"Billy Elliot" at the Ordway Center

Despite being an adaptation of a movie, Billy Elliot is a fun and moving musical with spectacular choreography. I saw this same production on tour at the Orpheum two years ago and wrote a fairly extensive review of it at the time, so I'm not going to go into that much detail here. It's pretty much the same production with a different cast, and I agree with what I said last time. You can read that review here. Below are a few highlights of the tour that's currently at the Ordway through this weekend.

• In a nutshell, Billy Elliot is an adaptation of the 2000 movie of the same name about a young boy in working class England who finds himself through dance, while his family and tight-knit community is going through the coal miner's strike of 1984.
• The best part of this show is the choreography. It's edgy and unique, unlike anything I've seen elsewhere. You have the ballet that the kids are learning with varying degrees of skills, mixed with the rough movement of the miners and cops. It's really something to see.
• The stars of this show are the children. Four Billys are on tour with the show, and I saw a young lad named Noah Parets, who was incredible. He carries this show and has some difficult and energetic choreography. I particularly love what I like to call "the angry dance," where Billy is so angry he can only express it through dance, as he bounces off walls and taps around the stage. Later he dances with an older version of himself in a beautiful ballet, and literally flies through the air.
• I think my favorite scenes of this musical are those involving the little girls in the ballet class. Who can resist little girls in tutus and pigtails with foul mouths?!  Not me. They perform with the awkward grace of your average children's dance class, but I suspect that they're actually a lot better than they pretend to be.
• The adults are good too, particularly Minnesota native Janet Dickinson as Billy's ballet teacher, Patti Perkins as his Grandma, and Rich Hebert as his tough love father.
• The set is quite effective in creating the spaces where the story takes place. The main set is the community center/gym where the town meetings and classes are held, with walls opening up or moving in and out to expand the space when needed.

Billy Elliot is a great big musical, and a successful adaptation of a small cult hit English movie (although I still think Next to Normal should have won the Tony that year!). For more details you can read my past review. And if you're interested, act fast, this one's only here for one week!

"Billy Elliot" at the Orpheum

Some shows you go to for the music, some for the story, and some for the dancing.  Billy Elliot is definitely a show you go to for the dancing.  And also the great story about being who you are and expressing yourself in the way that you want, no matter what anyone else thinks.  The music, written by Elton John with lyrics by Lee Hall (who wrote the screenplay for the movie) is good, but is mostly there to facilitate the dancing.  The musical won several 2009 Tonys, including best musical (which should have gone to Next to Normal in my opinion), best direction, best choreography, and best actor for the three young men who shared the role of Billy.  I've wanted to see it for a while, but resisted because it was one of those ubiquitous movie adaptations, which I often find to be unimaginative and mostly about making money.  But Billy Elliot is the exception that proves the rule.  For one thing, it's not a huge blockbuster with a built-in audience (like Spiderman, for example); it's a sweet and funny little English movie.  Secondly, it's about dance and music, so it seems naturally suited to the stage (unlike, for example, Spiderman).  I loved the movie, and I think it has been successfully translated to the stage.

Billy Elliot takes place in Northern England during the coal miners' strike of 1984.  The whole town is on strike, and in the midst of this, an 11-year-old boy discovers dance.  After accidentally wandering into a ballet class populated by adorably awkward little girls (in some of the best performances of the show), he finds himself continuing to come back to dance class.  His teacher, played by the divine Faith Prince (she's guest-starred in numerous TV shows in addition to her successful Broadway career), discovers a talent in him he didn't know he had.  Billy's growing passion for dance is not initially accepted by his miner father and brother, but they eventually come to support him in his dream that will get him out of the dying mining business.

My favorite scene in the movie is when Billy, angry that he was forced to miss his dance school audition, is so overcome by emotion that he can't do anything but dance.  He doesn't know what to do with what he's feeling, so he throws it all into a dance through the streets of the town.  That scene also turns up in the musical, and is equally well done.  Billy screams and dances to a song called "Angry Dance" as the miners strike and the cops patrol.  In another scene, Billy dances a beautiful balletic dance shadowed by his older self, played by the incredible ballet dancer Maximilien Baud.  They dance together in joy, and Billy flies through the air, finding freedom in dance.

Another sweet subplot in the movie that's well replicated is about Billy's friend Michael, played in this performance by the charismatic and talented Jacob Zelonky, who likes to dress up in women's clothing.  He convinces Billy to try on a skirt, and they sing and dance about how there's nothing wrong with "Expressing Yourself," even if that means wearing a dress.  Several dresses come to life and dance with the boys, who are wearing glittering tap shoes and are surrounded by a shining backdrop.

As I mentioned before, the ballet girls are some of the best performers in the show.  Ranging in age from about 8 to 14, they play girls who are learning ballet in a small town with varying degrees of success.  They're rowdy little girls who love to push each other and make faces, and even occasionally swear!  They look so comfortable and natural up on stage; each and every one is a star in the making.  In one brilliantly choreographed scene (the show was choreographed by Peter Darling), the ballet girls dance in and out amongst the striking miners and the cops, as they continue to discuss what's going on, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they're twirling and lifting a little girl in a tutu.  It's a fascinating juxtaposition.

Another one of my favorite scenes (there's just so much to talk about in this show!) is when Billy asks his somewhat senile grandmother about his grandfather.  You might expect a touching story, but not in this show.  Instead, Granny tells Billy how her husband was a bastard who hit her.  But in the evening, "We'd Go Dancing," and everything was magical.  If she had it to do over again, says Granny, she'd enjoy her life and not be someone's wife!  As she's telling the story, the versatile men in the ensemble quietly come on stage from the right, and slowly move towards Granny and Billy until she dances and fights with them, and then continue gracefully past and out the windows on the left.

But the star of the show is, of course, Billy.  There are five Billys touring with this production, taking turns playing the role.  The Billy I saw is 14 year old Daniel Russell from Australia.  An amazing dancer, a great actor (I had tears in my eyes when Billy read a letter from his deceased Mother), and not a bad singer.  I'm so impressed by him and all the kids for the performances they give and the focus and discipline they must have to tour with this show at such a young age.  I'm inspired to look into the possibility of taking dance classes (better late than never), but in the meantime, I ordered a ticket to the James Sewell Ballet at the Southern Theater next year.  I'm not sure that I've ever been to a ballet, and judging from the little I've seen, I'm sure I'd love it!