Billy Elliot is obviously a crowd pleaser, and with good reason. But there is not much substance underneath all the sugary treats.
Currently playing at the Canon Theatre through July, the Mirvish production is based on a charming film of the same name, directed by the same man (Stephen Daldry) who directed the film, with book and lyrics by Lee Hall, who wrote the screenplay. And its music was written by Elton John, who also wrote the music for The Lion King.
I went to see Billy Elliot hoping and expecting to love it, and while I was certainly wowed by the choreography and several scenes, and often moved to tears (seeing a child trying to escape poverty through his gift of dance, and being sung to by his dead mother are pretty well irresistible), minutes after the standing ovation I felt a great letdown, as if I ate too much cotton candy and suffered from sugar shock.
The musical lacks a single memorable tune (at least Elton John’s Lion King score had “The Circle of Life”). In addition, the placing of one lad’s story against the backdrop of Maggie Thatcher’s destruction of the U.K.’s mining industry and the long, painful strike of 1984-1985, seemed sentimental and superficial.
Dear readers, I am no spoil-sport, and I have no desire to urge people not to see it. The young actor/dancer (one of four) who played the title character the night I saw it, Marcus Pei, was excellent, and his exhausting, emotional “Electricity” dance half-way through the second act is stunning. But as I walked out of the gorgeous Canon Theatre, a famous Nathan Cohen moment came to my memory.
It was when Cohen, Canada’s greatest theatre critic was once challenged by someone after he panned a wildly popular musical in the late 1960s. “Do you mean to say that the millions who loved Brigadoon are wrong and you are right?” Cohen smiled, murmured, “Yes,” and walked off. Billy Elliot is an undeniably entertaining evening of theatre, music and dance, but shortly thereafter, I was hungry for something more substantial.
For more information go to www.mirvish.com.
Soulpepper offers stunning Dream
While I approached Billy Elliot with hope and cheer, I was a bit concerned as I walked to my seat at Soulpepper’s theatre.
Soulpepper’s productions are usually superb, but can a solid actor such as Rick Roberts direct such a complex, poetic comedy as Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream?
I left the theatre two hours later on a high and with a deepening respect for the company. The opening and closing scenes of actors playing eerie music on bells, accordion, violins and flute are haunting and powerful; the hundreds of difficult rhyming couplets of The Bard have rarely been handled and spoken so exquisitely and Gregory Prest’s crafty Puck and Oliver Dennis’s uproarious Bottom are unforgettable and near-perfection.
Many of Shakespeare’s most famous lines are in this great comedy, yet you may feel as if you are hearing them for the first time.
The post-dream acting of a death scene by the vulgar “mechanics” — as a celebration for all the weddings at the end — is the best, most wildly comical I have ever seen.
What an ideal way to introduce young students — and your preteens — to Shakespeare!
For more information go to www.soulpepper.ca.
Allan Gould is Post City’s theatre critic. Read more of his reviews online at www.postcity.com.