‘Newsies’ review
If you haven't yet heard of ‘Newsies’ (let alone watched the 2012 Broadway production on Disney+), it's kind of hard to explain the appeal of this peppy and thoroughly American musical. But imagine a cross between ‘Annie’, ‘Les Miserables’, and one of those elaborate gymnastic-based spectacles staged by communist countries and you're halfway there. And Troubadour Theatre's high-octane production captures all its vigorous spirit, sending its huge cast of plucky, rebellious paperboys tumbling and leaping across its mammoth stage as they stand up to the big bosses who are determined to grind them down. The year is 1899, the place is New York, and the times are hardscrabble ones, where orphans must choose between fending for themselves, or living three to a bed in a rat-infested institution called The Refuge. Needless to say, this show's protagonists choose freedom, eking out a precarious living selling newspapers on the street. But when dastardly newspaper boss Joseph Pulitzer decides to eat into their meagre profits by raising the prices they must pay for each paper, the boys risk everything by going on strike.It's a story that feels massively relevant at a time when half the UK's either on strike or wishing it was, but this is not the show for gritty social realism. Lead rabble-rouser Jack Kelly, played with spirit by Michael Ahomka-Lindsay, is easily this show's most complex character, as he wrestles with guilt about leading his mates into potential penury. His more thinly dr