What a disappointment. Billy Elliot, our first theatrical excursion in London, and the centerpiece of our across-the-pond jaunt, is a big fat dud. A caveat: the audience frigging ate it up, which we all found inexplicable.
What's wrong with it? Where to begin? The thick Yorkshire accents were irritating but excusable. I mean, it takes place in a mining town, after all. It reminded me of when The Secret Garden opened on Broadway and people were annoyed at not being able to understand anything Dickon said. I found such quibbles petty. Well, Billy Elliot took a little extra effort, but you could still get the gist, as one does at an opera, even though it's in another language.
No, the main problem with Billy Elliot is that the scenes themselves are incomprehensible. Even when I understood perfectly what the actors were saying, I still didn't understand what was going on. And I had seen the movie.
The main metaphor of the show is the struggle of the local coal miners to keep their "pit" open and the struggle within Billy to do what he really wants, which is to dance. This came to a dramatic head in the only really transcendent moment in the show, the act I finale, when Billy erupts into a dance of frustration to the counterpoint of the local police force forming a metaphorical wall to block his ambitions. Otherwise, the whole the-coal-miners-versus-the-dancers theme was forced and tedious.
The humor was infantile, consisting of name calling and verbal assaults such as "fat bastard" and "wanker." Elton John's music isn't really any better than his work on Lestat. The sets were the worst I've ever seen on a professional stage, consisting of realistic and dreary flats that the cast had to move themselves at times, which was pointless, because you could see the stage hands helping them, so the actors' actions served no real dramatic purpose.
But the main culprits here are director Stephen Daldry and book-writer and lyricist Lee Hall. They've failed to put together a comprehensible show. There's very little clarity of purpose to any of the songs or scenes. And despite the presence of numerous choreographers, assistant choreographers, and associate choreographers, the dance rarely rose above the serviceable. Particularly disappointing was Billy's dream sequence, when he does a pas de deux with his future self, and for some quizzical reason starts flying through the air like Peter Pan. Huh?
The only other part of the show I even remotely enjoyed was the curtain call, when the entire cast comes on stage in ballet attire and starts to...um...tap? Besides the act I finale, it was only time the choreography was at all interesting, but why were they tapping? Billy's attending the royal ballet school, not the Royal Tap Academy. And the cast are all in tutus. It was fun stuff, but it didn't really make sense.
But, again, here's the funny thing: the audience went wild. Are we just a trio of jaded, aging theater queens, or is this one of those parochial British pieces that New York audiences just won't buy? (e.g. We Will Rock You, Dirty Dancing) Has anyone out there seen Billy Elliot? Are we just being picky, or are we accurate in saying that the piece meant well, but on the whole it just doesn't work?
Sorry to hear that Billy Elliot was such a disappointment. Could it have been your jetlag or the acting of a replacement cast? I took in Billy Elliot a year ago and thought it was very good (not excellent), but it almost sounds like it simply hasn't stood the test of time (perhaps the way The Producers hasn't held up post-Lane/Broderick?).
Posted by: Steve | July 25, 2006 at 06:12 PM