#91 I love Newsies.

Newsies is the best musical in the history of ever.  With the exception of RENT, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, Cabaret, Guy and Dolls, My Fair Lady, Hairspray, Avenue Q, Mary Poppins, The Lion King, Wicked, Spring Awakening, Chicago, Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, Jersey Boys, Beauty and the Beast, Spamalot, The Book of Mormon, Billy Elliot, Cinderella, Cats, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Oliver, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Music Man, among others which are equally amazing…so what I really mean to say is…Newsies is Broadway fantastic.

Much like Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella I was obsessed with Newsies when I was a kid.  Again, like Cinderella, none of my friends had ever seen Newsies.  But it was the best!  Christian Bale, David Moscow, Robert Duvall, Bill Pullman and Ann-Margret.  I would move all the furniture in the living room and jump around and use the couch to climb on, dancing and singing my way through the movie every time I watched it…which was pretty often.  I wore the tape out.  It wasn’t until I was in college that I found it on DVD…randomly in a Target in South Bend, and when I happened upon the DVD I went out and bought the soundtrack.  When I love something, I really love it.

I turned Mason on to Newsies when we were in college.  She once exclaimed, “I can’t believe I never knew about this!”  She is now a Newsies fan for life.

Jump to a couple of years later, I’m standing on a movie set and I’m jumping up and down talking about my love of Newsies when the prop master on the show walks by and says casually, “You mean with Kenny Ortega?  I was the prop master on that show.”  My jumping stopped immediately and my jaw dropped open.  He went on to say he had props from the movie somewhere in his attic.  One day I’m going to take him up on his offer and scavenge through his attic to find everything and anything I can get my hands on.  Until then I’m just hanging on to the promise of actually digging through is attic.  I hope he never moves.

So of course I liked them on Facebook even before that was a thing, because I listed it in my favorite movies.  As Facebook changed, eventually I just started getting updates from the Newsies site.  Random quotes from the movie etc, when one day I saw an update that said they were holding auditions for a Newsies workshop in New Jersey.  I started following it religiously, and soon enough the show was gaining momentum.  I got the official email that Newsies was headed to Broadway and literally set an alert on my phone to beep on January 30, 2012 when tickets went on sale.  I called up Mason, and we decided to fly to New York to see the show over Easter weekend.

The day before I was set to fly out I was so excited I was gushing all about my trip at work, when one of the actors on the show I was on told me he knew the cast.  My jaw dropped open…again…and that doesn’t happen very easily.  There are very few times when I get excited about the entertainment industry, and this was one of them.  He told me he could have gotten Mason and me comped tickets…bummer…but then he told me he would call his friend and have him take us back stage after the show.  Did I also mention how Newsies was playing at the Nederlander Theater?  WHERE RENT LIVED FOR YEARS?!?!  My love of all things RENT is almost as obsessive as my love of Newsies.

Mason and I flew to New York and stayed with A-Ha.  We were there primarily to see Newsies – everything else was just icing on the already amazing cake.   The show was “Broadway fantastic”, and we got a quick tour of the back stage area…which was surprisingly tight!  It really was a great show!

I dragged Mason to the Easter Parade on 5th Avenue…which I knew about because of the Judy Garland movie of the same name.  (The weird kid thing…remember that?)  Today, high society doesn’t promenade down the street showing off their Easter best so much as drag queens create the most ornate hats you’ve ever seen and create the most amazing spectacle for the few hours that 5th Avenue is closed to traffic.  I really felt like I was watching a part of my childhood come to life.

A year later as I reminisce about this, Jeremy Jordan who originated Jack Kelly on Broadway (originally played in the movie by Christian Bale) has left the show to act full-time on SMASH…to which I say – good on him!  Now I get to watch him every week kill it on TV.  I often say we can’t help what we loved as kids – they stick with us our whole lives…but I can’t stress enough, how great Newsies is.  Let’s just say…I never ask for autographs…I have asked for exactly 3 my whole career working in the industry – and one was when I asked Robert Duvall to sign my Newsies double-sided poster.  I’ve never heard a grown man laugh so hard for so long.  I wasn’t ashamed.  #91 I love Newsies.