Culture junkie for a day

Billy Elliot- The Musical, 14th September 2005

At last a musical that doesn’t sound like an ALW cheese fest. At last a musical that genuinely represents the working classes and doesn’t patronise or condescend. Billy Elliot: the musical is a joyful and exuberant exploration of love, death and genderbending during the 1980s miner’s strike.

The eighties were an extraordinary era in which people still believed that ordinary people could make a difference to the way the country was run. Being being labour or conservative really meant something and politicians weren’t afraid to speak their mind and declare themselves wholeheartedly for or against something (CND anyone). They were much more polarised times, with more passionate, seat of the pants, politics.

The music soaks all this history up and reflects it brilliantly. Particular tunes don’t stick out in the way an audience fed on a diet of The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins or Evita might be used to (there's no balcony scene for starters), but the whole piece is much more that the sum of its parts; and has a lot more to offer. Billy Elliot: the musical is a bit like a socialist rock-opera and watching it even performed the minor miracle of making me think Elton John (who wrote it) an ok kinda guy (but I still don't like his solo stuff).

The overall impression is one of rabble-rousing grandeur and vitality, with its cocksure young actors stealing the show (apart from the dotty old granny played by an actress I'm sure I recognised from the classic eighties kids show Metal Mickey- very appropriate).

Ultimately, any musical that has Maggie Thatcher’s head on a stick and lyrics such as '“Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher, we celebrate today ’cos it’s one day closer to your death”, is pretty sure to win my vote. Oh and for the ladies there is a rather lithe (adult) male dancer that appears towards the end wearing little more than a snugly-fitting pair of tights. V. nice vicar.