BILLY ELLIOTT WORST MUSICAL EVER?- Page 2

[Chloe]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 7:11pm

I see your point, Mister Matt, and of course you're right, but this show seems to inspire kind of extreme reactions either way. In the link below to some theater patrons' reviews, most of them give it either 5 stars or 1 star.
BE Reviews

[cturtle]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 9:02pm

well, everyone knows my opinion by now. i'm delighted that i was one of the first to see the show, and i'm sure it's just gotten better. the performance of the kid who played billy ALONE was worth the price of admission!

[Borstalboy]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 9:12pm

Elton John Musical=Avoid

[Caroline-Q-or-TBoo]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 9:15pm

i LOVE BILLY ELLIOT and have faith in this musical but John has me worried cuze i hate hate hated Aida.

[LouW95]

Posted: 5/1/05 at 9:50pm

From my many reliable theater friends in London - I have heard nothing but wonderful reviews of Billy Elliot. These opinions came from a variety of very experienced as well as diversified types of theatregoers. Perhaps, Ajax is too anti-Elton or too much into the looks of the actors to be fair???

Here is part of an article in Variety about the show's buzz...

Is 'Billy' Broadway-bound?
Long preview period allowed tuner to grow in London

By MATT WOLF

LONDON -- As "Billy Elliot -- The Musical" enters the final stretches of the longest preview period in West End history, its creators are sounding confident about a London success while, for the moment, unsure about a Broadway transfer.
"I'm so pleased we did it this way," says John Finn of Working Title, the film company co-producing the tunertuner with Old Vic Prods.

What "way" is that?

Namely, to give the £5.5 million ($10.5 million) musical adaptation of the Oscar-nommed film nearly six weeks to settle in before folding critics into the mix May 11.

The advance stands around the $6 million mark, with capacity running at 97% in the 1,520-seat Victoria Palace Theater. (Tuner breaks even around the 60% mark.)

"We have been altering and refining the show quite substantially," says Finn, referring to "a quantum leap from the show we first opened." That initial preview was March 31, a week later than the original March 24 start date.

The delay was to allow the three boys alternating the title roletitle role to develop their chops. "The kids just needed more time onstage," says Finn. "They were knackered."

Changes, meanwhile, continue apace: The finale, for instance, only went in at the April 20 perfperf.

A long rollout allows for all sorts of informal assessments, which can be good and bad. "Billy," unusually, has generated positive buzz from the start, getting an early thumbs-up from Daily Mail columnist Baz Bamigboye ("a dazzling 40-carat gem of a show") and a full-page encomium from Evening Standard writer Nick Curtis in the April 22 edition.

"Already, the stage show created by director Stephen Daldry and writer Lee Hall, with the music composed by Elton John, shows a caustic vigor and audacity that go beyond the original film," Curtis wrote.

The same paper is all but making a media sensation of the youngest of the Billys, 12-year-old Liam Mower, who got a two-page feature to himself in the Standard's Thursday listings magazine.
Updated On: 5/1/05 at 09:50 PM