BILLY ELLIOT National Tour Review



I am a very thankful girl for my Thanksgiving visit to my Delaware homeland. My sister & I had intentions of seeing Once on Broadway, but that goal proved too lofty. Instead, we saw the national tour of Billy Elliot at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music. I loved being back in Philadelphia, even though national tours always lack a little of the shine of a Broadway production.

My opening reaction was an immediate, familiar resonance of those great musicals of the turn-of-the-millennium Broadway era. I grew up on those musicals, and it’s been a long time since I could just go see a new, awesome musical with my sister. For that experience & dynamic, I am very grateful. From a critically-minded theatre-goer’s perspective, my interpretation of that reaction offers a different perspective that explains my immediate sense of familiarity: Billy Elliot is a patchwork of the highest quality musicals of the recent yesteryear, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Throughout the musical, I saw distinct moments reminiscent of The Full Monty, The Beatiful Game, Les Miserables, Urinetown, and Miss Saigon. 

The costumes were a hodgepodge of winter thrift-store wear & I loved them. The set was an asymmetrical set of puzzle pieces that effectively & fluidly created a variety of spaces. Billy’s audition scene used the actual theatre as the set, which was an appreciated change of tone & a clever staging technique. Obviously, the dancing was awesome and Elton John wrote some great songs. The glaring exception to the overall quality & cohesion of the production was the number Expressing Yourself, which felt like a glaring neon public service message & felt completely disjointed in both production-style & plot-relevance.

The plotline seemed stripped from movie in terms of establishing the family dynamic. Specifically, the father’s change-of-heart was too abrupt and the catalyst for his change of opinion was noticeably absent. I did appreciate the theme of swallowing one’s pride in the pursuit of one’s passion that erupted after the father began to support Billy’s intention to dance. In terms of plot, the father’s decision to support his son provided the thematic cornerstone because it also raised the questions of when it is worth it to cross the line, of picketers or appropriateness. In seeing the potential Billy exhibited, the coal miners on strike readjusted their focus to the future instead of the present.