Review: Billy Elliot
Empowering Billy Elliot
After the premiere of Billy Elliot, the Helsinki City Theatre (HKT) can be congratulated on yet another successful musical interpretation. The Finnish audience can also be congratulated on the fact that the work, which premiered in London in 2005, will finally be seen on the Finnish stage.
Before the premiere of HKT, I watched both the original version, the film made in 2000, and the recording of the London musical made last year, and it wouldn’t be hard to watch the work for the fourth time.
Billy Elliot gives energy and encourages you to believe in yourself and your dreams, and that people basically have good will towards each other. The joy, ecstasy and sense of freedom of Billy’s dance is transferred to the viewer as an empowering experience.
The musical also has dramatic music that resonates with the moods of Elton John’s text.
Billy Elliot is a coming-of-age story about a 12-year-old boy who searches for the coordinates of his own life in a small English town in the mid-1980s. In the midst of coal miners’ strikes, riots and poverty, Billy secretly swaps boxing training from his father and brother for ballet classes and plans to apply to the Royal Ballet School.
In the mining community, a career as a ballet dancer is not an everyman’s dream, and Billy also has to fight against prejudice. Fortunately, best friend Michael is not a normal case either, and encouragement comes from the dance teacher.
Billy Elliot carries the message of individuality and being oneself without forgetting the community. Despite the contradictions, they are not mutually exclusive: people need both their own strength and courage as well as the support of the community. Solidarity is one of the main themes of the musical, and I would like to see its appreciation increase in real reality as well.
Billy Elliot is also a defense of art, which sometimes has to take its place by force, but which is always present. This is impressively crystallized in the scene where dance school students train between miners and policemen. The set design also reflects nicely how dreary and run-down life would be without art that detaches itself from everyday life – why not even from the surface of the earth.
Director-choreographer Markku Nenonen has both the eye and the heart to see into the core of the work.
The choreography as a whole is not quite as lively as in the London version, but in places it is more insightful than its predecessor.
For example, Self-Expression, which begins as a duet between Billy and Michael, turns into a carnival of personal characters, which is much more profound than the giant skirts and pants of the British version. Nenonen’s dance is also more diverse than that of the English, whose many choreographies rely on tap.
Most roles have double or triple casting. At the premiere, Billy Elliot was played by the natural and skilled Lassi Hirvonen, who seemed to enjoy every second. She has the radiance that the dance teacher, Mrs. Wilkinson, sings after. Kasperi Virta, who played Michael, was also captivatingly genuine.
I also liked Jonna Järnefelt’s strict but heartfelt Mrs. Wilkinson and Leena Uotila’s dignified, goofy grandma. The duet between young and adult Billy to the music of Swan Lake is one of the highlights of the performance, which is crowned by the virtuosity of Antti Keinänen, a principal dancer from the Finnish National Ballet.
If the numerous applause and exclamations from the premiere audience and the standing ovations are anything to go by, the musical’s tickets are selling like hot stones.
IRMELI HAAPANEN