Billy will return to Hamburg, Germany in 2020!!

[robir]

Exiting news everybody! Billy is coming back to Hamburg in 2020!! The official website, made for it's run in Hamburg during the UK/Ireland Tour by Mehr! Entertainment, changed. Instead of saying that the show is over it now says that Billy will be coming back to Germany in 2020. They don't provide any other details but suggest you to subscribe to their newsletter and follow them on their social media. Hope you all are enjoying these news as much as I am! Check the website out for yourself: http://billy-elliot.hamburg

Greetings from Hamburg, Germany!

ps. Yes this is my first post.

[accessmenj]

Thanks, robir, for cheering me up with this news. And welcome to your first post of many in this forum.

[Real Geordie]

Very interesting news which raises many questions. Will it be a German language production with a local cast, (similar problems to the Netherlands with restrictions on child actor hours) or as before an extension to a UK tour - or even a wider European tour ? Taking into account the very lengthy audition, casting and rehearsal timescale involved something should be starting to move already or soon. How long before the grapevine starts to rustle ! I still watch this clip from time to time as a reminder of my visit to Hamburg. Greetings from UK to Billy fans in Hamburg !

https://www.facebook.com/MehrTheateramG ... 249765856/

[Then I saw her face]

It appears to be a tour production. Kulturhuset in Stockholm states that BETM will return in autumn 2020.

http://kulturhusetstadsteatern.se/Teate ... ly-Elliot/

[Real Geordie]

The fact that the productions in Hamburg and Stockholm are both scheduled for 2020 may be a coincidence. The press release from November last year (just discovered !) makes reference to a collaboration with BASE23, a Stockholm based dance school. The original production in Malmo/Stockholm was an interpretation with a Swedish cast, not a replica production, and the continued involvement with BASE23 suggests a repeat of this format.

http://kulturhusetstadsteatern.se/Press ... -tillbaka/ - extracted details below

“PRESS RELEASE 2017-11-24

In the fall of 2020, Billy Elliot will be back and will be the first premiere …….after the move. The new premier will be in collaboration with the dance school BASE23.”

Further developments awaited !

[jtsw1]

This seems strange. My guess is it will be a German production (and this can't be anything else than painful to watch for a German native-speaker and a devoted "anglophile"...) - I just can't think of any other reasonable explanation. But let's hope for the best (another UK tour).

[atreyu]

I, too, harbor excitement and concern for this return to Hamburg. It is fantastic to see there are signs of revival, but very curious to see it is at the same stage. When BETM played the Mehr! Theater, it was with a highly experienced cast and crew, operating at the very top of their game. Watching the video of the finale again brings back the fond memories, but also begs the question of whether a new production at the same theatre can match that level. To do less invites the snap judgment "Not as good as the first time". But perhaps by 2020, any Billy will be much better than no Billy. Hoping for the best as well.

[Real Geordie]

Just a final thought, and then I will keep quiet until there is some more factual information provided. On reflection the notification states that Billy is coming back to Germany, not specifically Hamburg. This theatre/concert group has venues in Hamburg, Bochum, Berlin, Düsseldorf and Cologne. Maybe the run in Hamburg was a toe in the water to see what the audience reaction was. There was a promotional event in Berlin prior to the start of the Hamburg run - odd ? This could well be a tour across Germany lasting a number of months. Still leaves the door open for either a local production or an extended UK tour.

[Sheffan]

Firstly, warm regards to Real Geordie, Atreyu and Ben Muller amongst others of whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Hamburg last summer. I'll certainly be over to see any German revival production. I was made to feel very welcome, there were many handshakes from audience members who seemed to be aware that I was a regular follower of that tour.

All the scenarios discussed above seem to me to be very feasible. A few points - I detect no great clamour from German fans or media for a German language version, for them the English aspect is part of it's authenticity. Also a German tour might run into the child labour issues discussed at length previously. Does anyone know if UK born child stars would be also be subjected to these restrictions?

That said, a German tour seems more likely than a static production, as I assume audiences all over Germany would react in a similar way to the Hamburg one. Also, Mehr Entertainment seem to me to be a very enthusiastic and competent promoter of this show. Some of the promo videos and TV appearances made for Hamburg seem to be much more natural and relatively unscripted compared to what was the case for the UK media.

I tend to think that Mehr will probably be strongly in favour of a "replica production"

If the proposed tour is indeed in English, children will likely be trained in the UK and/or the USA for this production. This lends itself to UK and non-UK dates and venues before, during or after a German tour. (I know Mamma Mia did a tour before its current one, where UK tour stops were visited in between two mainland Europe dates).

Maybe the set used in any new tour in Germany or the UK will be the same one from the 2016/17 tour and I'm guessing it would also be used for any West End revival as no gutting of the stage would be required. I'll also assume any new tour will follow the Broadway version, although I've noticed in the recent Far East revivals, Michael's dresses are like the West End ones. Apparently storing theatrical sets commercially is very expensive according to Cameron Mackintosh. He gets round this by storing them for his own shows in a hanger at his Somerset dairy farm!!

Regarding speculation about a new UK tour. I think it is a case of when not if. Tom Bainbridge said as such in his video blog of Hamburg. Also the tour website is still open, albeit in a rather dormant state - the sites sends a message to my browser, saying the tour has finished but advises fans to keep tracking the show's official social media. Looking at a sort of average over a number of successful West End shows I am familar with, a second tour typically follows about 4 years after the first, but then takes about another 8-10 years to do a third. West End revivals tend to be anything from 5 to 15 years after the original closure, tending to run for at least 3 months, but rarely does this exceed 2 years. It is interesting to note that South Korea is enjoying a BETM revival around 7 years after the first run.

I'm having great fun following the Miss Saigon tour (10 cities and 9 theatres in common with the BETM tour) which has its final night on UK soil at Sunderland Empire this November - I'll be there. It then heads off for a final couple of months at Theatre 11, Zurich. The Saigon tour is currently in Southampton at the Mayflower - I'm there this Tuesday 6th March and I hear that it is suffering the "curse of Southampton" just as BETM did - for fans not familiar - many members of this forum have noted audiences seem to be much less enthusiastic here than in other cities.

I occasionally see the Blood Brothers tour (seemingly endless) and have made, or will be making, one-off visits to the tours of Cilla, Evita, Mamma Mia and Sunset Boulevard. The fourth Les Mis UK tour will start this November at the Curve, Leicester.

Please could as many people as possible contribute to this thread? Feel free to differ, but lets keep up this forum's cordial reputation.

[atreyu]

Apparently storing theatrical sets commercially is very expensive according to Cameron Mackintosh. He gets round this by storing them for his own shows in a hanger at his Somerset dairy farm!!

Now that gives new meaning to the phrase "Mrs. Wilkinson is a right cow"! I forget exactly which sets had this, not all of them did.

Anyway, I am hoping we can once again lift a pint in a post-show Billy celebration somewhere in Germany, it will forever be a fond shared memory at the end of the UK Tour with Sheffan, Real Geordie and Ben. It's just that my best guess is that the widest appeal for a Germany revival would be a German-language production. Ich studiert Deutsch nur zwei jahre. Sehr klein Wortschatz. (Only 2 years of studying German, very small vocabulary).