I actually saw the Newsies musical at the Papermill Playhouse two weeks ago, but I decided to wait and see what our resident theater buff Nick thought, before posting my thoughts here.
In short, I loved Newsies! The musical was fun, and lively, and it really is a great adaptation of the movie. I have had the song, "King of New York," stuck in my head for weeks now. My comparisons for this show will obviously be based on the movie, but I would like to give a few details about how familiar I am with Newsies the movie. My girlfriend's favorite movie in the entire world is Newsies, and in fact the first gift I ever bought her many many years ago was Newsies on DVD because she didn't yet own it.
So over the years I have come to know and love most of the songs, as well as the story. I have a few points of criticism, and I will try not to duplicate the same points that Nick already made.
1.) I found it interesting that they stopped referring to the character of Jack Kelly as 'Cowboy.' This seems like an odd change to me, especially because Jack still wants to go to Santa Fe, and is still the leader of a band of striking newsboys. In the movie the only 'cowboy-type' scene Jack has, is when he steals a horse and rides it for all of ten seconds, while singing the song Santa Fe, and throughout the movie he wears a cowboy hat instead of a newboys/drivers cap. I think the addition of the cowboy hat for the stage would be a good thing, because it would help Jack to stand out in the crowd a little better, and distinguish him as different, because, well, he is. I found myself at times having trouble differentiating Jack from the rest of the chorus members from the mezzanine (cheap seats!!).
2.)I think that the people making the casting decisions for this show must have decided early on that they were going with chorus members who were better dancers then they were singers. I think that this choice made the many large dancing numbers extremely exciting, and fun - but it left something to be desired during the actual singing of some of the rather large anthems. And don't get me wrong...I don't think that the singing was bad by any means, I just think there could have been a few more strong voices to fill out these songs (I believe I am also just used to the movie which probably has double, if not more, the amount of people singing these beloved songs).
3.) I also had a real problem with the actor who played Davey. I don't really feel like looking up his name, because frankly he is forgettable. He was extremely whiny, and took a character who, in the movie was a bit of a nerdy know-it-all, and turned Davey into a neo-maxi-zoom-dweebie, every time Davey opened his mouth during the show, I cringed.
But the real test is this, "Would I go back and see the show again?" and I can honestly say that 'Yes!' I would. And I hope that this 6 week test in Millburn turns into something bigger.
A quick question for you theatre people out there, throughout the course of this production they used screens and large projectors to create backgrounds for some of the scenes. Pulitzer's office had a projected picture of windows with large opulent curtains, to name one scene where this technology was used. My question is this, are the projectors part of the scenery? or the lighting?
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