On late summer nights in the 1990s, “Newsies” — a home-video cult classic despite its poor movie theater returns — played often in my fellow high-school friends’ homes, underscoring countless hours of friendship. The film’s first draft was written as a drama. No music. Its director, Kenny Ortega, who had choreographed films like “Dirty Dancing,” suggested turning it into a musical and created the acrobatic dance movie it became. Alan Menken — a 90s staple who composed music for Disney classics “The Little Mermaid,” “Aladdin,” and "Pocahontas" — wrote the score. 

This week, Music Theatre Wichita presents the 2012 stage musical adaptation, “Disney’s Newsies,” created when Disney’s influence on Broadway was in full swing in the decades swaddling the millennium change: “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Lion King,” “The Little Mermaid.” Like the film, the musical leaned heavily on dance and ensemble numbers, earning a Tony Award for choreographer Christopher Gatelli.

The story is loosely based on the 1899 paperboy strike, in which young boys hawking newspapers in the streets of New York took on media moguls Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, creating a union, striking, and eventually achieving a marginal improvement in working conditions. Parsing out the many differences between the actual historical event and the Disney musical is an easy internet research project with plenty of rabbit holes and clever story amalgamations, but I won’t bore you with those.

The show opens on a New York rooftop. Jack Kelly, played by the superb Brendan Dallaire, and his friend “Crutchie,” nicknamed for his use of a crutch for mobility and played by charming Evan Tylka, dream of elsewhere, specifically Santa Fe, New Mexico. They are both “newsies” who sell papers on the street for “The World” (named for Joseph Pulitzer’s “New York World”). Conflict arises when Pulitzer, played by Tom Galantich, and his associates brainstorm ways to compensate for falling newspaper sales (hint: see “Spanish-American War”). The wealthy men in the high rise decide to charge the newsboys an extra ten cents per 100 papers. The squeeze will be felt by the children hawking papers while the rich get richer.

The plot points are clean and predictable: The newsies strike, initially succeed, but then are met with fierce resistance. Our hero, Jack, falters and then recovers. Finally — with the help of the group of singing newspaper hawkers, ambitious reporter Katherine Plummer (the marvelous Becca Petersen),  burlesque singer Medda Larkin (a bold Aurelia Williams), and Governor Teddy Roosevelt (local favorite Timothy W. Robu) — he coerces Pulitzer into caving. The negotiated deal is a reduced price increase and a promise to buy back unsold papers.

Disney musicals are the wrong place to seek social-justice storytelling, but they are quite good at painting friendship and romance. With brotherly bonds between Jack and Crutchie and a sweet budding romance between Katherine and Jack, “Disney’s Newsies” reminds us dreams are not made of places and circumstances, but of friendship and human connection.

MTW’s production is visually stunning from curtain rise to elaborate curtain call. Bruce Brockman’s proficient and gorgeous set maneuvers simply but transports us effectively from location to location. Maranda DeBusk’s lighting saturates the stage in deep, romantic colors, encouraging us to suspend our disbelief and imagine “what if.” Dixon Reynolds has designed costumes that are period-appropriate, if not a bit clean for homeless kids living on the streets of New York. The smoothly run show is smartly staged by director Chaz Wolcott. 

All of these technical elements are fantastic, but the show would be nothing without the choreography. As Kenny Ortega first realized in the early ’90s, this show doesn’t fly without dance — and boy did it fly. I cannot say enough about this ensemble as it barreled, turned, pirouetted, flipped, and spun through the show. Just when we thought we had seen all there was to offer, the newsies came out to wow us again. I wish I could have tracked each dancer well enough to name them here for their virtues, but they operated in such beautiful accord it was impossible to tell who did what. The one exception I must note is Zach Doran as Race, whose out-of-this-world tap dancing made the show’s most memorable tune — the second act opener, “King of New York” —  the most thrilling as well. 

The show’s two stars elevate the entire production. Brendan Dallaire as Jack Kelly is everything one could hope: charismatic, good looking, skilled at keeping the plot moving along. At the end of Act 1, his “Santa Fe” brings the house down with a money note well worth his sponsorship. If Dallaire’s good looks and killer voice aren’t enough, Becca Petersen in the role of Katherine seals the deal. Along with her delightful voice and ability to keep up in the dance sequences, Petersen performs with nuance and clear objectives: Her early cold shoulder to the charming Jack, slowly melting over the course of the evening, is a showcase of character development, and her line-by-line understanding of the song “Watch What Happens” is a clinic on how to act a song. 

The supporting characters in this musical are not particularly deep, and a few actors fall prey to the temptation of playing them as ideas instead of humans with conflict, but actors can only do so much with scripts written primarily as templates for dancing and singing.

Lyricist Jack Feldman, whose best-known work before “Newsies” was penning Barry Manilow’s hit "Copacabana," spins lovely rhymes and rhythms into the show’s songs. His lyrics shine in Katherine’s “Watch What Happens”: “Write what you know, so they say, all I know is I don’t know what to write or the right way to write it.” 

Harvey Fierstein’s pragmatic book moves with pacing appropriate for resting acrobatic dancers and establishing basic plot points. His scenes are efficient if a bit too reliant on caricature. Villains are obvious bad guys, sidekicks remain two-dimensional, and our half-sized comic relief Les, played with gusto and crowd-pleasing charm by Isaac Tra, represents a tried-and-true Disney formula. The book’s strengths are the relationships between Katherine and Jack and the early scenes between Jack and Crutchie. These are written to be played with the earnest ease one might expect from someone who also wrote the “The Torch Trilogy” and “La Cage aux Folles.”

MTW is educating and training young people to be the next generation of theater talent, as evidenced here in the dozens of “teen newsies” and “youngest newsies” included in this show. Early in, their inclusion up the aisles of the continental seating layout of Century II felt forced and inconvenient, but in the second act, during “Once and for All,” director Walcott delivers a thrilling payoff. It is well worth the wait. 

Music Theatre Wichita is clear about its mission to bring quality musical productions to the Century II stage in downtown Wichita while also providing an educational experience for students. With "Newsies," it delivers on both accounts. This production is a thrilling spectacle in the theater, and young people are learning the craft. MTW is worthy of your support, and your support will be rewarded. Whether you are a ’90s kid looking for a bit of nostalgia, a fan of Disney on Broadway, or eager to support the arts in Wichita, “Disney’s Newsies" is the show for you.

The Details

Music Theatre Wichita presents "Disney’s Newsies"
July 30-Aug 3, 2025, at Century II, 225 W. Douglas Avenue in Wichita

Curtain times are 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday.

ASL is provided Saturday at 2 p.m.

Tickets range from $25-$85.

Learn more and buy tickets.

Leslie Coates is a theater faculty member at Butler Community College and has acting and directing credits from San Diego to New England. He is a former board member for Forum Theatre Company where he also appeared in "Christmas Letters," "Pump Boys and Dinettes," and various Words and Music performances. 

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