Newsies Review and the Trip to Chicago
Sara and I had the wonderful opportunity to take in a performance of the production of Newsies at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
Now, initially, much as I loved Newsies, I was just a little bit sorry that I wasn't going to get to see a show for the first time. Sara and I saw Newsies at the Ford Oriental Theatre on December 30th, 2014, in Chicago's Theatre District.
What would distinguish this particular production from that one in my mind?
Well, the first item is the fact that we had theatre in the round. I could practically touch the actors as they passed me by in the aisles to go to the stage. In one case, I did. Adrienne Storrs, the brunette girl Newsie, brushed her dress against me while running onto the stage. Thank heavens I had my feet out of the way. My seat was right on the aisle. There wasn't much relief from the aisle to the floor under my seat. In other words, I was a little scrunched. Good thing I was short.
Another reason I am glad I got to see Newsies live for a second time? Patrick Rooney.
I took one look into his eyes, and knew that any girl would stand a chance of leaving me for him. (If Sara went to sleep dreaming of him instead of me, I could hardly blame her.) I thought of the scene in Superbad when Jonah Hill as Seth talks about his man-crush with that one classmate of his and Evan's, and he compares looking into his eyes to hearing The Beatles for the first time.
Rooney as Jack Kelly worked the smoulder. He was almost as good as Dan DeLuca, who played him in Chicago three years ago.
Eliza Palasz played the part of Katherine, the girl reporter who merges the film's Bill Pullman role and the sister of Davey. She's a girl cub reporter here. Trying to make a name for herself in what is very much a man's world. Jack Kelly tries to romance her. She at first deflects his advances.
I think there's some article about all of the sexual harassment allegations against men in show business where it mentions that even Newsies has a "come hither," "why can't she just give in," "I'm flirting with you, quit sending me mixed signals" scene.
But it's Disney. So the girl has eyes for the male lead eventually.
That's Eliza Palasz in the green skirt that's same color as my blue blanket, with her cup raised. She had a comforting presence. And she reminds me of somebody. She reminds me of Nancy from Stranger Things. The resemblance is uncanny.
The setting is 1899 New York. The newspaper delivery boys pay fifty cents a day to the wholesalers for a stack of 100 papers. This means that they buy each "pape" for about a half a cent. I imagine they make a serviceable profit on that. Well, how much did newspapers cost in 1899? Like a cent? Two cents? So if they sold all their papers they didn't lose money. Well, I suppose on a bad day, they would lose money.
Kind of like me with the Spanish Club t-shirts, actually.
Jack Kelly is incensed when Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York World, decides to up his profits and charge the newsboys about sixty cents for 100 newspapers.
Jack Kelly and his merry rag-tag team of newspaper vendors can barely make ends meet on the fifty cents per hundred that they are ponying up as it is. And then we have to factor into the equation Davey (Nick Graffagna), whose dad is out of work and doesn't have a union to give him disability checks.
Davey's younger brother, Les (Carter Graff at my performance) is a scene-stealer. He goes with Davey, and is able to pose as apoor sick child to get a woman on the street to buy a newspaper from him.
Davey brings up legitimate concerns when he goes to the distributors for the New York World and they don't offer to buy back the papers that he doesn't sell. If for the sake of argument he only sells fifty papers in a given day, he only breaks even.
If he only sells fifty papers and had to pay sixty cents for them, he just lost ten cents if he loses fifty papers worth of sales.
A strike is in order.
Davey, Crutchie, and Race (Zachary Porter) appoint Jack as the president of their union. Everyone knows that he's the most aggressive, terse, determined one of the group, and has everyone's best interests at heart. He'll pointedly address the lost revenue and ask for a price cut when he enters collective bargaining with Pulitzer.
Joseph Pulitzer (Kevin Gudahl, Dr. Bachman on two episodes of Chicago Fire) does well to play the Disney antagonist. He's the scene-stealing, dialogue chewing antagonist; in the spirit of Annie's Miss Hannigan, Damn Yankee's Applegate, or or Peter Pan's Captain Hook; whom we're rooting against, but we keep hoping for him to show up on stage. So oily. It's not so much that he hates children. He just loves his bottom line. He loves money.
So the harm he inflicts upon the boys by looking out for his profits can easily be neutralized by a fan-favorite show-stopping number. We have Jack Kelly, Race, Davey and Company take center stage for "Seize the Day," which really was the reason I so readily scrambled to open my pocketbook to see this show again. I love this number. I love this song. We performed it when I was thirteen years old in the Alleman Music Theatre Workshop, along with "Hooray for Hollywood," in a show-business-themed year.
