Posted in: Audio Dramas, BBC, Doctor Who, Review, TV | Tagged: doctor who, F. Scott Fizgerald, Gatsby in Harlem, Ncuti Gatwa, the great gatsby

Doctor Who: Enigmatic Ncuti Gatwa Stars in Charged "Gatsby in Harlem"

Ncuti Gatwa (Doctor Who) shines in Gatsby in Harlem, BBC Radio 3's socially-charged adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Ncuti Gatwa has been very busy when he's not filming Doctor Who, including acting in audio dramas like Dickens adaptations, but the most interesting is Gatsby in Harlem, a new BBC Radio 3 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby transposed to 1920s Harlem. This is not a gimmick or an exercise in identity politics but makes the story even more socially and politically charged when the social setting is set in Harlem and New York City while the story remains the same, using it to highlight African-American social and cultural history. As a piece of alternate universe literature, the writers of Doctor Who would have been proud.

Yes, We Know You'll Check This Out Mainly Because of Doctor Who

If you're reading this and on this website, you're here for Doctor Who. We know that. If you're here for Ncuti Gatwa, he doesn't turn up in the first forty minutes of the eighty minutes of Part One, after which Jay Gatsby slowly begins to dominate the story as he enters Nick's life after lurking in the background during Nick's early months in Harlem. Part One is Malachi Kirby's show as narrator and protagonist Nick Carraway. Like the book, Nick is a veteran of the First World War who has moved to New York for a fresh start. The added dimension here is that he has chosen New York City to leave the racial intolerance of the South, where his family is from, and his grandfather's liberation from slavery is still just decades old.

He revels in the freedoms of New York, the Jazz Age, and the Harlem Renaissance and is pleasantly surprised that white people don't use the n-word, nor would glancing at a white woman get a black man hung from the nearest tree. He's shocked and disquieted to find that East Coast African-Americans have a prejudice against those from the South and still disparage them with the n-word, particularly Tom Buchanan (Chiké Okonkwo), the brutish husband of his cousin Daisy (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who expounds on the progress of African-Americans in a new liberated age by quoting the latest writings from the authors of the Harlem Renaissance.

Nick attends parties with the newly rich, where black and white people mix without prejudice, and it's not long before he gets a party invitation from Jay Gatsby, an enigmatic and mysterious millionaire who's the talk of Harlem. The mystery of who Gatsby is and how he makes his money becomes a key driving force of the story as Part One ends on a cliffhanger where Gatsby finally comes face-to-face with Daisy. Part Two is where the story and the ensuing tragedy really play out. If you've read the original book or seen any of the movie adaptations, you know where things are headed.

Making The Great Gatsby Feel New and Relevant Again

Playwright Roy Williams brings that added historical and thematic charge to The Great Gatsby while faithfully following the plot of Fitzgerald's original book. Gatsby in Harlem takes place at the same time as the original book, which takes place on Long Island. The two stories could be happening in parallel. Where Fitzgerald's book was a commentary on class, the Lost Generation, and his own lost love from his youth, Williams adds social commentary on the class and social divides between different African-American groups and the modern awakening of the culture. The Great Gatsby was a commercial failure when it was first published, and Fitzgerald died thinking himself a failure doomed to be forgotten, but many readers now consider him a great American author and the book one of the greats if not the Great American Novel (I'm not one of them, but I recognise the importance of Fitzgerald's work as social documents of their time). Gatsby in Harlem stands as a great companion piece next to the original that can also stand on its own without knowing the original book. It's more than a Doctor Who-style alternate universe tale, though it's fun to think of it that way.

Audio Dramas: An Underrated Medium

BBC Radio 3 audio dramas are considered the cream of the crop of the BBC's radio dramas, often the most sophisticated and prestigious audio dramas in the world, even if not many people know about them. If Doctor Who is being used as a gateway drug to lure younger audiences to discover The Great Gatsby and the history of the Harlem Renaissance, Gatsby in Harlem is as good as it gets.

Gatsby in Harlem is available to stream worldwide for free from the BBC. It was directed by Celia de Wolff and produced by Nathan Freeman and Tom Billington. You can imagine it as The Doctor going to 1925 Harlem to cosplay Jay Gatsby because he's still at loose ends on his own without Ruby. Come on, you know you want to. Part one streams on BBC Radio 3 on January 12th, and Part Two on January 19th.

Gatsby in Harlem

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Review by Adi Tantimedh

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10/10

Doctor Who and Ncuti Gatwa may be the lures attracting listeners to this adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel, but playwright Roy Williams makes the story's relocation to the Harlem Renaissance more than a gimmick, adding additional social commentary and insight on African-American cultural and history, making the story both new and relevant again while also remaining faithful to the original story. This stands next to the original but also on its own without audiences ever having to read the original book.

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