Billy Elliot on Broadway

I've heard it's being put on hold indefinitely...

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I heard something about the 2007-2008 season...

It would be amazing if it came!

I thought I would hate this show then I bought the cd and fell in love with it!

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What with the current state of things in Toronto, mostly thanks to the Lord of the Rings fiasco, Billy Elliot is likely to go to Chicago instead. However I believe that all plans, right now, are on hold as the Mirvishs attempt to salvage their industry with some higher offers on Elliot.

There have been only two show CD's I've bought that have been collecting dust: "Mack and Mabel" and "Billy Elliot".

I had extraordinarily high hopes for the show after seeing the film but from the beginning of this show with the staging borrowed from "Evita"--a newsreel clip to launch the show--to the musicalization of "Dear Mommy" and Billy's gentile, sweet grandmother (in the film)morphing into an embittered old woman kvetching about her dead abusive husband I found the show misfired on all cylinders.

There are certainly enough BE fans to launch the thing in a big way but I wouldn't at al be surprised if American audiences and critics were not as ovationary as their British counterparts. As a matter of fact, one critic abroad after seeing Grandage's relaunch of "Guys and Dolls" suggested that if "Billy Elliot", by comparison, were the best the Brits could do, West End musical theater was in big trouble.

The American critics already loved BILLY ELLIOT, hawker - Ben Brantley in the New York Times said it was something like the best new musical of the past ten years.

Liam Mower sings on the cast recording.

"The American critics already loved it".

That's not ENTIRELY true. As a matter of fact the New Yorker's review was scathing and it's particularly difficult to find many reviews from this side of the Atlantic.

One reviewer voiced similar concerns to my own:

"Could a show so rooted in a particular region that it requires a dictionary page in the program ever play New York? It’ll take a rewrite, certainly, but much of the material seems strong enough to survive the transplant."

And, as I said, John Lahr, who is not Ben Brantley's spear carrier was unusually brutal in his lack of affection for the show. This quote is from an article discussing American ambivalence concerning the musical:

"It has been hailed as the best musical ever, and had British critics raving over the 'exhilarating' and 'terrific' performances.

But Billy Elliot the Musical has failed to make such a positive impact on the other side of the Atlantic. The New Yorker magazine has launched a scathing attack on the Elton John show, describing it as 'mawkish', 'repetitive' and 'camp'.

The verdict of John Lahr, the senior theatre critic for New York's most influential magazine, could damage the musical's chances of a transfer to Broadway.

In a two-page denunciation of the show, Lahr, who has written 17 books on theatre, dismisses Billy Elliot as being riddled with 'narrative vulgarities', 'thematic bankruptcy' and general 'sloppiness'."

It wasn't long ago that "Jerry Springer the Opera" took down every conceivable award in its category among UK theater critics and in a country where "The Lion King" could still be playing to packed houses while "Ragtime" languishes as road show, I would suggest that the jury is still out on this one.

Good points, Hawker, but John Lahr honestly isn't influential enough a critic to keep a show from transfering or to insure a transfer. ELLIOT is definitely coming to New York. Last I heard it was not going to play Toronto, but was planning on coming straight to Broadway.

No musical is universally loved. But a musical as well crafted, directed, and choreographed should do just fine overall with New York critics.

Lahr has zero power or influence in the NY theatre scene and has become something of a joke in many circles in the last several years with his reviews that are nothing more than rambling facile synopses of plot (that often give away the ending of the play being reviewed) filled with quote after quote of the text and have little in the way of critical analysis. He's grown very lazy over the years and is a prime example of someone who burnt out on his job a decade ago, but is retained simply because of name and reputation. It's quite telling that the editors of the New Yorker are relying more and more on Hilton Als to review major New York theatre openings rather than Lahr -- not sure if Lahr is being gradually pushed out or not, but most people have known for years that if you want to read a coherent, intelligent, incisive theatre review in the New Yorker, you read Als and not Lahr.

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[quote]Hawker: It wasn't long ago that "Jerry Springer the Opera" took down every conceivable award in its category among UK theater critics and in a country where "The Lion King" could still be playing to packed houses while "Ragtime" languishes as road show, I would suggest that the jury is still out on this one.[/quote]

I don't know how someone who professes to love theatre could dare to be so blatantly racist, not to mention downright rude and ill-informed! >:<

So what if you personally dislike Billy Elliott? Is it because it's too 'foreign' for you and you don't think US audiences have the capacity to be stretched? If so, I suggest you are projecting your own shortcomings onto other people. Is your ignorance of other countries a badge of honour for you or something? If you'd expressed your reservations about the show without resorting to cultural stereotyping I'd have given your reservations some consideration: as it is I think you're missing out by not being open to things outside your experience. Either way it's your loss! >:[

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"I don't know how someone who professes to love theatre could dare to be so blatantly racist, not to mention downright rude and ill-informed! >:<"

I have little to add to that than your are either being deliberately obtuse or incapacitated. How does questioning the viability of a Billy Elliot transfer or suggesting that "Ragtime" was--in the purist sense of a book musical--far superior to "The Lion King?" imply racism, especially in light of the fact that "Ragtime" dealt seriously with issues of race and cultural assimilation.

You are seeing prejudice in a place where it does not exist just as Jimmy Swaggert saw decadence and lust in everything and everybody before he was found to be consorting with prostitutes.

I have been an advocate of citizens of other cultures and minoritites against accusations of everything from defamation to murder and I have found it almost infallibly reliable that when one human being trots out the race card, it is the accuser that has the problem and not the accused.

Updated On: 8/20/06 at 07:09 PM