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Muscular Butts Pt II
Oct. 12th, 2014 07:50 amSo my post-show (next day) thoughts.
They added a new, short song for Crutchy to try out on the tour, "Letter from the Refuge", and I liked it. Crutchy is a more important character in the show at the beginning - Jack's best friend rather than his sidekick/mascot - so he needed to not just disappear for a long time the way he had been, especially since the show cut out the abortive escape attempt and window conversation at the Refuge.
Speaking of Crutchy, it kind of niggled at me for a while before I could put it into words, but I don't know if I like the characterization shifts overall. "Santa Fe" is such a great song in the movie because it's at odds with Jack's character as it'd been shown - he's not obviously a dreamer. Everyone knows he wants to go there, but nobody knows how strongly he clings to it as a dream rather than a general ambition. (Am I putting way more thought into Newsies than I should? Yes.) How much he wants more adventure/action than just selling papers. And he stands apart from the rest as their leader/popular kid, he can't make a real friend until he meets David because David isn't one of them and he doesn't have to lead him. In the show, David is basically just another newsboy - Katherine isn't replacing Sarah and Denton, she's replacing David. David and Jack have the meet-cute in the movie, David and Jack have the teasing banter, David brings the cross-class relationship, David provides a new way to look at other people and an emotional center (with his family). And David is absolutely a leader of the strike, on par with Jack almost. Crutchy was beefed up to fill that soulmate-fraternal role that David left and it didn't work, in part because Crutchy still has a character voice, still is not a strike leader, and still spends too much time off-stage.
I understand that smooshing Sarah and Denton together into Katherine was economical, but it also amped up this generation-war theme that feels like pandering to the Millennial audience. Katherine's song lyric about older people making a mistake by growing old, "we'll stay young forever", plus the fact that without Denton there are no significant positive adult characters. (Medda is great, I totally approve of making her song bigger to give her more presence, but she's not terribly pivotal.) Factor in the scene at the Jacobs' apartment being cut and it starts to feel like something to me. Something like pandering.
They added a new, short song for Crutchy to try out on the tour, "Letter from the Refuge", and I liked it. Crutchy is a more important character in the show at the beginning - Jack's best friend rather than his sidekick/mascot - so he needed to not just disappear for a long time the way he had been, especially since the show cut out the abortive escape attempt and window conversation at the Refuge.
Speaking of Crutchy, it kind of niggled at me for a while before I could put it into words, but I don't know if I like the characterization shifts overall. "Santa Fe" is such a great song in the movie because it's at odds with Jack's character as it'd been shown - he's not obviously a dreamer. Everyone knows he wants to go there, but nobody knows how strongly he clings to it as a dream rather than a general ambition. (Am I putting way more thought into Newsies than I should? Yes.) How much he wants more adventure/action than just selling papers. And he stands apart from the rest as their leader/popular kid, he can't make a real friend until he meets David because David isn't one of them and he doesn't have to lead him. In the show, David is basically just another newsboy - Katherine isn't replacing Sarah and Denton, she's replacing David. David and Jack have the meet-cute in the movie, David and Jack have the teasing banter, David brings the cross-class relationship, David provides a new way to look at other people and an emotional center (with his family). And David is absolutely a leader of the strike, on par with Jack almost. Crutchy was beefed up to fill that soulmate-fraternal role that David left and it didn't work, in part because Crutchy still has a character voice, still is not a strike leader, and still spends too much time off-stage.
I understand that smooshing Sarah and Denton together into Katherine was economical, but it also amped up this generation-war theme that feels like pandering to the Millennial audience. Katherine's song lyric about older people making a mistake by growing old, "we'll stay young forever", plus the fact that without Denton there are no significant positive adult characters. (Medda is great, I totally approve of making her song bigger to give her more presence, but she's not terribly pivotal.) Factor in the scene at the Jacobs' apartment being cut and it starts to feel like something to me. Something like pandering.
