Newsies is a fairground ride of a show
The Broadway musical opens in Wembley and got two standing ovations on opening night
Brigit Grant is the Jewish News Supplements Editor
It’s taken ten years for Newsies to get here from Broadway and no one would have expected it to land in Wembley (yep, you read that right) but there’s no congestion charge and it was truly worth the wait. That the show’s arrival coincides with a swathe of industrial action is frankly ironic as Alan Menken’s outstanding musical is about the 1890s strike by teenage newspaper sellers who formed their own union to take on the publishers.
It’s tough for a journalist to focus on a period when papers were selling well enough that the strike made an impact, but Harvey Fierstein’s wise and witty book for Newsies provides the backdrop for what is essentially a dance marathon by some of the most gifted dancers to ever tread the boards. They leap, pirouette and run around the audience in the spectacular space that is the Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre.
Entering on zipwires or singing by your seat, Newsies is as immersive as a fairground ride, with a Menken soundtrack framing Jack Feldman’s sharp lyrics. As lead striker, Michael Ahomka-Lindsay sings like a bird fittingly from the top of a winding industrial-dwelling that takes centre stage. On opening night there were two standing ovations before the interval, which is enough to tell you to get to Wembley.
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