The newsies were a ragged army
Oct. 15th, 2011 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_whomSo as noted, there's a stage musical version of Newsies. And it's pretty okay! Some thoughts:
They did justice to "King of New York", and since it's clearly the best part of the movie, I feel that was the most important part for them to get right.
The theater is at most maybe ten miles from New York City... so couldn't they possibly have hired someone to teach these kids New York accents? Someone could commute, maybe. I mean, it's not like they weren't doing New York accents.... They were. Just really badly. Aren't they worried that people from New York might want to come see their show? I mean, it just... bah. They just don't care. (In comparison, I can almost forgive David Hyde Pierce's terrible Boston accent in Curtains, since (a) he's a big star and (b) at least it didn't do its premiere production within short commuting distance of Boston.)
I don't even know what to call it when this happens... but Urinetown, which was written to be basically a parody of generic "ragged underdogs vs. corporate tycoon" stories, is now retroactively way more specifically a parody of Newsies in particular. The changes made to Newsies to adapt it for the stage make it substantially more like the plot of Urinetown, except played totally straight. So Joseph Pulitzer now gets a song, with backup sung by his lackeys, that's just like "Mr. Cladwell" in its over-the-top "Gosh, I sure am an evil capitalist!"-ness. Jack Kelly gets a new love interest, a girl from a privileged background who takes the newsies' side (she's the reporter, replacing Bill Pullman's role from the movie)... who (spoiler warning) turns out to be Pulitzer's daughter, and they have a tense scene that echoes Urinetown's "you didn't tell me you were a Cladwell!" scene. I mean, I dunno... I'm not sure that, ten years after Urinetown, you can really get away with playing plot elements like this straight. It makes the show seem derivative of a parody.
Something rubs me the wrong way also about introducing a interesting and independent female character... and then feeling like her inclusion has to be justified by hanging her off a more famous man by making her related to him. (Yes, I know Les Phys did that too.)
Jack Feldman has gotten a lot better as a lyricist since the original Newsies, it seems. I noticed a lot of lyric changes and they kind of made me sad, but most of the replacements were probably better from an objective standpoint. Also, the new sort-of patter song for Katherine (the reporter) is really good.
The dancing was as good as I expected. Lots of impressive flips and leaps and whatnot. And the staging of "Once and for All", which is kind of an unmemorable song from the movie, made it very compelling, I thought.
On the other hand, I don't think moving "Santa Fe" to the beginning of the show, before "Carrying the Banner", was effective. We have to see the setting Jack lives in before we can really understand and empathize with his wish to get out of it.
They did justice to "King of New York", and since it's clearly the best part of the movie, I feel that was the most important part for them to get right.
The theater is at most maybe ten miles from New York City... so couldn't they possibly have hired someone to teach these kids New York accents? Someone could commute, maybe. I mean, it's not like they weren't doing New York accents.... They were. Just really badly. Aren't they worried that people from New York might want to come see their show? I mean, it just... bah. They just don't care. (In comparison, I can almost forgive David Hyde Pierce's terrible Boston accent in Curtains, since (a) he's a big star and (b) at least it didn't do its premiere production within short commuting distance of Boston.)
I don't even know what to call it when this happens... but Urinetown, which was written to be basically a parody of generic "ragged underdogs vs. corporate tycoon" stories, is now retroactively way more specifically a parody of Newsies in particular. The changes made to Newsies to adapt it for the stage make it substantially more like the plot of Urinetown, except played totally straight. So Joseph Pulitzer now gets a song, with backup sung by his lackeys, that's just like "Mr. Cladwell" in its over-the-top "Gosh, I sure am an evil capitalist!"-ness. Jack Kelly gets a new love interest, a girl from a privileged background who takes the newsies' side (she's the reporter, replacing Bill Pullman's role from the movie)... who (spoiler warning) turns out to be Pulitzer's daughter, and they have a tense scene that echoes Urinetown's "you didn't tell me you were a Cladwell!" scene. I mean, I dunno... I'm not sure that, ten years after Urinetown, you can really get away with playing plot elements like this straight. It makes the show seem derivative of a parody.
Something rubs me the wrong way also about introducing a interesting and independent female character... and then feeling like her inclusion has to be justified by hanging her off a more famous man by making her related to him. (Yes, I know Les Phys did that too.)
Jack Feldman has gotten a lot better as a lyricist since the original Newsies, it seems. I noticed a lot of lyric changes and they kind of made me sad, but most of the replacements were probably better from an objective standpoint. Also, the new sort-of patter song for Katherine (the reporter) is really good.
The dancing was as good as I expected. Lots of impressive flips and leaps and whatnot. And the staging of "Once and for All", which is kind of an unmemorable song from the movie, made it very compelling, I thought.
On the other hand, I don't think moving "Santa Fe" to the beginning of the show, before "Carrying the Banner", was effective. We have to see the setting Jack lives in before we can really understand and empathize with his wish to get out of it.
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no subject
Date: 2011-10-16 12:41 pm (UTC)Only, in Les Phys it actually feels like a joke, rather than an attempt at justification? Or so it did to me, anyway.
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Date: 2011-10-16 02:47 pm (UTC)