Intended initially for a limited run, and turning into a 2+ year hit, Newsies, featuring a score with music by eight-time Academy Award winner Alan Menken and lyrics by Jack Feldman, with a book by four-time Tony Award winner Harvey Fierstein, will play its final performance at Broadway's Nederlander Theatre on Sunday, August 24, 2014 prior to launching its national tour in October. Produced by Disney Theatrical Productions, Newsies is directed by Jeff Calhoun and choreographed by Christopher Gattelli.
When it opened on March 29, 2012 Newsies was intended for a Broadway run of just 101 performances. The show's fiercely devoted fans had other ideas, however: they propelled the show to a run that will total 1005 performances, attendance of more than 1 million and a gross of over $100M. At the time of Newsies' closing, only the landmark musical Rent will have played the Nederlander Theatre longer in its 93 year history.
The Newsies North American tour launches in October 2014 and will play 25 cities over 43 weeks during the 2014-15 season.
Since bursting onto Broadway, Newsies has set and broken seven Nederlander Theatre house records and become the highest-grossing show of the 2011-12 Broadway season. The show received 23 major theatrical nominations - including eight Tony Award nods - and won Tony, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards for Score and Choreography.
Though intended only as a pilot production before the title was licensed for regional, professional and amateur productions, Newsies' initial production at Paper Mill Playhouse in September 2011 engendered extraordinary interest from the media and public alike, prompting Newsweek.com to call the show, "one of the biggest surprises of the season...the talk of the town." It was then that Disney Theatrical Productions decided to move the production to Broadway for what was intended to be a strictly limited three month run.
The current Broadway company of Newsies features Corey Cott as Jack Kelly, John Dossett as Joseph Pulitzer, Liana Hunt as Katherine Plumber, Lavon Fisher-Wilson as Medda Larkin, Ben Fankhauser as Davey, Andy Richardson as Crutchie, and Luca Padovan and Zachary Unger alternating the role of Les.
The ensemble of Newsies features Aaron J. Albano, Mark Aldrich, Giuseppe Bausilio, John E. Brady, Caitlyn Caughell, Julian DeGuzman, Michael Fatica, J.P. Ferreri, John Michael Fiumara, Damon J. Gillespie, David Guzman,Jacob Guzman, Nico James, Molly Jobe, Adam Kaplan, Evan Kasprzak, Stuart Marland, Tommy Martinez, Daniel Quadrino, Julie Reiber, Tom Alan Robbins,Jack Scott, Brendon Stimson, Nick Sullivan, Clay Thomson, Iain YoungandStuart Zagnit. Original cast member Tommy Bracco will re-join the cast later this month.
In what will be among its lasting legacies, Newsies provided 32 exceptional young performers their Broadway debuts. 14 current actors are members of the original Broadway company: Dossett, Fankhauser, Richardson, Albano, Aldrich, Bracco, Brady, Caughell, Fatica, Kasprzak, Marland, Scott, Stimson, Sulivan and Zagnit.
Set in New York City at the turn of the century, Newsies is the rousing tale of Jack Kelly, a charismatic newsboy and leader of a ragged band of teenaged 'newsies,' who dreams only of a better life far from the hardship of the streets. But when publishing titans Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst raise distribution prices at the newsboys' expense, Jack finds a cause to fight for and rallies newsies from across the city to strike for what's right.
Newsies is inspired by the real-life 'Newsboy Strike of 1899,' when newsboy Kid Blink led a band of orphan and runaway newsies on a two-week-long action against Pulitzer, Hearst and other powerful newspaper publishers.
The stage version introduces seven brand-new songs by the original team of Menken and Feldman while keeping many of the beloved songs from the film, including 'Carrying the Banner, 'Seize the Day,' 'King of New York' and 'Santa Fe.'
Since the film's 1992 theatrical release and subsequent DVD release, Newsies has grown into a cult phenomenon, and for years had been the single most requested title of all the Disney musical films not yet adapted for the stage. (The film featured a screenplay by Bob Tzudiker & Noni White (Tarzan, 102 Dalmatians).
