The Brits adore the music hall. It’s been part of their DNA for over 100 years - hence the name Royal Albert Music Hall instead of Royal Albert Theatre. They don’t care so much about a beginning, middle and an end as they do about the roiling. Keep it moving, because the crowd in the stalls is dying for a reason not to pay attention. The Brits are champions at the sport of Staying Ahead Of Your Audience – Monty Python comes to mind. So. Billy Elliot chugs along without a nanosecond of a pause, and that’s pretty much that.
Anyway, this musical made me cry. Maybe it’s the season. Maybe it’s because it’s about a child who has a dream that makes no sense until another person shines a light on it. In this case the other person is Billy’s teacher Mrs. Wilkinson (Haydn Gwynne), the chain-smoking dance instructor in Durham who is resigned to spending her days managing traffic patterns for girls in tutus - until she sees Billy dance.
Our Billy is growing up during the miners’ strike in 1984, when Margaret Thatcher was taking a break from having her hair lacquered to decry the demands of the union, any union. She was Reagan’s soul mate, remember? In this atmosphere the dream of a boy might be taken seriously if he was hankering for a hat with a light on it. Billy, however, is more interested in staying above ground and moving like a gazelle.
He does have his supporters. His mother is dead but still encouraging, and his grandmother adores him. So does his Da and everyone else in his community. In fact, everybody pretty much likes everybody in Durham, even the weird ones like Billy’s friend Michael, who likes to dress up in girls’ clothes, or Mr. Braithwaite, who plays piano at dance classes and is counting the seconds until someone mentions the word “boogie.” It’s just that most of them don’t have time for dreams, except the one that makes them stand up as a union.
So this Billy kid is kind of an anomaly. Dancing? What’s up with that? Even Billy doesn’t seem to have an answer, and he pretty much goes with the flow once he stumbles into Mrs. Wilkinson’s class by mistake. This is where a fully developed plot would have come in handy, but there is enough of one to stretch out over the nearly three hours. As a matter of fact the only struggle is about Billy’s Da, who has to make a choice between his union brethren, including his older son, and his younger son, Billy.
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