Sunday 28 June 2009

REVIEW: Billy Elliot, Original Cast Recording

Here's a review of the original cast recording of Billy Elliot, currently available from the good folks at Spotify. Book/lyrics by Lee Hall and music by Elton John.


Solidarity, solidarity
Solidarity forever
We’re proud to be working class
Solidarity forever

Whoever knew that Arthur Scargill would make it to Broadway? Obviously the comrades on the Tony awards panel had no such doubts about the appeal of arguments surrounding nationalised industries in Thatcher’s Britain. Or maybe they just liked seeing a bunch of talented kids in a follow-your-dreams kind of plot. Who knows? What does seem certain is that the story of the little dancer that could looks set to become the latest West End megamusical.

Like all the best musicals, Billy Elliot is deeply weird. Set against the background of the 1980s miners’ strikes in North East England, it’s about a young lad who discovers an unlikely love of ballet. As Billy’s talent, literally, takes flight, the miners and their traditions, literally, sink into the ground. Lee Hall wrote the original film and has done the musical adaptation, writing both the book and the lyrics. As you might expect, he’s at his best in the world that he grew up in, that of the mining community. From its earthy socialism (“Once we built visions on ground we hued/We dreamt of justice and men renewed”) to its nastiest vitriol (“Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher...one year nearer death”), this provides the real heart of the show.

As for Billy, although much of the time his character is naturally expressed in dance, there is one big number. It comes at Billy’s final audition for the Royal Ballet when, with his entire future hanging in the balance, a member of the audition panel asks him to explain what it feels like when he dances. If that isn’t a cue for a song, then I’m Ethel Merman. But it also requires the right song and “Electricity” fits the bill. The music starts hesitantly as Billy tries to find the words (“It’s a bit like being angry/It’s a bit like being scared”). Like a lot of things young kids say, there’s a kind of articulacy to the inarticulate mumblings. Then the chorus jumps up a gear:

And then suddenly I’m flying
Flying like a bird
Like electricity, electricity
Sparks inside of me
And I’m free, I’m free

The ideas are simple and sentimental but there’s no doubt that it works. It’s a genuine musical theatre moment.

The grown-up characters seem less well drawn. There’s a personal and political ambivalence here that is never quite spelled out. The key scene is the confrontation between the older son, standing alongside the striking miners, and the father, who breaks the picket line in the hope of funding Billy’s future. Politics has suddenly become deeply personal and the father explains his actions:

He could be a star for all we know
We don’t know how far he can go

The neatness of the internal rhyme (“far/star”) is fine but the character is all wrong. This is not some pushy parent shoving their kids on stage in the hope that they’ll be the next Wayne Sleep. This is a man dropping everything he knows and believes in. He does it, not in the hope that Billy will become a star but because, as a father, it’s imply what he has to do. The father’s personal struggle is a distillation of the political conflict between “society” (the miners) and the “individual and the family” (Billy and his Dad). The problem is that we’re supposed to celebrate the “individual” winning out whilst, at the same time, mourn the loss of “society”. The father’s change of heart is an empathetic one; we understand his choice and we’re on his side. But to spell it out more clearly would require that empathy to be mirrored in the political story. That never really happens and leaves a strange hole in the drama. Presumably, to do so, would be to admit the unconscionable, that perhaps Maggie had a point after all.

The music is provided by Elton John who has a unique place in musical theatre. He’s one of the only bestselling chart acts to have had a crack at new musicals. Instead of re-packaging his back catalogue into some Yellow Brick Road Extravaganza, he’s actually trying to make a go of original material and, for this, we should be exceedingly grateful. So far the results have been a little mixed. He’s had two successes (The Lion King and Billy Elliot) but these have been off the back of smash hit films. His two straight-to-theatre musicals have fared less well (Aida and That Weird Vampire Musical) which is a bit of a worry.

Similarly, the music for Billy Elliot is a mixed bag. The more “Broadway” the music tries to sound the less successful it is. So “Shine” and “Expressing Yourself” feel like fillers; generic showbiz numbers shoved in just because they’re the sort of songs you get in a musical show. The sound jars with the British sensibility of the piece, although the singers do have a rum go at keeping up the Geordie accent (“Give ‘um the auld razzul dazzul, like”). The flip side is that the less “Broadway” the music sounds, the better it gets. In fact half of the score is basically male voice choirs and brass bands and hymns. Unlike most pop composers, Elton John writes his songs on piano, rather than guitar, which tends to make the harmonies more interesting. But the really interesting part is the harmonic rhythm. The harmonic rhythm is the rate at which the harmony changes in relation to the beat. In most pop songs the harmony changes every 4 beats (or every bar). In a lot of the Billy Elliot songs,
however, the harmony changes every 2 beats. This doesn’t make them hymns exactly (in a hymn the harmony changes every single beat) but it does make them more hymn-like. It’s what gives the ballads that feeling of earnest reverence. It’s not for no reason that the most famous moment in Elton John’s career came whilst he was sitting at a piano in a church, singing about a secular saint, the late Princess Diana.

It’s this aspect of the music, along with Lee Hall’s more heartfelt lyrics, that give Billy Elliot a British feel. That’s a rare achievement and should be celebrated as such. More than any other Billy Elliot points to a possible way forward for British musicals. In the meantime the show seems destined for world domination. Those posters of leaping little Billies are becoming as familiar as the cat’s eyes and French urchins of the other global brands of the West End megamusical. It seems as though you can sell anything these days, even 1980s socialism. Sing out, Arthur:

Solidarity forever!

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