Scenes

Scene 1 begins with the narrator Nick Carraway’s arrival to West Egg from Minnesota, and his rental of a small waterside cottage next to Gatsby’s palatial digs. After taking possession of the property, Nick sings the opening number, aptly labeled “Arrived,” in which he declares his intention to take Wall Street and New York City in general by storm. 

In Scene 2 Nick is surprisingly invited to the Saturday night festivities of Jay Gatsby, who on the surface does not want to offend his neighbor but who is more surreptitiously aware that Nick is the cousin of Daisy Buchanan for whom Gatsby is carrying a very hot torch. Delivered a personal invitation by one of Gatsby’s servants, Nick is both exhilarated and apprehensive, emotions he conveys in the second number of the show, “An Invitation.”  

In Scene 3 Nick arrives at the party knowing no one but fascinated by the Bacchanalian activities taking place around him, captured by the large crowd number “Gatsby’s House Tonight.” Gatsby, however, is strangely absent, and the partygoers engage in innuendo about what he does and the rumors about his past in the number “Man of Mystery.” Over the course of the evening Nick does actually meet Gatsby but in a most embarrassing way since he engages in a conversation with his host without knowing that it is Gatsby. He also meets Jordan Baker, a friend of Daisy’s and a professional golfer, with whom he quickly becomes taken. After the party is over, Gatsby emerges alone in the dark, staring across the bay that literally divides him from Daisy and symbolizes the figurative barriers of her marriage and time. The ballad “Across the Great Divide” conveys this painful yearning. 

Scene 4 introduces Daisy to the audience. Set in the Buchanan household, it features a duet between Daisy and Jordan called “Mirror, Mirror,” in which both women seek to know their futures within a looking glass: Jordan wanting to know whether she will win an upcoming championship, Daisy, acutely aware of her husband’s infidelity, wondering whether she will ever be truly happy. Though Nick pays a brief visit to reacquaint himself with Daisy, he departs with Jordan at which time Daisy sings her first solo, “Fairytale Romance,” in which she nostalgically remembers the early days of her courtship with Tom, then laments the fading of his affections.  

Scene Five introduces the secondary characters, a couple named George and Myrtle Wilson, the latter of whom is having a somewhat covert affair with Tom Buchanan. George, the owner of a run-down and unsuccessful garage, sings “Dead End Street,” a blues number in which the title becomes a metaphor for his job, his marriage and his life. When Tom stops at the garage for gas─and to arrange a rendezvous with Myrtle─Wilson’s desperation and naivete become clear: the former in his attempt to buy a hand-me-down vehicle from Tom, the latter in his obliviousness that Tom is the man having an affair with his wife. The three of them sing an amusing number called “Lift Me Outta the Trashcan, Mistah,” in which both Myrtle and George Wilson reveal that they see Tom as their deus ex machina, the person who can lift them out of their bleak situation. 

Scene 6 shifts to a speak-easy in New York City to which Nick accompanies Gatsby on “business.” The opening number, “Flapper’s Lament,” is primarily atmospheric though it does make social commentary on the general plight of women. When Gatsby suddenly disappears to take care of some ‘business,” Nick is left with a gambler known as Meyer Wolfsheim and his cronies, who in the rollicking number “Opportunity Knocks,” give Nick a lesson in how to get ahead through gambling. Later, Nick bumps into Tom at the establishment and tries to introduce him to Gatsby, only to find Gatsby has mysteriously vanished. 

Scene 7 is set in a New York hotel room in which Tom and Myrtle have been conducting business of their own. They sing an amusing duet called “Adultery, Adulterah” that humorously and shamelessly celebrates their adultery and infidelity in general. 

Scene 8 returns to Gatsby’s for another Saturday night extravaganza, opening with “It’s a Roaring Age!,” a testament to the zaniness of the era. During the evening Jordan Baker fills Nick in on the history of Gatsby’s love for Daisy. She also tells Nick that Gatsby would like him to host a luncheon at which he can rekindle his relationship with Daisy, a suggestion which Nick finds morally repugnant and rejects. 

