Set against the miner coal strike in London in the 1940s, against the cruel time of Maggie Thatcher, this emotional but inspirational story is about a boy named Billy who haas a passion of ballet.
Billy Eliot was played by the phenomenal Cameron Levesque. At just ten years old, he portrays the character really well. And not to mention his dancing skills. There a scene where Mrs. Wilkinson, convinces Billy’s dad, which is played by the wonderful Jonathan Champion, to send him to The Royal Ballet School, Jackie, Billy’s dad, is having non of it. Billy then gets really mad, and storms into a dance which is referred to the “Angry Dance”. It is literally four minutes of Billy just thrashing his body and throwing his body this way and that. It is really well done. There's another number in Act 2 called "Electricity". This is at the audition for The Royal Ballet School, after Jackie lets Billy go. Billy performs this number excipoanally well, and you might call this number a showstopper.
At the helm of this production is the brilliant Skylar Grossman. Just seeing the way he directs is amazing! He blocks it in such a way that is wonderful to watch.
There are definitely some funny woments in the show, and there are some moments that will make you cry.
There was nothing wrong with this production Weston Drama put on this summer, but how does it compare to the production I saw at Wheelock Family Theatre in February. This production was not as elaborate. Now I'm not saying anything bad about the production today, but Wheelock's set was more elaborate, you might say. And of course Weston only had the summer to pull this off, whereas Wheelock had professional actors and much more time to rehearse.
All in all, the production was great. As a BE fan (I wasn't one before this, but now Im a fan), I was really satisfied.
No comments:
Post a Comment