Billy Elliot fails to inspire despite solid performances

Billy Elliot the Musical Broadway Across Canada National Arts Centre Southam Hall Reviewed Tuesday, Jan. 1 T he story of Billy Elliot should clutch your imagination and never let go.

After all, it’s about underdogs — and who doesn’t cheer for an underdog? — including young Billy who’s born into a coal mining family but who wants to be a ballet dancer, and miners who aspire to a better life but, trapped in the corrosive economic cauldron of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, have no choice but to strike.

The multi-award-winning musical also spotlights those ever-precious themes of individuality, persistence, family and community.

Just the kind of ingredients that you’d think would make your blood boil when the good guys are ill-treated and warm the cockles of your heart when they luck out.

What’s more, the touring production currently at the NAC features some solid performances including, on opening night, the talented Ben Cook as young, motherless Billy (Cook shares the role with three other actors) and Craig Bennett as Billy’s burly dad who’s initially horrified that his son wants to join the ballet but eventually comes around.

Also on board: Patti Perkins as Billy’s feisty, albeit caricatured, Grandma, Janet Dickinson as Mrs. Wilkinson, the rough-and-tumble dance teacher who spots and nurtures Billy’s potential, and a raft of other capable performers.

Heck, there’s even music by Elton John — although that doesn’t automatically make it memorable music — to accompany Lee Hall’s book and lyrics and Peter Darling’s choreography (Hall also wrote the screenplay for the original 2000 movie while Stephen Daldry directed both the movie and the musical). Despite all this, the current production of the inspirational show is less than inspirational.

That’s especially so in the first half where, outside of a funny/poignant scene in which Grandma recalls her younger days to the tune We’d Go Dancing, the emotional register barely rises above tepid. Case in point: the song Dear Billy, a flight of Billy’s imagination in which his dead mother appears to show him her undying love and encouragement.

Meant to make the heart sing, it’s flatter than the accents of those north-ofEngland miners.

And while the big production number Solidarity finds beefy miners and police officers dancing with young, tutu-wearing ballet students in energetic and amusing fashion, the fact that you wonder exactly why they’re doing so does blunt the impact of the spectacle.

That, in fact, is the principal problem with this production. Despite the cast’s hard work, strong voices and, especially in the case of Cook, spot-on dancing, the production is simply not powerful enough to rise above the spectacle to touch our hearts.

That’s notably true in the post-intermission scene in which young Billy and an older dancer (Christopher M. Howard), who represents the performer Billy hopes to become, dance together.

It’s a lovely, well-choreographed piece until the older dancer clips a cable to Billy so that, like his dreams, he can soar above the stage of the quotidian. Then it becomes simply dumb, deflating the scene with clunky staginess that this company can’t rise above.

And while Bennett as Billy’s father has a fine, moving turn as he recalls his beloved dead wife in Deep into the Ground, other parts of the production, including the cloying cuteness of the young ballet students, quickly grow tiresome.

It’s a shame that the production falls short. Like the striking miners who, initially scornful of Billy’s ballet ambitions, sacrifice the little cash they have to help send him to ballet school, the show should make us want to rally round the cause of all that’s good and pure and artful.

Dance, Mrs. Wilkinson tells Billy, is not just about “the steps.” In this case, that’s mostly what it is.

Continues until Jan. 6. Tickets: NAC box office, 1-888-9912787, ticketmaster.ca.