NEWSIES

On Saturday, July 30th, Frank and I attended a matinee performance of the musical NEWSIES at our local Bankhead theatre in Livermore. I was looking forward to the outing, and this musical in particular, because I had never seen it before and was curious.

The cast did a good and lively job for a bunch of amateurs. Their dancing was impressively energetic, but synchronization fell a bit short of what I thought a professional cast might have done. But then, this is a ragtag bunch of young boy newspaper carriers dancing with heartfelt enthusiasm, so maybe being a finely tuned, strictly regimented team is not the impression that was intended. The fun and dedication came through loud and clear. 

Clarity was not so true for the lyrics of the songs. It is hard for me to judge, since often, when I attend a musical, I have seen another version of it before and my ears can anticipate what is being said. Newsies was totally new to me and I did not leave humming any of the songs, with the possible exception of Seize the Day. Here is a YouTube link to Seize the Day; it is worth listening to this two minute, toe tapping tune and watching the dance sequence.

I did learn enough during the show to encourage me look up the history of the story based on fact. This link from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of History has a more detailed summary.

NEWSIES is inspired by the real-life Newsboys' Strike of 1899, when newsboys Kid Blink and David Simons led a band of orphan and runaway children on a two-week-long action against newspaper publishers Pulitzer and Hearst. … NEWSIES is based on the real-life Newsboys' Strike of 1899.

Frankly I was a bit disappointed with the show – not with the hard-working, enthusiastic, performance of the talented cast but with the musical itself. I expected more from a Disney source production. I wondered if it was bias on my part. I found an online article rating all the songs from the Newsies sound track with links to YouTube video of each of the songs embedded within. Seize the Day was ranked first so it is not surprising that it was the only one memorable to me.

7. High Times, Hard Times

6. Carrying the Banner * 

5. The World Will Know

4. King of New York

3. Once and For All

2. Sante Fe

1. Seize the Day

* Banner headlines are words printed in extra large letters across the top

of the front page of the newspaper on extremely important stories.

We watched the movie NEWSIES a few nights after we saw the show. In retrospect we should have watched it before with captions to help with the lyrics. I did like all the dance extravaganza scenes. Those to me were the best part of the musical and the movie both.