NEW YORK — "Billy Elliot: The Musical," the stage version of Stephen Daldry's heartwarming movie about an 11-year-old lad who dons a pair of ballet slippers in defiance of his coal-mining father's cramped notions of masculinity, confirms a truth that really didn't need confirming after "Mamma Mia!" -- there's a thin line between a mega-hit and a mega-mediocrity.
A smash in London ever since its West End premiere in 2005, "Billy Elliot" arrives at the Imperial Theatre with its parts intact but its spirit plasticized and pasted with glitter. This global theatrical phenomenon, which has already spawned a cash cow in Australia, might be considered a landmark in one unenviable respect: Broadway finally has in its over-hyped midst a major opening of road-show quality. (OK, provinces, cut the snickering.)
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday, November 15, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
'Billy Elliot': A review in Friday's Calendar section of "Billy Elliot" on Broadway misspelled the surname of the actress who plays Mrs. Wilkinson. It is Haydn Gwynne, not Gwynee.
In London, "Billy Elliot" managed to capitalize on its stirring saga to overcome Elton John's insipid pop-rock score and Lee Hall's clunky book and shopworn lyrics. Daldry's direction may have been slick in all the usual ways of the modern-day musical machine, but it never shortchanged the story's emotional core. I left the theater dry-eyed yet secretly softened. And even as I shuddered on the Tube back to my hotel at different aspects of the faulty artistry (laugh lines that pleaded like a television audience warmup, musical numbers that were eerily reminiscent of Ethel Merman's disco album), the memory glowed with tender excitement.
In New York, the innocence isn't just overshadowed by bells and whistles -- it gets mugged by them. The poor motherless Elliot home doesn't stand a chance against all the bullying showmanship. But equally problematic is the way the cast never coalesces into a believable North England family suffering in the mid-1980s under Margaret Thatcher's union-busting rule.
Graceful dancer
David Alvarez, the Billy I caught (there are three), is an absolute marvel of balletic grace. The poise of his movement is mesmerizing, and the way his eyes blaze with desire to attain perfect physical form sheds light on his character's uphill quest. You can't help cheering for him, even as you wish his acting (on par with a dance double) was as confident as his arabesque.
Gregory Jbara vividly portrays Billy's bruising dad, a worn-out mine worker who doesn't mind doling out precious spare change for after-school boxing lessons but goes absolutely ballistic when he catches his kid prancing around with a gaggle of tutus. Jbara shows us the strain of a widower struggling to be both mother and father to a boy at a time when the local economy is undermining his status as breadwinner. But their relationship is always more plotted than personal.
