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Billy Elliot the Musical - The Choreography Review
By Sid Smith:
"Billy Elliot: The Musical" is different in key ways from "Billy Elliot," the movie, and that turns out to be a fine thing. The film endures as irresistible, but the stage show, which just launched its national tour at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago, is much more an exploration of ballet: madcap, daffy, silly ballet, at times, but ballet nonetheless.
Is this the stage musical for which balletomanes have been waiting a lifetime? Maybe. Certainly it stands as the most involved and intricate attempt by a musical to incorporate ballet since the days of George Balanchine's "On Your Toes" or the pre-eminent work of Jerome Robbins.
Peter Darling, who choreographed both the movie and this later effort, makes a critical shift for the stage. Dance-wise, the film is fueled mostly by Billy's wild, unfettered, unschooled and sometimes delightfully clumsy solos, his unbridled lust to move so wonderfully enacted by title performer Jamie Bell.
But the Elton John-Lee Hall stage show takes a step back and fashions the plot to portray young Billy as stumbling into the art accidentally (like the film), but then gradually, oh so slowly, warming to ballet and acquiring skills bit by bit like so many real students. Billy is not so much driven to dance as blessed with a talent undiscovered, and when he finally lets loose, it's to show off genuine ballet technique, culminating in an extraordinary solo showstopper set at his audition for the school of the Royal Ballet.
At Sunday's opening, Cesar Corrales, one of four youngsters playing this coveted and surely exhausting role, achieved with that scene an excitement rare enough in the concert hall. Corrales, 13, of Cuban descent, born in Mexico and trained in Canada, is one heck of a gifted ballet star. In the solo, he enacts most of the star turns given a male soloist at the peak of the classic full-lengths. Except that Darling, as if to maximize Billy's youth, compacts them in such a way as to leave the theatergoer breathless. Striking pirouettes, a couple of double spins and the requisite jetes in a circle lead to a galvanizing series of tours en l'air that come at you so fast I didn't even think to count them. I only know there were a lot, and by that time I was leaping to my feet like the rest of the audience.
The other three young men may vary in their ability to carry that scene, but Darling deserves a lot of other credit for his work throughout this piece. It's almost as if a schizophrenic bifurcation is at work, albeit one Darling smoothly stitches together, whereby Billy is mostly shown off in solo (and genuine ballet) and a cheesier, goofier hybrid of ballet, pop and theatrical staging defines everyone else. That's not a rule followed religiously--Billy has one infectious vaudeville tap extravaganza that's essentially a duet with his gay friend Michael, eventually backed by giant dress forms, and he's part of one wondrous trio involving his mentor, Mrs. Wilkinson, and her heavyweight but light-footed musical accompanist, Mr. Braithwaite--one of the more delightful dances in the show.
But often Darling employs dance-theater staging, movement that crafts haunting images of the miners sporting their headlights and heading underground near the end, or easing across the stage, carrying and dancing with simple wooden chairs, in a dark, reminiscent fantasy sung by Billy's dotty grandmother.
Darling walks a fine line superbly, employing such serious motifs to underscore the socio-economic hardship that's one half of the story while elsewhere infusing the group bits with just the right smidgen of wacky humor that's bread and butter to Broadway. The two styles pretty much synthesize brilliantly early on, when, during one of Billy's first lessons, the little girls in the class and the miners surrealistically enter into each other's worlds and dance together, the miners taking on some Trockadero-like ballet moves of their own.
But slapstick, funky pop and goofball comedy and here and there postmodern angst define the chorus--ballet, especially in its inimitable excitement for the soloist, belong to Billy and, in one scene, including a bit of aerial dazzle, his imaginary, older alter-ego.
Darling also slyly cheats a bit and saves for the curtain call the kind of blowout, razzmatazz, spectacle tap-and-pop ensemble finish so crucial to the stage musical--he's having his cake and serving the customers a jam-packed, omnibus slice. By then, you've been completely won over by the glories of the story, the bittersweet juxtaposition of Billy's artistry and the gloomier fate of those he leaves behind and Darling's wizardry in matching the complex messages of director Stephen Daldry's production with a complex but beguiling dance fusion abundant in entertainment while an intelligent paean to ballet.
Dance fans' alert: don't miss this amazing achievement.
