Billy Elliot the Forum

I've seen the first five performances in Budapest, I've seen John and Áron twice and Kamill once.
On his second show, the cast and the audience celebrated Áron's 13th birthday on the stage. He was surprised. He got a pair of headphones from the musical director. There must have been a reason for this gift



All three boys playing Billy were very talented and all those hard work and 1.5 years of training showed on their performances.

I was happy with the adult cast in general, with a few exceptions. One of the dads: Kristof Nemeth's "singing" was not good at all.
All three choices for Mrs Wilkinson were great.

Overall it was a good production with excellent children cast.
But I still couldn't like it, because of the following two reasons:

1. Billy is not in focus.

Although they found the best boys possible for the role of Billy and they spent the last 1.5 years giving them extensive training, the director, still did not trust their talent enough to rely them solely: the Dream Ballet had 3 solo dancer and an ensemble from the National Ballet, and even Electricity had one soloist. By having all these people the director took the focus from Billy.
In time I could get used to a dream ballet with no flying or even an Electricity with flying, these are not the reasons I didn't get to like the show. But I could not get used to a performance where Billy is not in the focus, where the show is not based on the boys' talents playing Billy.

2. Wrong message.

Expressing yourself started with Michael literally coming out of the closet. But the two boys soon after that started to wear clown outfit and the whole act came out as a circus show. It was ok. But then Michael remained silent about his feelings towards Billy in the Christmas scene, so Billy could not react with acceptance. All those most derogatory terms used for gays during the show and it was not balanced out by Billy's action of accepting his friend as he was.

I was at the show on Wednesday 3rd August. I've not done a 'full review' but some of my thoughts good and bad are below

There's a few parts that don't make sense from the subtitles above the stage, this may be a translation issue, but it felt like these lines could have been cut e.g.
In shine Mrs Wilkinson says "Get down for starters" when he's already standing at the same level as everyone else, Billy ends up doing an odd sort of night fever dance instead.
In Expressing Yourself Michael says "Trackies off" and Billy doesn't actually do it, could have easily been cut

I totally agree with Darth_Revan about the lack of dancing, it was there in parts, just lacking a bit considering the story is meant to be about Billy Elliot. I felt Angry dance in particular definitely missed the tap element, however his emotions were portrayed very well by Kamill.

While it was strange that the flying was in Electricity rather than Dream Ballet, I actually think it made a lot of sense and complimented the lyrics of the song really well.

I really like tonight's Mrs Wilkinson Nikolett. She made it clear that Mrs Wilkinson she really cares for Billy, caring, compassionate and angry all at the right times.

Without giving too much away for those who've not seen it, extra emphasis given to Billy's special things at the end of the show was really touching, it showed that they weren't just a 'bit of stuff' that he'd grabbed for his lesson earlier in the show.

I'd like to make it back over to Hungary at some point to see the other rotations of cast performing, fingers crossed!

Hello to all the veteran members, this was my first encounter with Billy Elliot the Musical.

Watched it first time with John and second with Áron. I especially liked John's acting, notably his expression at the end of Angry dance, dancing movements in general and mini-dance at boxing.
Over all, I liked the supporting cast in the first performance I saw (Tóth Sándor, Csémy Balázs, Karamás Zalán) better than the second group (Nemeth Kristof, Borbely Richard, Lucacs Oliver).

I don't agree with Darth_Revan that Billy's not in focus, I think he has enough focus, especially after browsing the Estonian thread
But I only watched BETM Live version after Hungarian perfomance, that must be why. Also liked how Budapest version was directed compared to London's, including flying in Electricity and adult dancers in Dream Ballet.

As for cutting off Michael's romantic feelings for Billy, I think it was done because audience has more conservative attitude in Hungary. However, not knowing those existed in the original BETM and the movie, everything felt in place

I wish they also released a BD with Hungarian BETM.

Welcome to the forum pirouette. Thanks for your review.

I hope you will enjoy exploring the site.

pirouette wrote: I think he has enough focus, especially after browsing the Estonian thread

It was not the "focus" that made the Tallinn production bad