New York Must See

Billy Elliot

"Billy Elliot," the hit musical, has arrived on Broadway. Playing in London to over two million there, as well as in Australia, the warm-hearted, feel-good musical based on the movie of the same name, is repeating its earlier successes. With plenty of sentiment but not sentimental, it tells the story of a motherless eleven-year-old boy who dreams of being a dancer, despite living with a macho mining family in northern England.

As in the movie, Billy yearns to be in the girls’ dancing class in the leisure center where he is supposed to be learning boxing, and soon the dance teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson, is giving him lessons along with her tutu-clad girls. On strike with his fellow miners, Billy’s father is enraged when he discovers this, but is eventually won over, even deserting the strike to earn the money needed for Billy’s audition with the Royal School of Ballet.

Billy is played by three very talented young boys, David Alvarez, Trent Kowalik, and Kiril Kulish, who alternate in the role.

Directed by Stephen Daldry, who also directed the film, the story loses none of its freshness now that it is enhanced by Elton John’s music and choreography by Peter Darling. As the musical is not bound by the realism demanded of a movie, ghosts are evoked when Billy’s mother appears or when his grandmother (Carole Shelley), exchanges her drab housedress for a fairy-tale one that sparkles as she waltzes with her alcoholic husband.

Group numbers that are outstanding include "Solidarity," that moves the story along by combining cops, striking miners, and the ballet class of girls in tutus. In another crowd number at the miner’s hall, a raucous group celebrates Christmas in costumes depicting their hated enemy Margaret Thatcher. And Billy’s mentor Mrs. Wilkinson (Haydn Gwynne) and the accompanist both have a turn at boogie-woogie. To suggest the fulfillment of Billy’s dream, there is an effective number in which Billy dances Swan Lake with his older self, but nothing can replace the magic of the movie ending.

Fresh, inventive, and appealing, "Billy Elliot" should be inhabiting the Imperial Theater for a long time to come.