Then there's the really nasty villain. After Sieze the Day, the coppers show up to bust up the mobilization of the strike. Crutchie (Matthew Uzarraga) gets trapped and put in a jail for the infirmed. He writes from his boarding house squalor cell, sick and hungry, to Jack. Jack blames himself. He blames himself for the viciousness shown by Snyder (Bill Bannon, the HVAC man from the Chicago Fire Season 2 episode A Rocket Blasting Off). Snyder has a history of subjecting young boys to abuse and neglect. It's crazy how, in the cultural climate of today, an already vile Disney antagonist can seem yet more sinister and diabolical given everything that's going on in the world. Newsies keeps it PG. It's aware of its audience. But we can assume what went on in that boarding house.
It is up to Jack to decide. He can keep the spirit of this movement going. At the expense of Crutchie's safety, he can save the forest for the trees.
Or he can listen to his nagging consciense and halt the union movement because Crutchie is starving to death.
Joseph Pulitzer preys on Jack's conscience.
And everyone feels abandoned.
Jack has his own abandonment issues though. There's a mole in his entourage. Somebody close to Pulitzer has been either a devil working on the side of the angels, or a straight-up backstabber. He has to decide that.
In as much as I suffered from severe stomach cramps during the first half of the show, I was happy to suffer, in the spirit of Newsies, a moment of price-gouging of my own. I spent $3.59 for four Pepto Bismol capsules at the hotel lobby front desk. But I really needed them. My intestines were bunched up in my seat, not helped by the Starbucks White Mocha Latte with whole milk (I forgot to ask for skim or soy) that I finished off shortly before the show. The medicine was worth it, though.
Grandma Hilda used to say that you can sit and enjoy a television show if you have a stomach ache, but you can't enjoy anything with a headache. Wise words. I blessedly did not have a headache, so I was happy to have the distraction of splendid acting, singing, and dancing on a theatre in the round stage, actors and set rushing past me every five minutes. I would not have enjoyed it as much with a headache.
Newsies was superb. Right down to the Governor Roosevelt appearance. The lesson from this play is we are not alone. When our backs are against the wall, and we have to make an impossible choice, we can find a way to do the right thing without an unbearable compromise. We have allies. In our corner. Friends in high places. Friends down on their luck like us, but working hard by our side.
Topped off by a dinner with Mike Scimeca at the Olive Garden in nearby Vernon Hills, pasta, breadsticks, salad, Stella Artois, and the first half hour of Saturday Night Live hosted by Chance the Rapper, the Newsies trip was really a high-water-mark for my holiday season. It makes me want to immediately pay down my credit card to plan my next trip.
Now, initially, much as I loved Newsies, I was just a little bit sorry that I wasn't going to get to see a show for the first time. Sara and I saw Newsies at the Ford Oriental Theatre on December 30th, 2014, in Chicago's Theatre District.
What would distinguish this particular production from that one in my mind?
Well, the first item is the fact that we had theatre in the round. I could practically touch the actors as they passed me by in the aisles to go to the stage. In one case, I did. Adrienne Storrs, the brunette girl Newsie, brushed her dress against me while running onto the stage. Thank heavens I had my feet out of the way. My seat was right on the aisle. There wasn't much relief from the aisle to the floor under my seat. In other words, I was a little scrunched. Good thing I was short.
Another reason I am glad I got to see Newsies live for a second time? Patrick Rooney.
I took one look into his eyes, and knew that any girl would stand a chance of leaving me for him. (If Sara went to sleep dreaming of him instead of me, I could hardly blame her.) I thought of the scene in Superbad when Jonah Hill as Seth talks about his man-crush with that one classmate of his and Evan's, and he compares looking into his eyes to hearing The Beatles for the first time.
Rooney as Jack Kelly worked the smoulder. He was almost as good as Dan DeLuca, who played him in Chicago three years ago.
Eliza Palasz played the part of Katherine, the girl reporter who merges the film's Bill Pullman role and the sister of Davey. She's a girl cub reporter here. Trying to make a name for herself in what is very much a man's world. Jack Kelly tries to romance her. She at first deflects his advances.
I think there's some article about all of the sexual harassment allegations against men in show business where it mentions that even Newsies has a "come hither," "why can't she just give in," "I'm flirting with you, quit sending me mixed signals" scene.
But it's Disney. So the girl has eyes for the male lead eventually.
That's Eliza Palasz in the green skirt that's same color as my blue blanket, with her cup raised. She had a comforting presence. And she reminds me of somebody. She reminds me of Nancy from Stranger Things. The resemblance is uncanny.
The setting is 1899 New York. The newspaper delivery boys pay fifty cents a day to the wholesalers for a stack of 100 papers. This means that they buy each "pape" for about a half a cent. I imagine they make a serviceable profit on that. Well, how much did newspapers cost in 1899? Like a cent? Two cents? So if they sold all their papers they didn't lose money. Well, I suppose on a bad day, they would lose money.
