle, “the one character the show doesn’t take seriously or treat with dignity. Even when tragedy befalls her, there’s a laugh line in the immediate aftermath.”

The “tragedy” is that Daisy Buchanan runs over Myrtle like a dog, literally rips her open, and doesn’t bother stopping the car. She never stops for a moment in the Valley of Ashes, where the poor people reside. (Yes, we only have Gatsby’s word in the book that Daisy was behind the wheel, and he’s a known liar. Either way, these star-crossed lovers are stone-cold killers.)

I would normally never comment on a production I hadn’t seen, and I still might see the musical when I’m in New York this summer as penance for doing so now. If I’m wrong, I will suitably apologize and publicly chastise myself, but it makes me sick that there’s a goddamn laugh line after on-stage vehicular homicide. Sometimes audiences laugh at moments the creative team clearly didn’t intend. It’s not always your fault, especially if there’s a bar in the theatre, but it’s absolutely ghoulish to knowingly induce laughter after a woman is killed. Myrtle Wilson is not a Disney villain whose death elicits applause when the hero defeats them. Her only offenses are that she’s poor, lacks the superficial trappings of class and “breeding,” and enjoys sex. Those aren’t crimes, unlike a callous hit-and-run, but they seemingly code her as “less than.”

Daisy Buchanan is an objectively terrible person, and it’s unfortunate that Kerrigan felt it necessary to “deepen” a remorseless killer while leaving Myrtle a shallow punchline. Myrtle’s husband locks up his adult wife to keep her from leaving him and when she flees her confinement, she’s obliterated by what would become the very symbol of American freedom. That’s the true tragedy.

Myrtle isn’t merely a symbol of Tom Buchanan’s grossness and hypocrisy. She was just as worthy of seeking the American dream as Gatsby, and her ultimate fate is definitely more worthy of the audience’s pity.

Follow Stephen Robinson on Bluesky and Threads.

Subscribe to his YouTube channel for more fun content.