Original Broadway Cast, 2024 (Sony Masterworks Broadway) (0.5 / 5) As F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous and revered novel The Great Gatsby lapsed into the public domain, it was perhaps inevitable that stage adaptations would begin to appear. This musical version had the good fortune of employing two extremely talented vocalists, Jeremy Jordan (Newsies,  Bonnie and Clyde, etc. ) as Jay Gatsby and Eva Noblezada (Miss Saigon, Hadestown) as Daisy Buchanan. Noblezada was cast against type for this role, yet she comes across better than Jordan on the recording, finding genuine emotion in songs such as “For Better or Worse” and “Beautiful Little Fool.” Though Jordan’s singing voice is distinctive in ballads including “For Her,” his accent in his spoken dialogue sounds out of place. And while John Zdrojeski and Sara Chase are well cast as Tom Buchanan and Myrtle, respectively, Noah Ricketts struggles in the role of Nick. The story of Gatsby’s pursuit of the married Daisy is narrated in the novel and the musical by Nick, who has just returned home from serving in World War I, and who also plays a key role in the unfolding drama as he carries on a romance with professional golfer Jordan Baker (Samantha Pauly). Nick is the audience’s reporter on the show’s primary subjects and themes: the tragedy hidden behind the decadence of the Roaring ’20s in America, the life of the mysterious Gatsby, and the everlasting hope or the unreachable dream represented by a single green light in the distance. But narration is much more difficult to execute in a stage show than in a novel, and Nick’s lines often feel shoehorned into the musical. The score for this version was written by Jason Howland (music) and Nathan Tysen (lyrics), and the book by Kait Kerrigan. Howland is not untalented; his melodies for the songs “For Her,” “Only Tea,” and “Past is Catching Up to Me” are enjoyable, and “My Green Light” plays well as the obligatory, highly-anticipated duet between the two leads. But some of Tysen’s lyrics are of shockingly poor quality. For example, in the song “One-Way Road,” a pregnant Myrtle sings “Though I’m not showing, a baby’s growing,” along with “He’s mine, and this baby here is genuine.” Lyrics like these prevent the recording from gaining any real momentum, and further, the score as a whole is structured so generically that some listeners may be able to predict the type and style of each successive song before it plays. It’s likely that the standout visuals of this show’s physical production and the presence of two bankable musical theater notables keep the party moving well enough on stage, but this Great Gatsby‘s lack of nuance is clear from the cast album, especially in comparison to its source material. — Forrest Hutchinson