Most of the world thinks of Christian Bale as the latest incarnation of Batman: the Dark Night. (We won’t include Ben Affleck, who will never be known as anyone but Ben Affleck.) But for a generation of singing and dancing young ladies, Mr. Bale will forever be known as Jack Kelly, the signin’ dancin’ newspaper slingin’ union organizin’ young scrub in Disney’s 1992 musical, Newsies!
Based on the movie, the musical is here in town and a dozen of us went together last night.
We began the evening with a large, Italian dinner at Buca di Beppo. We had a long table in the back and ate until we could barely walk. We’re native Minnesotans and we know how to do winter. We stoked up our internal furnaces with a ton of starch, then walked four blocks through subzero temperatures to the theater. Believe me: we were all wide awake by the time we showed our tickets to the usher!
I love the Orpheum. I have no idea how many shows I’ve seen there over the years. Christmas ’14, my girls and I all saw Motown, which was fabulous! I think the first show I ever saw there may have been Annie, back in ’76. Since then, I know I’ve seen the Boomtown Rats, a Beatles homage (Shout?) Basia, Michael Buble and more. Part of the problem in trying to remember is that the State theater is right across the street and I’ve seen lots of shows there, too.
Both theaters are opulent, gorgeous, fully refurbished beauties that make you feel as though you ought to be wearing feathers, diamonds and furs just to walk in the door. I love it!
Last night, our tickets were up in the balcony. We had barely gotten seated when the lights went down.
The show is the story of the news paper boys (called ‘newsies’) battle against the greed of the newspaper’s owner, Joseph Pulitzer.
It seems in those days, the newsies had to buy stacks from the publisher before selling them on the street, so the circulation depended on the newsies, selling as many sheets as they could. When circulation went down, instead of taking the losses or improving the content, Pulitzer raised the price of the paper for the newsies from .50 cents per hundred to .60 cents.
A 20% increase is quite a kick in the pants!
Their response to this injustice was to organize and strike.
I couldn’t help wondering why they didn’t just charge more for the papers they sold.
That’s what I did a little over a year ago, when my supplier raised the price of canvas by 20%. Maybe next time I have to pay more for paint, I should pirouette around Michaels and beat up a few old ladies? Nah. I’ll stick to the laws of supply and demand. I guess that’s why no one’s ever going to write a musical about needlepoint designers.
Besides, back in 1890, it’s plausible that the newsies had been selling papers for a penny a piece and I suppose a 100% price increase would have been hard to sell to the public but who knows? If all the papers raised their prices…wouldn’t have been much of a story, would it?
The other plot point I couldn’t help getting stuck on was when the plucky young Girl Reporter /love interest, in order to gin up support for the cause, excitedly got an article and large photo of the striking newsies printed…in the newspaper…which they weren’t distributing anywhere in the city…so what was the point of that, again?
The point was the show stopping number “I’m the King of New York”, silly!
Anyway, when watching a cast of athletic, graceful young men dance their well sculpted asses off, who cares about the internal logic of the plot? NOT ME.
As usual in live theater, half the fun is being amazed by the staging and the sets. For Newsies, the set was composed of a three tiered scaffolding in three articulated parts. These sets moved to, fro, up, back and separately to convey tenements, Pulitzer’s office and basement and the inside of a theater. It was ingenious and fascinating to watch as the cast and the sets themselves performed dance numbers on so many levels of the stage space. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show that included more athleticism. Most of the numbers included running up and down all three stories of that scaffolding as well as hand springs and flips across the stage yet at the end of such numbers, none of the dancers could even be seen to be breathing heavily.
I’m pretty sure there was a time in my life when I, too, was young and fit but I really don’t remember.
The only weak spot in the whole show was Katherine, the Girl Reporter. Her singing and dancing was adequate but her acting was…well, you could tell she was just acting her little heart out. You know how Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly used to deliver their lines in that East coast- actress diction no one in real life ever spoke with? That’s how she talked and it sounded bizarre, especially against the Bronxy dialect of the newsies, all of whom were superb.
The show was so good that I was surprised when the lights came up at halftime because it all went by so fast! I do think that the Orpheum could make a killing if they sold ice packs for the knees of us old codgers squeezed into those balcony seats which have no legroom, whatsoever. We all stood just to ease the strain on our poor, throbbing knees during intermission (not half time). The second half (act) was just as good and sped by just as quickly as the first half (act).
It did feel good to walk the few blocks to where we’d parked afterwards. No need for icing the knees when you can simply march around in ten below weather.
All in all, a great night and I can’t wait to do it again!