Scene 9, still at Gatsby’s but near dawn and after the festivities have all ended, features a medley in which Gatsby reveals his passion for Daisy in greater detail. In the first song, a pretty but plaintive number called “How Can She Tell?,” Gatsby bemoans the fact that Daisy does not know how obsessed he is with her; in the second, called “Anything for You,” he indicates how far he is willing to go to recapture her love. 

Scene 10 switches to the interior of Nick’s cottage where, to Nick’s surprise, the luncheon broached in scene 8 actually takes shape. This is the first time Daisy and Gatsby have spoken in five years, since he went off to fight in the First World War. Their interaction is predictably awkward as the duet “I Never Know When” conveys. Nick and Jordan are left to their own devices as Gatsby and Daisy renew their affection. 

In Scene 11, the final scene of Act One, Gatsby, having returned to Nick’s cottage from a tour of his mansion, attempts to impress upon Daisy how far up the social ladder he has climbed despite not coming from Old Money. In the powerful finale, “The Crossroad of our Lives,” both Daisy and Gatsby realize they are on a bold new precipice: she, knowing her husband is unfaithful but stirred by Gatsby’s undying affection for her; he, coming tantalizingly close to his grail. It is a potentially pivotal movement in the lives of the two of them though it comes with great risk of which they both are conscious. 

Scene 1 is again set at one of Gatsby’s parties. The opening number, “Let the Party Begin!,” captures the carpe diem attitude of the Roaring Twenties, the line “Life’s a short race. You might as well go through it at a fast pace” summarizing this philosophy. The difference in this party scene is that Daisy elects to attend. When Tom wanders off in search of booze and perhaps another romantic conquest, Daisy and Gatsby reunite. Again, the reunion is clumsy, and in the duet, “Open Up Your Heart,” they suggest that each of them is incapable of empathizing with the other’s problem: Daisy’s fear of ending her marriage and Gatsby’s impatience with her hesitance to do so. Hence, by the party’s end Gatsby is disconsolate. In the number “Set Your Sights on Tomorrow,” Nick endeavors to persuade Gatsby to move on from Daisy, only to find he is even more adamant about recovering her. 

In Scene 2, which occurs three weeks later, Nick wanders over to Gatsby’s property which in recent days has become strangely quiet. There he learns that Daisy has been secretly coming over to see Gatsby who is convinced she is going to leave Tom. This is one of only three transitional scenes without a musical number, but it is crucial to setting up the play’s turning point. 

Scene 3 is the preamble to this climax. Gatsby and Nick visit the Buchanans, the former expecting Daisy will tell Tom she is leaving him; however, Daisy is terrified of the consequences of such a momentous decision and delays it, insisting that they get out of the heat by driving to the Plaza Hotel in New York. In a seemingly harmless development Tom asks to drive Gatsby’s car to see how it performs, and Gatsby, not wanting to disappoint Daisy, agrees. Tom and Daisy subsequently drive off, with Gatsby and Nick following in Tom’s automobile. Prior to their departure Gatsby and Daisy sing a brief a cappella reprise of “The Crossroad of Our Lives” that ominously foreshadows the events of the next scene.  

Scene 4 is the second song-less scene, but one necessary to set up the final tragedy. When Tom stops for gas at Wilson’s garage several seemingly trivial things occur: Wilson sees him driving a new car and asks again about buying an old one, and Myrtle sees Tom depart in Gatsby’s ostentatious yellow roadster, believing that it is his car. 

Scene 5, set at the Plaza Hotel, contains the aforementioned turning point in which Gatsby forces the issue by telling Tom that Daisy is leaving him. Though Gatsby wants Daisy to utter the words herself, she is torn between the surety of her Old Money life with Tom Buchanan and the risk of Gatsby’s entrepreneurial lifestyle. In the dramatic trio “Remember Love?” Gatsby and Tom engage in a tug-of-war for Daisy’s affections, Tom reminding her of posh restaurants and island getaways, Gatsby telling her she should forget the past and move on in life with the one she truly loves. Here wealth and security collide with wealth and love, and Daisy opts for the former. Fully and securely in charge, Tom tells Daisy to drive home “in Mr. Gatsby’s car.” 

