#1
Posted: 11/13/08 at 4:10pm
B+ from Entertainment Weekly, which reviewed Kiril:
"Also flourishing are the on-stage performers. Haydn Gwynne plays a suitably disillusioned ballet instructor reawakened by Billy's talent; Gregory Jbara portrays Billy's dad as both gruff and loving; and Carole Shelley makes a showy turn as the hero's sweet but steely-cored grandma. Which brings us to Billy, a role shared by three youngsters (Kiril Kulish, an incredible dancer with a passable singing voice, rotates with Trent Kowalik and David Alvarez). No offense to Patti LuPone or any of the other divas of the Great White Way, but this is the single most challenging role on a Broadway stage right now. The actor must perform long, highly aerobic dance routines in nearly every other scene and only seems to slip off stage to change costumes. On the evidence so far, these young show-stoppers are nailing it.
Billy Elliot is by no means perfect. Like the original London production, it is still too long (with a seemingly endless curtain call). Some numbers are less melodically compelling ('He Could Go and He Could Shine'), and some scenes are awkwardly staged. But the ideas that work here — and there are many — work magnificently, whether it's presenting the striking miners and the police as opposing choruses or the moving second-act pas de deux with Billy and his older self (New York City Ballet vet Stephen Hanna). In such moments, the potential of Billy Elliot, both character and show, seems both boundless and fully realized. In tough economic times that seem eerily similar to 1980s Britain, in fact, it's easy to imagine projecting all of our recession-weary hopes onto the slender shoulders of a precociously gifted pre-teen boy."
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20240252,00.html
"Also flourishing are the on-stage performers. Haydn Gwynne plays a suitably disillusioned ballet instructor reawakened by Billy's talent; Gregory Jbara portrays Billy's dad as both gruff and loving; and Carole Shelley makes a showy turn as the hero's sweet but steely-cored grandma. Which brings us to Billy, a role shared by three youngsters (Kiril Kulish, an incredible dancer with a passable singing voice, rotates with Trent Kowalik and David Alvarez). No offense to Patti LuPone or any of the other divas of the Great White Way, but this is the single most challenging role on a Broadway stage right now. The actor must perform long, highly aerobic dance routines in nearly every other scene and only seems to slip off stage to change costumes. On the evidence so far, these young show-stoppers are nailing it.
Billy Elliot is by no means perfect. Like the original London production, it is still too long (with a seemingly endless curtain call). Some numbers are less melodically compelling ('He Could Go and He Could Shine'), and some scenes are awkwardly staged. But the ideas that work here — and there are many — work magnificently, whether it's presenting the striking miners and the police as opposing choruses or the moving second-act pas de deux with Billy and his older self (New York City Ballet vet Stephen Hanna). In such moments, the potential of Billy Elliot, both character and show, seems both boundless and fully realized. In tough economic times that seem eerily similar to 1980s Britain, in fact, it's easy to imagine projecting all of our recession-weary hopes onto the slender shoulders of a precociously gifted pre-teen boy."
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20240252,00.html
