by Chris Peterson
I threw on the Newsies pro-shot the other night. You know the one, with Jeremy Jordan as Jack Kelly, Kara Lindsay as Katherine Plumber, and a cast of dancers so good they make leaping across scaffolding look like light cardio.
I have seen it plenty of times, but this rewatch got me thinking again. For all its heart and high energy, I keep coming back to the same question: do we really need Katherine Plumber?
BEFORE I GO ANY FURTHER, let me be clear: I love Kara Lindsay. She is phenomenal in the role. Her voice soars, her comedic instincts are pitch-perfect, and her presence lights up the stage. She does absolutely everything right with what she is given. My issue is not with her. It is with the character itself, and whether Katherine ever needed to exist in the first place.
I am a huge fan of the original 1992 film. Always have been. It was incredibly instrumental in developing my love of musical theatre.
In the film, we had Bryan Denton(played by Bill Pullman), the reporter who used his column to amplify the boys’ voices, and Sarah Jacobs(Ele Keats, an early celeb crush of mine), Davey’s sister, who provided the gentle, grounded romance.
Between them, Jack had both mentorship and connection, intellect and heart. When Newsies became a Broadway musical, those two roles were merged into one shiny new character named Katherine Plumber. On paper, it probably seemed like a smart way to streamline things. But in reality, it flattened some of the emotional texture that made the original story so strong.
If anything needed reworking for Broadway, it was not combining those two roles into one, but expanding Sarah’s presence so her relationship with Jack had more dimension. Let her be more than just the convenient love interest. Let her speak, argue, dream, and share the spotlight a little. That could have been the “modern update” the show was looking for.
Katherine is meant to be the modern update, the empowered woman breaking into journalism and holding her own in a man’s world. I love that idea in theory. In practice, though, she feels more like a Broadway adjustment, a checkbox addition designed to make the show feel current and give Jack a romantic duet.
And the thing is, Newsies never really needed that. Bryan Denton gave the boys legitimacy. Sarah gave Jack tenderness. Both served clear, separate purposes. Katherine, talented as she is, ends up doing both halfway, the journalism never feels as grounded, and the romance feels a bit more formulaic.
Again, Kara Lindsay does everything right. She is delightful, she is funny, and her “Watch What Happens” is pure Broadway gold. But her performance also highlights how much the character exists more for narrative structure than storytelling need. If Bryan Denton and Sarah Jacobs had stayed, we might have gotten a richer world, one that felt more lived-in, more balanced between youthful energy and adult perspective.
Watching the pro-shot again reminded me why I fell in love with Newsies in the first place. The story did not need fixing. It was already inspiring, already emotional, already unforgettable. The kids with nothing took on the men with everything, and they won. That is the heart of Newsies.
Sometimes the best stories do not need rewriting. They just need to be told with conviction. And as a lifelong Newsies fan, I will always take the film’s version of that truth.