Billy Elliot
Opening Night: November 13, 2008
Closing: January 8, 2012
Theater: Imperial Theatre
Based on the hit film of the same name, this is the story of a boy who wants to be a ballet dancer, even though his father wants him to box.
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November 14, 2008
After some rocky previews, marred by a sluggish hydraulic set and overly thick accents, "Billy Elliot" opened last night, proving itself the best gift from Britain since Harry Potter.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 13, 2008
Passion, power, and freedom explode from the boy at the center of the musical Billy Elliot whenever he’s allowed – or whenever he allows himself – to take to his feet and express his pain in movement. Born to a family of coal miners in the U.K.’s County Durham, Billy has never known the primal ecstasy of creation in its purest and most elemental state, but once he tastes it he cannot return to the artless world of his birth. It may be a cliché, but for Billy it’s true: He comes alive only when he dances.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 14, 2008
The transfer of musicals from film to Broadway has a spotty history, with carcasses strewn all over Shubert Alley. But "Billy Elliot," the irresistible new show from London, which opened Thursday night, is that rare production – one that brings all the elements together and creates a fresh emotional experience.
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November 13, 2008
Your inner dancer is calling. Its voice, sweet but tough and insistent, pulses in every molecule of the new Broadway musical “Billy Elliot,” demanding that you wake up sleeping fantasies of slipping on tap or ballet shoes and soaring across a stage. Few people may have the gift of this show’s title character, a coal miner’s son in northern England who discovers he was born to pirouette. But the seductive, smashingly realized premise of “Billy Elliot,” which opened Thursday night at the Imperial Theater, is that everybody has the urge. And in exploring that urge among the population of a down-at-heels coal town suffering through the British miners’ strike of the mid-1980s, this show both artfully anatomizes and brazenly exploits the most fundamental and enduring appeal of musicals themselves.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 24, 2008
Sure, this adaptation of the 2000 film about a coal miner’s son struggling to realize his dreams of ballet glory is already an established hit in London. There, its plot — set in Northern England in the 1980s, when those in Billy’s dad’s line of work were doing battle with Margaret Thatcher — resonated with audiences accustomed to a more rigid class structure and thus less likely to take social mobility for granted.
READ THE REVIEWNovember 24, 2008
It’s not often that a musical comes along that is as ambitious as it is emotional — and then succeeds on both counts. But "Billy Elliot," which opened Thursday at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, is an exceptional work that exemplifies what the best musicals are all about: collaboration. Everything comes together in this impressive, warmhearted adaptation of the 2000 British film about a North Country coal miner’s young son who yearns to dance and join the Royal Ballet School in London.
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January 26, 2010
“Billy Elliot: The Musical” is the real deal: a truly compelling and absolutely spectacular theatrical experience destined to be a smash hit. Easily the best British musical since “Les Miz,” it feels appropriate that it is playing at the Imperial Theatre, once home to that long running musical. Simply put, you cannot miss it.
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November 24, 2008
Three-and-a-half years may seem a long time for an instantaneous London smash like "Billy Elliot: The Musical" to cross the Atlantic, but the delay looks to have played serendipitously into the producers’ hands. With unemployment figures soaring and the economy in the dumps, the zeitgeist could hardly be more attuned to the stirring story of a Northern England miner’s son liberated from bleak reality by his passion for ballet. But even without that happy accident of timing, American audiences would have no trouble connecting with the universal sentiment of this bittersweet dual celebration of community and individuality.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
Your inner dancer is calling. Its voice, sweet but tough and insistent, pulses in every molecule of the new Broadway musical “Billy Elliot,” demanding that you wake up sleeping fantasies of slipping on tap or ballet shoes and soaring across a stage. Few people may have the gift of this show’s title character, a coal miner’s son in northern England who discovers he was born to pirouette. But the seductive, smashingly realized premise of “Billy Elliot,” which opened Thursday night at the Imperial Theater, is that everybody has the urge. And in exploring that urge among the population of a down-at-heels coal town suffering through the British miners’ strike of the mid-1980s, this show both artfully anatomizes and brazenly exploits the most fundamental and enduring appeal of musicals themselves.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
Sure, this adaptation of the 2000 film about a coal miner’s son struggling to realize his dreams of ballet glory is already an established hit in London. There, its plot — set in Northern England in the 1980s, when those in Billy’s dad’s line of work were doing battle with Margaret Thatcher — resonated with audiences accustomed to a more rigid class structure and thus less likely to take social mobility for granted.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
It’s not often that a musical comes along that is as ambitious as it is emotional — and then succeeds on both counts. But "Billy Elliot," which opened Thursday at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, is an exceptional work that exemplifies what the best musicals are all about: collaboration. Everything comes together in this impressive, warmhearted adaptation of the 2000 British film about a North Country coal miner’s young son who yearns to dance and join the Royal Ballet School in London.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
“Billy Elliot: The Musical” is the real deal: a truly compelling and absolutely spectacular theatrical experience destined to be a smash hit. Easily the best British musical since “Les Miz,” it feels appropriate that it is playing at the Imperial Theatre, once home to that long running musical. Simply put, you cannot miss it.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
Three-and-a-half years may seem a long time for an instantaneous London smash like "Billy Elliot: The Musical" to cross the Atlantic, but the delay looks to have played serendipitously into the producers’ hands. With unemployment figures soaring and the economy in the dumps, the zeitgeist could hardly be more attuned to the stirring story of a Northern England miner’s son liberated from bleak reality by his passion for ballet. But even without that happy accident of timing, American audiences would have no trouble connecting with the universal sentiment of this bittersweet dual celebration of community and individuality.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
AFTER some rocky previews, marred by a sluggish hydraulic set and overly thick accents, "Billy Elliot" opened last night, proving itself the best gift from Britain since Harry Potter.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2014
Elton John’s stage musical Billy Elliot, like the hero at its center, is a rough-around-the-edges charmer with talent and ambition to spare, one that grabs you by the scruff of your neck (and your heartstrings) and will not let go until the final curtain.
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April 22, 2014
Anyone feeling curmudgeonly about Billy Elliot: The Musical, now at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre, could take exception to the time it expends picking up dramatic steam or to the indisputably effective but surprisingly traditional Elton John-Lee Hall score or to the couple of seemingly redundant production numbers that stretch the proceedings to the kind of length that often tests children’s — and some adults’ — attention spans. But one would have to be a true sourpuss to carp about the gangbuster entertainment package that’s finally landed in Manhattan under the scrupulous direction of Stephen Daldry.
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