Susan Granger’s review of “Billy Elliot” (Imperial Theater)
It’s taken almost four years for this smash hit from London’s West End to make its debut on the Great White Way – but it’s worth the wait.
Set in 1984 against the cultural backdrop of the devastating, year-long coal miners’ strike in Northern England during Margaret Thatcher’s conservative era, it’s about a lonely, motherless boy who discovers he has a passion and talent for dancing. While he’s supposed to be taking boxing lessons after school, 11 year-old Billy (Trent Kowalik) stumbles into a ballet class perfunctorily conducted by tart-tongued, chain-smoking Mrs. Wilkinson (Haydn Gwynne). That’s where he finds happiness in the wretched world around him. Dancing becomes Billy’s sanctuary, particularly when his teacher encourages him to audition for the Royal Ballet School. But artistic ambition s considered “un-manly” by Billy’s hard-drinking, macho father (Gregory Jbara) and older brother (Santino Fontana).
As so often happens when a movie is adapted into a full-blown Broadway musical, the emphasis changes. This is more about the social melodrama and less about the boy. There’s something lost and something gained by the cultural choices made by writer/lyricist Lee Hall, director Stephen Daldry and composer Elton John. While one yearns for more Billy and less blustering by the miners, considering our current economic turmoil, it’s certainly timely – and remarkably uplifting – when Billy’s family and friends eventually realize that there’s no future in coal-mining and that in his defiance, Billy, alone, may have found a way out of their collective desperation and despair.
As Billy, Trent Kowalik is irresistible. (David Alvarez and Kiril Kulish also rotate in this title role.) But as his “poof” chum, Michael (Frank Dolce) steals the show with an unabashed penchant for cross-dressing – along with Peter Darling’s soaring, exuberant choreography. “Billy Elliot” is a must-see!