In each issue of D&T, we take a closer look at a play and examine some of its performance considerations. This time, Nick Smurthwaite discusses the hit show Billy Elliot the Musical.
Like all great musicals, Billy Elliot stands or falls by its narrative. Even before it opened in the West End to great acclaim in 2005, the show's producers and creatives knew they were backing a winner, as the 2000 film on which it was based had already won an army of admirers around the world.
How could any theatregoer resist the premise of a motherless boy from a poor mining town in the North-East overcoming every obstacle and hardship to realise his dream of becoming a ballet dancer? On top of that, it has a score by Elton John and Lee Hall, writer of the original film.
Plot
The setting is County Durham in the mid-1980s. While his widowed father Jackie and older brother Tony are angrily supporting the miners’ strike, 11-year-old Billy has secretly joined a ballet class – the only boy in a class of girls. The teacher, Mrs Wilkinson, recognises his natural talent and offers to coach him free of charge for an audition at the Royal Ballet School, despite his family's opposition. As the clashes between the miners and the police escalate, Jackie comes to realise how much dancing means to his son; he overcomes his prejudice and resolves to cross the picket line in order to pay for Billy's trip to London. Backed by his fellow strikers, Jackie scrapes together the rail fare. Back in Durham, where the strike is looking increasingly desperate, Billy learns he has been accepted by the school.
Themes
If you were to cite a musical with serious thematic value, you couldn't do better than Billy Elliot. It probably contains as many themes as there are songs. Set against the backdrop of the brutal miners’ strike of 1984-85, it shows a patriarchal community in decline, desperately trying to assert itself in the face of political and societal change. Billy's widowed father and older brother are very much a part of that often-violent resistance. So, not only have the Elliot men lost their precious matriarch, they are in danger of losing their livelihoods and their dignity as well. Amid all this doom and gloom, young Billy is undergoing a life-changing epiphany, even though it is a stretch to expect his strike-weary father and brother to share his joy. It can be seen as the triumph of creative aspiration over the least conducive of circumstances. It also touches on police brutality, burgeoning homosexuality, innate male prejudice against ballet and the north-south divide. In an interview in 2009, the writer Lee Hall said: ‘The great thing about musicals is you can say things you couldn't possibly say in a film or a play because the music allows you a bigger emotional range.’
Performance
The 2005 stage production cost £5.5 million and was what you might label ‘event’ theatre. It ran for eleven years, with a subsequent UK tour that last for 18 months. Encapsulating the miners’ strike on stage with sufficient drama and heft did not come cheap, and there was probably pressure to create a live show that lived up to the film. However there have been subsequent pared-down productions that have been just as effective at a much lower cost. It is very often the case that a musical with a strong score and narrative benefits from a simpler staging.
In a 2022 revival at the Leicester Curve, the striking miners marched through the audience, chanting their slogans. It was an inspired way of introducing that element of the story. Because of its site-specific North-East setting, the Geordie accents can be more problematic, and there is also the casting of Billy himself who has to be able to sing and dance with flair and exuberance.
Neither Stephen Daldry (director) nor Lee Hall ever expected it to be a hit on Broadway because of the regional accents, the political content and the fact that, as Hall put it, ‘it was quite a rough and ready sort of show’.
The enduring nature of the original West End show, and the legal restrictions on child performers, meant that the producers had to seek out and train dozens of young people to take on the role of Billy and his classmates. The original Billy, Liam Mower (pictured), went on to star in Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake; another, Tom Holland, became a movie star. Director Daldry likened the role of Billy to ‘playing Hamlet while running a marathon’, so it was hardly surprising that the role was rotated between four actors in the West End, and on tour. Child casting directors at home and overseas were kept busy finding bright young talent. There was also the matter of vocal changes and growth spurts to consider. Billy is meant to be pre-pubescent so the boys cast in the role had an average shelf life of nine months before they were considered too old.
Resources
Billy Elliot Live, a filmed version of the stage show, is available on DVD.
There is no published text of the show, but you can download it at Music Theatre International: mtishows.co.uk/billy-elliot-the-musical