Theatre
Michael Portillo - Winning strike
Published 23 May 2005
Theatre - Ballet's star boy makes a right song and dance in a class act, writes Michael Portillo
Billy Elliot: the musical
Victoria Palace Theatre, London SW1
The swearing in the stage version of Billy Elliot is hilarious, particularly when, with precision timing that takes your breath away, the tiniest of children does the cussing. But there's more to this musical than bad language. Lyrics such as "Oh my darling, oh my darling,/Oh my darling Heseltine/You're a tosser, you're a wanker/And you're just a Tory swine" indicate the musical's political content. Indeed, its political incorrectness is a joy.
This is the best musical I have seen in years. It sticks closely enough to the fond- ly remembered film's story about the lad from a mining town who wants to be a ballet dancer to guarantee a warm reaction from the audience. But it also has enough that is new to make a visit to the theatre a must.
The outstanding differences between the screen and stage interpretations are the all-new score by Elton John and Lee Hall's splendid lyrics. The music is the sound that you would expect from John: instantly enjoyable, yet varied and sustaining. Hall is at his best when giving voice to the working-class solidarity felt among the striking miners of north-east England.
The other stage novelty is the range of demands made of Billy. The film required charm, dancing skills and versatility from its young star, but in the theatre the boy who has to sing and dance all evening needs stamina, athleticism and stage presence well beyond his age. On the evening that I saw the show, George Maguire was absolutely up to the task. According to the programme notes, this youngster has already tried football, horse-riding, skateboarding, golf and trampolining, and for this part he may have drawn on all those skills. It is difficult to convey how impressively adult and charismatic his performance was, and he did it without sacrificing any of the youthful gaucherie that makes the role so endearing.
On other nights, James Lomas or Liam Mower plays Billy. All the boys' biographies reveal a juvenile sophistication. Mower, for example, having become a champion disco dancer at the age of eight, "felt that something was missing" two years later and turned to ballet. This lad from Hull has joined the Royal Ballet School, and so seems well placed to understand the stage role.
Haydn Gwynne plays Mrs Wilkinson, the tough-talking, soft-hearted dance teacher who encourages Billy to attend the Royal Ballet audition in the face of ridicule from his brother (a striking miner), and despite his family's poverty during the pitmen's stoppage. Gwynne captures the duality of her role perfectly, and her attempts to make swans out of her ugly-duckling girls' class ("You look like a spastic starfish") are very funny. Her dance number with Billy is one of the highlights of an evening that has no lows.
As in the film, Billy has a friend, Michael, who likes to dress up in women's clothes, and the scene in which he encourages Billy to experience the pleasure of transvestism is funny and nicely judged.
The play does not end, as the film does, with an adult Billy dancing a swan in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake. Instead, there is an even more moving scene, in which the youngster imagines himself as a grown man and dances with his future self (superbly represented by the ballet dancer and model Isaac James).
Stephen Daldry's direction and Peter Darling's choreography are excellent throughout. The film's memorable interlude, in which Billy's brother is chased by mounted police, gives way in the stage version to a series of confrontations between the miners and the boys in blue, stylised in dances that become intertwined with Mrs Wilkinson's ballet class.
The police are from the south and talk of middle-class things, such as building an extension to the house (made possible by all their overtime pay). The most political lyrics are in "Happy Christmas Maggie Thatcher", in which the miners rejoice that each day brings them a day nearer to the prime minister's death.
However, Mrs Wilkinson observes that it is all futile, and that for Billy's dad his son's prospects are more important even than the class struggle.
Neither Billy Elliot nor this review is the place to revisit how the miners were hoodwinked into a political strike by the unscrupulous Arthur Scargill. Whether you lament the passing of the British coal industry depends partly on whether you think it a good idea to send men to horrendous danger underground so that they can contract emphysema and contribute to a more thorough pollution of the planet.
Now that I think of it, what did Michael Heseltine have to do with the coal strike? He was too busy smashing the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament at the time. What the hell: his name makes a good rhyme. But whatever you think of the miners' tussle with the Tory establishment, Billy Elliot: the musical is a magnificent show. A class act, you might say.
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