Review: Billy Elliot

Dancing Hope

Billy Elliot is a compelling and smarter musical than usual

Per aspera ad astra. Through difficulties to victory. An old proverb has served as an encouragement to many people. It is also the basic message of many books, films, plays and musicals. The story of a talented young person who pursues his dream despite the difficulties of the community is a basic story, an empowering archetype that is diligently recycled in various variations, especially in popular culture.

One of the best examples of this theme is Billy Elliot. It is originally a blockbuster movie that has been turned into a blockbuster musical. Up to 10 million people are said to have seen it already. Now Billy Elliot can be seen in Finnish as a rather compelling performance at the Helsinki City Theatre.

Actually, Billy Elliot is a more complex basic story than usual about the beginning of a dancer’s journey. The events are based on a bitter mining strike in Britain in the 1980s.

Billy’s mother has died. He lives with his grandmother and his father and brother who work in the mine. Billy does boxing, as the boys of the working-class town are supposed to do. However, Billy is not at all enthusiastic about it.

By chance, Billy stays to watch a girls’ ballet class and gets excited about dancing. This leads to a conflict with a family that doesn’t value dancing a penny. It is considered to be the job of feminine men in terms of attitude. At the same time, a strike that started with the privatization of mines begins. These are the toughest times of Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberalism.

Billy’s path to stardom begins with a social upheaval. The mining industry is collapsing, the entire industry and mining communities are disappearing. Billy pushes forward and the community finally sees Billy’s struggle as a symbol of a better future and gives their support.

At the end of the play, Billy leaves for the Royal Ballet School in London – pardon the plot reveal – and Billy’s father and brother and other miners take an elevator to the depths of the earth, like hell and damnation. The symbolism is unusually clear. An individual must pursue his or her own path.

Billy Elliot also has child actors and three different casts. In the performance I saw, the main role was played by Amos Brotherus and his great friend Kasperi Virta. Music composed by Elton John will be heard on stage. Directed by Markku Nenonen, the performance is energetic and touching, in other words, everything you could wish for in a musical.

There has been public talk about Billy Elliot’s use of language. True, there is a lot of swearing and ugly words (not the worst, though) are said as they are. This is probably intended to underline the working-class way of speaking in the mining community of the 1980s. Whether it is necessary in today’s Finland is up to the viewer to decide.

I wasn’t bothered by the language. The age recommendation for the performance is 10 years and up. However, it is not a children’s play, even though the main character is a child.