Janet Dickinson as the wisecracking dance teacher convinces us of her good intentions in encouraging Billy to audition for the Royal Ballet School. Billy soon turns in his boxing gloves for ballet slippers.
When his coach asks him to give the keys to the gym to a dance instructor who shares the space, Billy gets his first glimpse of ballet (rhymes with valley as pronounced in Durham). Dad pays for boxing lessons to keep Billy out of after-school mischief. Billy's brother, Tony, and their father are on strike, along with virtually every working man in the gritty town of Durham (appropriately dingy sets and lighting by Campbell Baird and Doug Harry). It's 1984 and the prime minister is determined to break the mineworkers union. Tobin, who played Billy in London and on national tour, performed with disarming grace on opening night.Ī crisp three hours as directed by Steven Minning, "Billy" takes place in a northeast England mining region at the height of Margaret Thatcher's power. Mitchell Tobin, a gangly teen with the baby face of a tween, alternates in the demanding role with 12-year-old Brandon Ranalli, a season 6 "America's Got Talent" semifinalist. The success of The Gateway's Long Island premiere of "Billy Elliot," a best-musical Tony and Olivier award winner on opposite shores of the Atlantic rests on the slender shoulders and nimble feet of a boy who can pass for 11. Dad, a coal miner who thinks dance is for girls and gays, is distracted by a strike. "Mum" might have foreseen his destiny, but she died when he was a little boy. Steve Parks "Gateway's Billy Elliot soars."īilly was born to dance.
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