Saturday 1st May 2010 - Evening
Billy – Tom
Michael – Jake
Debbie – Fleur
After having a couple hours break from a great matinee performance spoiled by mobiles, coughers & horrible comments, I came in forgetting about the events of earlier & was delighted to see that as I arrived back, Tom was Billy tonight as I knew were in for another brilliant Billy performance & for the first timers to witness the talent of this young man & his great contribution to the show.
Yet again, Tom provided another perfect performance in his acting, singing & dancing with great sensitivity & interpretation of the dialogue throughout & great understanding of the character of Billy.
Tom’s signature scenes of The Letter & Letter Reprise were phenomenal again – he just makes it so believable that Billy is a sad little boy desperately missing his mother with a face so emotional, sullen & empty it is heartwrenching to watch.
Brilliant performances by Tom, Sam Seager & Jo Riding during The Letter & plenty of tearful audience members by the end of it. Tom has also stopped doing the shoulder shrugging during the Letter Reprise, which could be interpreted as uncontrollable laughing during this sensitive scene.
Unfortunately during Solidarity, Tom did have a little trouble with his microphone (in his hair) & had to keep adjusting it & trying to fit it back into his hair a few times as it was coming loose, but the more he tried the worse it got.
A couple of times he even tried turning his back on the audience to try & fix it, but to no avail. During Billys ballet lessons with Mrs W, the amount of turns & spins he does here did not really help the mic stay in place either. Luckily it is slightly round the side of his head & not the front, as the slacker it became the more it stuck out of his head & was beginning to look like a Dalek eye stalk.
Poor Tom, but he coped well with it & had it fixed while he was off stage for the brief moment before he comes back on in Billys shorts for the next Ballet lesson (when Mrs Wilkinson says “You’re late”). His mic was fine for the rest of the show.
Tom’s talent & skills were executed to perfection during Dream Ballet, Angry Dance & Electricity. I could watch Tom perform his Angry Dance & Electricity countless times in a row & never get tired of it, just amazing. He gave another exquisite & perfect acro & street Electricity with well deserved loud applause at the end.
Not everyone stood up to give him a standing ovation for Electricity which he deserved, but I did & Tom took time to lap up the applause afterwards, which as usual resulted in a pleasing smile & a quick glance around the theatre.
Jake Pratt was absolutely brilliant as Michael, a great performance by him & he totally owned the stage tonight during his appearances. He was more mischievous & played up to the audience a lot more than usual, with more winks, nods & thumbs up to us lot in the Stalls.
He did some cheeky & funny dancing in Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher with the Ballet girls including doing some high kicks & looked like he deliberately stood in Tom’s line of sight to try & make him laugh at his dancing.
Tonight was the first time I have noticed Jake do his puking up at Michael been given “a bloody football kit” for Christmas. It works really well & just puts a little bit more emphasis on who Michael is & his disgust & non interest in the footie kit & how he would rather have “Sindy The Nurse”.
Love the way in which Jake uses his glasses throughout his performance & therefore brings a little bit more comedy & uniqueness to Michael with them.
There is definitely an interesting dynamic when Tom & Jake are paired together because Jakes voice is so much deeper than Tom's, but they worked well together with a great Expressing Yourself from both, although Jake looked knackered at the end of it.
Fleur gave another perfect performance with Debbie’s lines timed to perfection & the pauses & emphasis where they are meant to be, especially during the toilet scene with Billy. (Tom’s reaction to the infamous “I’ll show you me F***y” line was priceless & spot on again).
Dream Ballet was great, although as usual disappointed & being too fussy when Barnaby is on with Tom due to Barnabys blonde hair & looking like an older Ollie & Dean rather than an older brown hair Tom. Barnaby Meredith is outstanding but can’t Sergio be on as Older Billy when Tom’s on?.
Ann Emery as faultless & cheeky as ever. Again she brilliantly joined in with some of the miners chanting as they ‘invade’ the Elliots kitchen in the breakfast scene.
Phil Snowden gave an even better & funnier performance as Mr Braithwaite than he’d done during the matinee.
Just fantastic & really funny during Born To Boogie with Tom & Jo.
Earlier on, the Smoke Machine did not work during “Shine” as Mr B came downstage (“Smoke, Mr Braithwaite”) – no smoke came out of it, so Phil immediately turned round & walked upstage where it started to work, but put it down immediately rather than continuing to walk about with it.
This meant that Mr B did not walk over to Billy with the machine & blast the smoke right into Billys face as normal.
Another change from David Nellist again tonight, with the “sitting there with a face like” line.
Still related to Gordon Brown as earlier, but rather than saying his name, said,
“sitting there with a face like you’ve left your microphone on” - which unsurprisingly got a great laugh.
No doubt there will be a few changes & additions from David during Election week.
You could hear a pin drop during He Could Be A Star thanks to the brilliant performances of Joe Caffrey & Tim Funnell who really made the scene & the emotion of it all stand out tonight. Tim Funnell is a great alternative Tony with just the right amount of anger, emotion, love & sensitivity needed for Tony & his relationship with his father & younger brother.
Glad to say there wasn't any audience carry on tonight after what went on at the matinee, apart from a few latecomers & one bloke in the front row who had a bit too much of a loud laugh. Fair enough, laugh at the funny parts & glad you enjoyed it,
but at one point his laughing was that loud I was sure there was a Lion roaring in the front row & I was about to go & ask the VP staff since when have they started letting animals in to watch the show.
It must be distracting for the performers especially when over the top loud laughing is “roaring” out of the front row.
Anyway, nice to see there was almost a full house again tonight & it was another fantastic & perfect show, with a faultless
& phenomenal performance by Master Thomas Holland & superb performances by Jake, Fleur, Joe, Tim & Jo Riding
with another great Finale performance by all.
Well done Tom – I said it during the week about Rhys & I will say it again here about Tom tonight, Ollie this afternoon & Dean last week
– in the words of John Barrowman – “fantastic, fantastic, fantastic”.
As we were leaving it was great to hear again very positive comments about the show (especially after the earlier nasty comments in the matinee) & brilliant comments about Tom & Jakes performances & that Billy is the best show they have seen & are definitely coming back.
Apologies to the bloke who’s foot I stood on in the row behind me when I had to get up to let the people sitting next to us into the row & Ahem! apologies to the same bloke who’s bottle of water I ended up kicking down the middle stalls aisle by accident when I came back from the Interval & then stood on his foot again.
Sorry mate!
Ah the joys of Billy – roll on Wednesday.
Cheers
Keith