Kind of like me with the Spanish Club t-shirts, actually.
Jack Kelly is incensed when Joseph Pulitzer, proprietor of the New York World, decides to up his profits and charge the newsboys about sixty cents for 100 newspapers.
Jack Kelly and his merry rag-tag team of newspaper vendors can barely make ends meet on the fifty cents per hundred that they are ponying up as it is. And then we have to factor into the equation Davey (Nick Graffagna), whose dad is out of work and doesn't have a union to give him disability checks.
Davey's younger brother, Les (Carter Graff at my performance) is a scene-stealer. He goes with Davey, and is able to pose as apoor sick child to get a woman on the street to buy a newspaper from him.
Davey brings up legitimate concerns when he goes to the distributors for the New York World and they don't offer to buy back the papers that he doesn't sell. If for the sake of argument he only sells fifty papers in a given day, he only breaks even.
If he only sells fifty papers and had to pay sixty cents for them, he just lost ten cents if he loses fifty papers worth of sales.
A strike is in order.
Davey, Crutchie, and Race (Zachary Porter) appoint Jack as the president of their union. Everyone knows that he's the most aggressive, terse, determined one of the group, and has everyone's best interests at heart. He'll pointedly address the lost revenue and ask for a price cut when he enters collective bargaining with Pulitzer.
Joseph Pulitzer (Kevin Gudahl, Dr. Bachman on two episodes of Chicago Fire) does well to play the Disney antagonist. He's the scene-stealing, dialogue chewing antagonist; in the spirit of Annie's Miss Hannigan, Damn Yankee's Applegate, or or Peter Pan's Captain Hook; whom we're rooting against, but we keep hoping for him to show up on stage. So oily. It's not so much that he hates children. He just loves his bottom line. He loves money.
So the harm he inflicts upon the boys by looking out for his profits can easily be neutralized by a fan-favorite show-stopping number. We have Jack Kelly, Race, Davey and Company take center stage for "Seize the Day," which really was the reason I so readily scrambled to open my pocketbook to see this show again. I love this number. I love this song. We performed it when I was thirteen years old in the Alleman Music Theatre Workshop, along with "Hooray for Hollywood," in a show-business-themed year.
Then there's the really nasty villain. After Sieze the Day, the coppers show up to bust up the mobilization of the strike. Crutchie (Matthew Uzarraga) gets trapped and put in a jail for the infirmed. He writes from his boarding house squalor cell, sick and hungry, to Jack. Jack blames himself. He blames himself for the viciousness shown by Snyder (Bill Bannon, the HVAC man from the Chicago Fire Season 2 episode A Rocket Blasting Off). Snyder has a history of subjecting young boys to abuse and neglect. It's crazy how, in the cultural climate of today, an already vile Disney antagonist can seem yet more sinister and diabolical given everything that's going on in the world. Newsies keeps it PG. It's aware of its audience. But we can assume what went on in that boarding house.
It is up to Jack to decide. He can keep the spirit of this movement going. At the expense of Crutchie's safety, he can save the forest for the trees.
Or he can listen to his nagging consciense and halt the union movement because Crutchie is starving to death.
Joseph Pulitzer preys on Jack's conscience.
And everyone feels abandoned.
Jack has his own abandonment issues though. There's a mole in his entourage. Somebody close to Pulitzer has been either a devil working on the side of the angels, or a straight-up backstabber. He has to decide that.
In as much as I suffered from severe stomach cramps during the first half of the show, I was happy to suffer, in the spirit of Newsies, a moment of price-gouging of my own. I spent $3.59 for four Pepto Bismol capsules at the hotel lobby front desk. But I really needed them. My intestines were bunched up in my seat, not helped by the Starbucks White Mocha Latte with whole milk (I forgot to ask for skim or soy) that I finished off shortly before the show. The medicine was worth it, though.
Grandma Hilda used to say that you can sit and enjoy a television show if you have a stomach ache, but you can't enjoy anything with a headache. Wise words. I blessedly did not have a headache, so I was happy to have the distraction of splendid acting, singing, and dancing on a theatre in the round stage, actors and set rushing past me every five minutes. I would not have enjoyed it as much with a headache.
Newsies was superb. Right down to the Governor Roosevelt appearance. The lesson from this play is we are not alone. When our backs are against the wall, and we have to make an impossible choice, we can find a way to do the right thing without an unbearable compromise. We have allies. In our corner. Friends in high places. Friends down on their luck like us, but working hard by our side.
Topped off by a dinner with Mike Scimeca at the Olive Garden in nearby Vernon Hills, pasta, breadsticks, salad, Stella Artois, and the first half hour of Saturday Night Live hosted by Chance the Rapper, the Newsies trip was really a high-water-mark for my holiday season. It makes me want to immediately pay down my credit card to plan my next trip.