spot deserved more.
will die mad about how criminally underused spot was in livesies. they set up his character so much just to give us... nothing. in act 1 they laid the groundwork for him to be this intimidating major character, his name was mentioned four times before he even appeared on screen.
"there was spot with all his cronies" - ensemble, carrying the banner
"spot conlon's turf!" - jack
"that spot conlon gets me a little jittery" - finch
"even spot conlon sent over a kid just to say 'next event you can count on brooklyn'" - david
and then they only gave him four lines.
"borough what gave me birth" - brooklyn's here
"newsies united!"
"let's see what pulitzer's got to say to you now"
"have a look out there mr pulitzer. in case you ain't figured it out, we got you surrounded"
brooklyn's here is a bop of an introduction song, but why is it all he gets? his entire presence in the musical is limited to:
show up
have a cool 'im the most powerful/respected person in this room' moment
push jack
shake hands with jack, slap a table, distribute the newsies banner
go to pulitzer with jack and davey, mostly just stand to the side
hug tommy boy (??)
sell papers again
that is it.
look, i'm not just saying this because of how much bigger his role was in 92sies, because obviously there are different constraints blah blah, but why bother setting up a character if all you're going to do with him is have him stand threateningly off to the side? for the majority of his screen time he's just standing there looking intimidating.
there are characters with even less (smalls, mike and ike come to mind), but none of them are set up as if they were going to be main characters. heck, none of their names are even ever mentioned! as opposed to spot’s, which is mentioned five times. (the aforementioned four, plus “let’s hear it for spot conlon and brooklyn!” from david).
also, they completely underused tommy bracco as a dancer. (yes i know that he was tommy boy in OBC but this is specific to the proshot, mostly bc that's all i've watched lol).
we know that tommy bracco is a damn good dancer, why wasn't he in the large group sections of the curtain call? aside from jack, davey, crutchie and les, he was the only newsie to not appear in the large group at the end. all of the other brooklyn newsies were there, just not him. (he did get a small group section with elmer, kid blink and sniper, but wasn't in the starting group dance either). also, for the end part of finale, he's standing off to the side with crutchie, les, kid blink and oscar. (ok that's probably just a spacing thing but. it still annoys me Let Him Dance). (also side note, oscar just ,, being there during finale is hilarious to me. and morris standing at the top for almost the entire song?? they look SO done)
but yeah. give me anything, give me how this (sorry tommy bracco) objectively tiny guy became the most feared newsboy in new york, tell me how he is as a leader, show me jack and davey going to talk to him, tell me what happened after the strike, GIVE ME SPOT CONLON
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