Funny how musical theater has evolved. It used to be that musicals would find success on the stage before being adapted into films — but now things more often move in the opposite direction. Films become Broadway musicals.
One of the more unlikely success stories among them is “Newsies.” The 1992 Disney musical is widely regarded as a cinematic bomb, only pulling in a fifth of its cost at the box office. Perhaps the timing just wasn’t right for a dance-filled musical about mostly-homeless young newspaper sellers pushing back against exploitative tycoons and lighting the fuse on a movement against child labor in America (which is making an unfortunate comeback).
But composer Alan Menken, lyricist Jack Feldman and playwright Harvey Fierstein reworked it as a stage musical that hit Broadway 20 years later and became a surprise hit, running for over two years. Now it’s been revived in a tremendously entertaining production from Bloomington’s Artistry Theater that should satisfy any summer cravings for high-energy dance numbers, passionate ballads and inspiring triumph-of-the-underdog stories. The skillfully rendered production keeps the physicality flying at you and the story clipping along at a pleasant pace.
And it’s all sold with such enthusiasm by its 27-member cast and nine-piece pit orchestra that you’re unlikely to be able to resist its appeal. Its story is based in fact, as young New York newspaper peddlers did go on strike in 1899, reacting to what was, i.