Billy Elliot contrived but hugely satisfying
If you were wondering whether a bitter 1984 British coal miners’ strike could be transformed into an uplifting musical, Billy Elliot answered that and then some Tuesday night. Hell yes! In fact, if there wasn’t a single song in Billy Elliot — if it were simply a drama about the coal miners’ strike of 1984 — it would still tell a sensational, heart-rending story.
Toss in a Rocky-style dance story to the mix, and what emerges is a smart, heart-filled musical that delivers both oldfashioned tears and cheers, and actually teaches you stuff, too.
Now, about that coal miners’ strike (courtesy of a very useful storyboard set up in the Jubilee Auditorium lobby).
That was one of the most bitter labour disputes in the history of Britain, with Margaret Thatcher laying waste to the nationalized British coal industry by breaking the unions, wiping out close to 250,000 jobs and leaving a string of villages in the country’s north in ruins.
Of course, in this telling of that bitter, violent, ideologicallydriven civil war of sorts, the angry rage of the miners is mitigated by the central plot.
That’s the one that concerns 13-year-old Billy (Noah Parets, one of four Billys performing this tour), a typical working-class lad.
He’s a washout at boxing, and having lost his mom some years earlier, is being raised by a volatile crew at home, including Dad (Rich Hebert), Grandma (a wonderfully foul-mouthed Patti Perkins) and much older brother Tony (Cullen R. Titmas), a family that includes two striking miners (Dad and Tony) with vastly different views of how to deal with the brutal coppers.
Dad wants to wait out management. Tony wants to grab a pipe and start swinging back at the po- lice from down south who show up in their Northern English village swinging truncheons.
Throw in economic hardship, a dead mom and a generally macho response to all that human hardship, and you have a bleak atmosphere in which to be a 13-yearold boy with few prospects.
However, the one escape Billy has is that he loves to dance, and one day, when he finds himself in a dance class following boxing, Billy catches the eye of Mrs. Wilkinson (a wonderfully barbed Janet Dickinson), a ciga- rette smoking dance instructor.
Billy might not have the right accent, money or social niceties, but he has talent and determination.
What he doesn’t have is any support from his family, which reacts to the news that he has abandoned boxing for ballet with the sort of horror reserved for scabs who cross the picket line.
Early on, Billy Elliot is broad and everything feels a little bit generic, almost as if the show’s creators were anxious about bringing the whole bitter labour war out right at the start of the party.
The music (by Elton John) is pretty good, but for long stretches lacks any of those memorable signature star turns, until Billy sings Electricity and brings down the house.
There’s an odd-feeling subplot concerning Billy and best friend Michael (a hugely charismatic little actor named Sam Poon) and cross-dressing that feels out of step with the rest of the play, and a general tension between the audience’s desire for a feel-good musical and the grim reality of the story Billy Elliot was inspired by.
What’s surprising is that the second act re-commits itself to telling the story of the miners’ strike, where families were split apart by scabs, and the community passed the hat to try to keep every family afloat, all of which is staged here and rips your heart out — its Les Miz with a midlands accent and some really great cloth caps.
Eventually, the hardened men of the community — including, most importantly, Dad — come around on Billy’s dream to escape to London to audition for the Royal Ballet School, even contributing to it.
That sets the stage for a trip to London for Dad and Billy, where the culture and class clash between northern and southern England makes Yugoslavia look positively unified by comparison.
The climax comes in a moment that’s pretty much obsolete these days — the opening of a letter — where Billy discovers his fate from the Royal Ballet School.
It’s corny. It’s contrived. And it’s completely satisfying, much like a good Yorkshire pudding and a pint at the pub — or, for that matter, Billy Elliot, the finest musical about striking coal miners and their ballet dancing sons ever.