Posted in: Audio Dramas, BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: Audio Drama, bbc, bbc radio, doctor who, Gatsby in Harlem, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Ncuti Gatwa, Radio 3, the great gatsby

Doctor Who Star Ncuti Gatwa Leading "Gatsby in Harlem" for BBC Radio 3

Doctor Who stars Ncuti Gatwa and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Malachi Kirby will lead Gatsby in Harlem, a new prestige BBC Radio 3 drama adaptation.

Doctor Who stars get to act in all kinds of productions in between seasons, and Ncuti Gatwa and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who played Martha Jones' sister in the David Tennant run and a new role in the upcoming spinoff The War Between the Land and the Sea, are the leads of a new BBC Radio 4 play. Gatsby in Harlem. The two-part prestige production by award-winning playwright Roy Williams adapts F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and sets it in Harlem, New York City, in 1925. Up-and-coming Malachi Kirby plays Nick Carraway, the naive narrator who witnesses Gatsby's rise and fall. Here's a look at the official overview of the production:

It is the time of one of the most creative cultural revolutions America has ever experienced. The Harlem Renaissance is up and running! Young Nick Carraway runs away from the racially segregated Jim Crow laws of the Deep South for a better life as an African American in New York City. He is reunited with his cousin Daisy and meets her domineering husband, uptight black businessman Tom Buchanan. Nick rents a ground-floor grubby apartment. Right in the heart of Harlem. He resides next door next to the fanciest as well as largest Brownstone mansion on the block, owned by one Jay Gatsby, a mysterious black business magnate who often hosts extravagant all night jazz parties on every floor of his home.

Gatsby's parties are the talk of Harlem! Set in an all-black neighbourhood with a heavy jazz score. This slightly reimagined take of the original classic, moves the location from the Long Island of the 1920s dominated by WASPS, (White Anglo Saxon Protestant), to the pulsating, jazz loving streets of African American Harlem in the 20s. The Harlem Renaissance offered African Americans across the country a new spirit of self-determination, pride, and a belief in their own American Dream that all Americans would one day be able to live and be respected and accepted as one, living in a time when segregation became a thing of the past.

Harlem is the perfect setting for a re-imagined world of The Great Gatsby. The 1920s Jazz Age, during which Fitzgerald's novel is set, overlaps directly with The Harlem Renaissance, a vibrant cultural and artistic movement. Both movements emphasised the transformative power of creativity, music (especially Jazz), and breaking free from societal norms. Gatsby's opulent parties, filled with Jazz and excess, align with the rise of Black culture and expression. Fitzgerald was also looking at reinvention, with Gatsby embodying the self-made man. Similarly, Harlem represented a cultural reinvention for African Americans, a reclaiming of identity, and a celebration of achievements in all areas of the arts and politics.

Gatsby in Harlem 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. It will be available to stream worldwide for free from the BBC.

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