Billy Elliot

I watched Billy Elliot last Thursday over spring break. It's pretty funny that the reason that I ended up getting able to watch it was because I told my hairdresser in the Philippines that Billy Elliot the Musical was showing in Chicago, and he told me that I should definitely watch it, especially since it got good reviews and won a lot of awards (even though he hadn't watched it himself).

I thought it was a great musical. I mean, I've watched a lot of musicals over the years and I felt that it had the best choreography out of all of them. The dance sequences combined different genres of dance--rock, tap, ballet--such dance (as a whole) was a subtext on its own that supported and expanded on the main plot of the musical. I felt that for me, the dancing eclipsed the singing component of the play (although this may also be because the songs were all new and unfamiliar to me).

Compared to the movie, which I last watched about 5 years ago, I think that the play focused a lot more on the union strike of the coal workers in Britain (unlike the movie, which depicted the strike as more of a side-story). The change--or I suppose redirection--of focus added a layer of depth to the tension between Billy and his family, because the money that Billy needed to go to ballet school was hard to come by during the time of the strike, and so it was a touching scene when the union workers who were trying to make both ends meet collectively contributed money so that Billy could go to London and audition for the Royal Ballet School.

In any case, I would recommend watching this musical.