Scene 6 is the third and final song-less scene. In it Wilson and Myrtle fight over money. The daft Wilson has finally started to put things together, suspecting Myrtle is seeing another man. Irate, she storms out of the garage, espying an oncoming yellow car which she believes is driven by Tom. She runs out in the road to hail it, but it runs her down without stopping. Obviously this scene cannot be played on stage, so the actual collision is auditory (brakes, impact, etc.) 

Scene 7, also set in Wilson’s garage, begins with a disconsolate Wilson being interrogated by the police who gather what information they can, then leave to attempt to locate the perpetrator. Once he is left alone, a vengeful Wilson sings the dirge-like solo “Someone Must Pay.” Mad at the driver of the vehicle and mad at life in general, he removes a pistol from the drawer of his desk and sets out in quest of the yellow car, believing Tom Buchanan was the driver. 

Scene 8 takes place in darkness, outside of the Buchanans’ house as Nick returns with Tom. There they find a distraught Daisy, emotionally shattered by the collision. Tom, believing Gatsby was driving, lectures Daisy about straying from her marriage. When she tells him that it was she who ran down Myrtle, he is shaken and immediately lawyers up. When Nick leaves, he finds Gatsby holding vigil in the dark, wanting to make sure Daisy is safe. The scene concludes with a tender duet “I’m Never Falling in Love Again” in which Daisy, in a Juliet-like moment, sings from the balcony and Gatsby sings from the ground below, neither aware of the other’s presence. It is like dual soliloquies which acknowledge that the dream is over. 

Scene 9 opens with a poignant exchange between Nick and Gatsby in which Nick essentially tells Gatsby he’s worth the lot of them, declaring that Gatsby is “great.” It also contains the final tragedy when the deranged Wilson, sent by Tom Buchanan to Gatsby’s house, locates the dented yellow death car and shoots Gatsby before completing the tragedy by shooting himself in the head. 

Coda: Ending Gatsby is problematic since the final scene is such as downer; thus, the Coda has been conceived in two parts: the first, Nick’s rhetorical solo, “What Happens to a Dream Deterred,” which riffs off the title of the Langston Hughes poem to question what harboring a dream like this does to a man; and the second, “Boats Against the Current,” in which the entire cast comes forth to pay tribute to the power and necessity of dreams. 

And that, my friends, is Gatsby: The Musical. 

Gatsby: The Musical─The Songs 
(Order, Running Time, and Location in the Script)

ACT ONE 

• Overture 5:34 
• Arrived 2:17   Page 3 
• An Invitation 2:00 Pages 8-9
• Gatsby’s House Tonight 2:54   Pages 11-12 
• Man of Mystery 1:54   Pages 14-15 
• Across the Great Divide (There is Love) 2:52   Pages. 23-24 
• Mirror. Mirror 3:33   Pages 27-28
• Fairytale Romance 3:19   Pages 34-35 
• Dead End Street 3:30   Pages. 37-38 
• Lift Me Outta the Trashcan 3:30   Pages 41-45 
• Flapper’s Lament 2:39   Page 47 
• Opportunity Knocks 3:41  Pages 50-54
• Adultery, Adulterah 3:03   Pages 58-60 
• It’s a Roaring Age 2:17   Pages 61-62 
• How Can She Tell? / Anything for You 2:51   Pages 67-68 
• I Never Know When 3:40   Pages 75-76
• The Crossroad of Our Lives 3:39   Pages 82-84

ACT TWO 

1. Entr’acte 5:49 
2. Let the Party Begin 3:31   Pages 85-87 
3. Open Up Your Heart 5:01   Pages 91-93 
4. Set Your Sights on Tomorrow 2:15   Pages 94-95 
5. The Crossroad of Our Lives (Reprise) 1:01   Page 105 
6. Remember Love? 3:31   Pages 115-118 
7. Someone Must Pay 3:27   Pages 125-126
8. I’m Never Falling in Love Again 3:58    Pages 130-132 
9. Dream Deterred / Boats Against the Current 6:02   Pages 139-140