Did you hear the story about the flop movie that turned into a Broadway smash?
Newsies, Director Kenny Ortega’s $15 million musical built around the real-life New York City newsboys’ strike of 1899 had no shortage of star power: The cast included Christian Bale, Robert Duvall, Ann-Margret, and Bill Pullman. Still, it was unceremoniously opened on screens in April 1992—a month when studios typically throw away what are known as “problem pictures,” seemingly noncommercial flicks that executives have little faith in.
Although Bale and his fellow paperboys marched through turn-of-the-century Manhattan belting out “The World Will Know,” audiences decided ignorance was bliss. Savaged by the critics, Newsies quickly went out of circulation, grossing less than $3 million—one of the lowest box office totals ever for a live-action Disney film.
But that was only the beginning of the story. Once it hit video stores and became a Disney Channel programming staple, Newsies became a sleeper hit, one of those movies that people eagerly recommend to their friends. The fan base was strong enough that in 2011, Disney produced Newsies The Musical at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse. The outstanding response to the three-week run convinced producers to launch a Broadway run the following year.
The movie nobody wanted to see became a surprise smash, playing for two years and—unlike the majority of Broadway musicals—recouping its costs. (Coincidentally, Kenny Ortega’s follow-up film to Newsies was the Halloween farce Hocus Pocus with Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy, which also bombed in its initial run and became a holiday favorite years later. Ortega couldn’t catch a break.)
Virginia Theatre Festival’s production of Disney’s Newsies hits the streets on July 9. “We [have] wanted to do a family show for many, many years,” says Director/Choreographer Matthew Steffens during a Zoom call from London, where he was directing La Traviata at Garsington Opera. Not only did Newsies fit the bill, its themes also feel, as they say, ripped from today’s headlines, something Steffens was not expecting.
“I just got shivers,” says the Virginia Beach native and University of Virginia alum. “As I started to read it and dive into the show, I realized that not only does it have, like, banger after banger after banger of songs—they’re so great—but the message of it is so compelling right now, because it is about dreaming, whether you’re Jack dreaming of living in Santa Fe, or dreaming of a better life, or Katherine wanting to be a reporter—a woman reporter in a man’s world.”
What Steffens originally thought would be merely “a fun show” when VTF Artistic Director Jenny Wales first pitched it to him last December became something deeper and richer when he delved into Harvey Fierstein’s script and the Alan Menken/Jack Feldman score.
“I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so prescient right now,’” Steffens says. “I think it’s hard for everybody to dream right now, especially as I work with younger artists who are in their teens, or college kids. It’s like their idea of dreaming is so pressed down by social media and what the world says they have to do. … And then fighting for your rights and standing up for what you believe in—there’s no time more prescient than now—you have to stand up for what you believe in and fight for what you think is right.”
Real-life strike fuels Broadway favorite
Newsies is based on a true story, which Steffens has been researching. “I’m reading Children of the City,” he says. “It’s a book about the news strike in 1899. I know this is technically a Disney show, but these are real people that struggled and fought. … I have found audiences don’t just want, like, a song-and-dance show, and I have no desire to create a song-and-dance show. We’re going to create another show. It’s going to challenge our audiences to think a little bit about their own lives and how does this connect to them.”
Wales agrees, calling it “a truly inspirational tale that is timeless.”
“There’s something so universal about that idea, you know?” says Wales. “The hope—the hope that exists within young people, the hope that we who are not young anymore have in young people, and the courage that it takes to stand up, to do the right thing to people who are older than you, to people who have more power than you do, I think is universal.”
Wales and Steffens’ partnership goes back to their days at UVA. “We met in our third week of college, as 18-year-olds here at UVA,” Wales says. “So, we’ve worked together for years and years and years and years. I refer to him kind of as an artistic touchstone, whether we’re working together or not. He’s kind of my first person I’ll call when I have a question about a different moment or a creative decision.
“Matt has built a career working internationally and on Broadway, and I think it’s safe to say—I don’t want to speak for him—but I think some of our most favorite things to do are to make theater here in Charlottesville, at UVA. Because it’s where we met and it’s where we kind of developed our sensibility of who we are as artists.”
Big production opens doors for young actors
On Newsies, VTF is collaborating for the first time with DMR Adventures, the local youth theater academy that produces six mainstage productions of its own each year.
Family programming has “been something we’ve been building towards” at VTF, Wales says. “Not only to capture our family-friendly audience, but also to have an opportunity to engage young artists in Charlottesville as members of the cast.”
Typically, VTF shows primarily feature professional actors from outside the area, but Steffens and Wales estimate the Newsies cast is about 50-50 local talent and visiting artists.
“It is a beast of a musical,” Steffens admits. “We have 37 people in the cast, and all the departments are flexing to make this happen. It’s the biggest—I think it’s the biggest—show that VTF has ever done.”
Aside from the singing and choreography, there is also the challenge of capturing the sound of late 19th-century New York. That’s where Andrew Bryce comes in.
Dialect work brings 1899 Brooklyn to stage
Prior to becoming theatre director at St. Anne’s-Belfield School, Bryce spent four years working as an actor in New York City and seven years in Richmond, teaching and building a reputation as an accent and vocal coach, a role he’s taken on for Newsies.
“Despite being a ’90s kid, I was not on the Newsies train,” Bryce admits. He didn’t catch the movie, he wasn’t in New York during the musical’s Broadway run, and he even missed the touring company. But the teacher is doing his homework.
“Something that’s really fun about and exciting about Newsies is, you know, there’s a lot of young people that I’ll be working with and as a teacher that’s exciting,” Bryce says.
Bryce and Steffens worked together on the St. Anne’s production of Ride the Cyclone in February, when Steffens was an artist-in-residence at the local private school. “He was just absolutely incredible,” says Bryce. “He had the production rise to a level that, you know, without him it wouldn’t have been possible.”
In Bryce’s first time working with VTF, he has had plenty to do, between Newsies and the VTF season opener, Moriarty, the Ken Ludwig comedy in which five actors portrayed more than 40 characters. “It’s a season of accents,” Bryce jokes. “We’ve got standard RP [Received Pronunciation, commonly known as “the Queen’s English”], we’ve got bohemian–which has been a fun investigation, in figuring out exactly what we’re going to do for a bohemian accent–we’ve got Brooklyn for Newsies. Oh, and Cockney. We’ll probably throw some Estuary [a more modern British accent] in there.”
That’s a lot of voices, a lot of accents, and a lot of moving parts. Good thing the newsboys have always known how to make themselves heard.
