Billy Elliot - Triumphant Hope for the Downtrodden!

For fear of sounding like every critic that has gone before, Billy Elliot is a triumph not just as a production in its own right, but over adversity, prejudice and lost hope.

This joyous show, which brings a tear to your eye and makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck, has strong overtures of The Full Monty in that it is centred around Britain's mining community, and the infamous 1984/85 year long miner's strike.

Billy Elliot is the foul-mouthed loveable Northerner who finds himself born into a traditional mining family, where the idea of recreation is a pair of boxing gloves and the thought of ballet leaves everyone questioning the kid's sexuality.

But, somehow, he overcomes deep prejudice, secretly learns his arabesques and attitudes, auditions and wins a place at London's Royal Ballet School, pulling himself out of the mire of prejudice and lost hope that is a Durham community crushed by the NUM / Thatcher miner's strike.

There's four Billies to carry the show and last night it was the turn of Leeds lad Matthew Lyons, who was wonderful, carrying the failures and shattered dreams of every last person in that audience.

Billy Elliot is about hope and that's why the Elton John / Lee Hall formula will always be such a winner; no different to the movie, Rocky. It is about rising to the top of the pile against all odds and, whenever we fail to stir because of perceived negativity in our lives, it is the likes of Billy Elliot that lifts our spirits and reminds us that the underdog can still win through.

This is a wonderfully uplifting, humorous, and engaging show, full of pathos, repressed love, realisation, bigotry and hate, a complete emotional mish mash so appropriately set in 80's industrial Britain. Billy's triumph is the miners' loss; two stories running parallel to one another.

Lyons was vibrant, full of beans and danced as though he enjoyed every last minute - the confidence of childhood, not the hesitancy of adulthood when, sometimes, the only thought centres around remembering the next line or movement!

And his sidekick Michael - Samuel Torpey - was fantastic as the young, cross dresser enthused by his sister's dresses and lipstick. When the two lined up side by side it really felt like two normal kids having a conversation as though no one was watching. Totally natural, hilarious and emotionally debilitating.





And that's Billy Elliot, it cuts to your core, stripping back the veneers more effectively than a French polisher.

But its essence lies in its bigotry. Martin Walsh as the lad's dad and Scott Garnham as older brother Tony, were brilliantly Northern, existing in a time when dancers were poofs and anything less than a pint of bitter constituted homosexual tendencies. Only ballet teacher Mrs Wilkinson - Annette McLaughlin - had the gumption and temerity to challenge the norm.

This is engaging, powerful, musical theatre at its best and the reason it runs until 11th June is that the bookers know it will be packed to the gills long after Britain's summer weather has threatened its worst! A must.

At Alhambra Bradford until 11 June