Billy Elliot brilliantly mines rich seam of raw emotions

Billy Elliot The Musical gracefully combines comedy and tragedy, fantasy and reality for an unforgettable theatre experience.

Jamie Rogers stars alongside Kelley Abbey as Mrs Wilkinson in Billy Elliot The Musical. Picture: James D. Morgan

A mining community crushed by the march of history and a boy who wants to dance: Billy Elliot is as brutally simple and heartbreakingly complicated as that.

It’s 1984 in the north of England. Coalminers are on strike and prime minister Maggie Thatcher is determined they will not prevail. They’re out for more than a year.

Young Billy (Jamie Rogers on opening night) has a gift that can give him a shining future, or at least the possibility of it, but it means leaving everything behind.

“We can’t all be f..king dancers,” howls his brother Tony (Drew Livingston) in rage and despair. Before too long Tony, his father (Justin Smith) and their mates will be back in the pits to labour at the dangerous work, while it lasts, that’s defined their families for generations.

Of course, this being a musical, they are indeed all effing dancers of one kind or another, whether they’re riot police banging rhythmically on their shields as they advance in lock-step, the town stepping out at a Christmas party, boys learning to box or Grandma (Vivien Davies) reminiscing about her youth.

Billy’s dad and Tony are right to be frightened of ballet though, unless it’s confined to the galumphing girls taught by Mrs Wilkinson (Kelley Abbey) in the community hall. To them it speaks of the south, of refinement, of distance, of the class divide that tears at Britain’s social fabric to this day.

Writer Lee Hall’s 2000 film was a small gem and a big hit. Hall and Elton John’s gorgeous musical version is even better, with every aspect deepened and amplified through song, movement and exhilaratingly fluid staging.

Ian McNeil’s set design itself dances and in choreographer Peter Darling’s most brilliant inspiration, worlds collide as miners, police and a ballet class mingle surreally to a rousing call for solidarity. Comedy and tragedy, fantasy and reality are separated by a pin prick.

Stephen Daldry’s 2005 production, first seen here in 2007, is restaged magnificently and cast to perfection.

The zesty children are led by Rogers, a tightly coiled, hugely loveable Billy (he shares the role with three other boys).

First among equals in the adult cast is Smith. Billy’s Dad is a firebrand in his milieu and touchingly bewildered out of it.

Smith gives us the whole man in all his contradictions as he battles his way through prejudice to acceptance. Unforgettable.

Billy Elliot The Musical. Music by Elton John, book and lyrics by Lee Hall. Lyric Theatre, Sydney, October 18. Tickets: $65-$224. Bookings: ticketmaster.com.au. Duration: 2hrs 50mins including interval. Ends December 15. Adelaide, December; Melbourne, from February 20; Perth, June; Brisbane, July.