Musical - Billy Elliot

It really feels like I am on such a lucky run of musicals at the moment. After we saw Matilda, John texted one of his friends who likes musicals and as we were all teachers we decided to meet up in the Easter holidays for some West End Action.  Billy Elliot was what we had in mind and after some to-ing and fro-ing around Leicester Square, we ended up at the half price ticket booth with 3 stalls tickets for the matinee.

We had a lovely lunch at Honest Burger and walked through the very snowy blizzard (yes on April 4th, Easter holiday) to get the tube to Victoria.  There was lots of rebuilding work going on at Victoria and I thought the theatre looked so funny standing there on its own.  Though I also felt kinda proud for it, that it was worthy of staying standing!

We settled into out seats to enjoy the show.  I had been to see it while I was at uni and remembered enjoying it.  I remember being very impressed with Billy, I remember the whole audience sniffing after the letter song and I remember the bed moving up and down.  I realised as it started that that was all I really remembered and that wasn't very much!

The number where Billy and Michael were trying on his Mum's clothing was brilliant.  Michael had such confidence and stole that bit of the show.  There was then a bit where these 7 foot high dresses danced around them and that's when I realised how little I remembered as that seemed sure to be a stand out.

Just as Billy was building up for his big dance number at the end of the first half where he is angry with the injustice of something... and he ran off the side of the stage then a stage man all dressed in black walked on saying there was a technical difficulty and they would be breaking for the interval.  This made me feel odd as at lunchtime we had been talking about that happening and I couldn't remember the circumstances but as we all turned to face each other excitedly it turned out that the time we had been talking about was the last time our friend had been to see Billy Elliot!  A coincidence??  We speculated for a long time.  The second half continued and we never did see that number.

There were lots of other good bits though. I much more enjoyed Billy's swan lake dance with the 'older billy' - especially the flying bit which i didn't remember from before.  Definitely made me feel different inside.  Then of course there was the letter number where the tears collected in my big jumper neck.  I was cross with myself as I had reassured myself earlier in the day that I had tissues for this moment but then I had left them inaccessible in my bag!  I had them on my lap for the second half and was ready for the reprise which I felt I could feel the audiences reaction more.  Then 'electricity' was really good.  I like the combination of the singing and the dancing music.

On the bus on the way home, I read the entire wikipedia article on the mining strike as it really felt such a disturbing issue.  Back home we also watched several Billy Elliot youtube videos including a three parter about the staging of the second US tour!