Billy Elliot – The Musical

About the show:

Billy Elliot the Musical is a musical based on the 2000 film Billy Elliot. The music is by Elton John, and the book and lyrics are by Lee Hall, who wrote the film's screenplay. The plot revolves around motherless Billy, who trades boxing gloves for ballet shoes. The story of his personal struggle and fulfillment are balanced against a counter-story of family and community strife caused by the UK miners' strike (1984–1985) in County Durham, in North Eastern England. Hall's screenplay was inspired in part by A. J. Cronin's 1935 novel about a miners' strike, The Stars Look Down, to which the musical's opening song pays homage.^[1]

The musical premiered in London's West End in 2005 and was nominated for nine Laurence Olivier Awards, winning four, including Best New Musical. The production is still running strongly, and its success led to productions in Australia, on Broadway and elsewhere. In New York, it won ten Tony Awards and ten Drama Desk Awards, including, in each case, Best Musical. It has also won numerous awards in Australia including a record-tying seven Helpmann Awards.

A live recording of the musical was released on DVD and Blu-ray on 24 November 2014 in the United Kingdom.

More info on the musical: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Elliot_the_Musical

More info on the show at the Victoria Palace Theatre in London: http://billyelliotthemusical.com

My opinion:

If seen a lot of the big musicals already: Les Mis, Wicked, Oliver! etc., but Billy Elliot hasn’t been one of them. So this time we took the chance to see the show. I loved the movie and I really like the story, especially because of the dancing.

It was a great show, Billy was played by Bradley Perret. He was wonderful, a great dancer and singer and his acting was superb. Oh and he’s very cute. I was also very impressed with the boy playing Michael, Tomi Fry, such a talent. They had a great chemistry on stage and I really loved their scenes and songs, epspecially the one with the clothes, awesome choreography. Mrs Wilkinson (Ruthie Henshall) and Tony (Chris Grahamson) were fantastic as well, really strong actors and full of passion. The cast was great in general, but these people stood out.

The best scene came after the interval, where the celebrated Christmas and Margret Thatcher came up! Such an awesome song and lots going on stage.

At times I had problems understanding their strong dialect, but since I knoe the story really well it was okay. At the end I was hoping for a last scene where they are all older, like in the movie, but it wasn’t there...

The dancing in this show is really impressive and all these childern on stage were great!!! The music isn’t really my kind oft hing, no memorable melodies and no real emotions included. It was still an awesome show with lots of spark, enegry and passion!!!