January 2015 Reviews - Denmark

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thm
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Re: January 2015 Reviews - Denmark

Post by thm »

One of the press reactions after the opening night and a translation:
Dance and coal dust

http://gregersdh.dk/?p=9901
'Billy Elliot' is an overwhelming and jaunty show - sunbeam story of a miner boy who want to be a ballet dancer. And becomes one. But actually also about a strike that shook England.


"FIRST you go so terribly much through, and then ..." Now we get the story again, and it is good once again, HC Andersen's tale of the road to fame. The way from the bottom to the top. Here comes the one about the miner's son Billy, who danced his way out of a poor coal mine environment in England to the Royal Ballet School in London. H.C.A. tried similar in Copenhagen, but ended up on a siding, and thanks for that. My goodness, the story is told well at the New Theatre! And it suits the theatre. This theatre can so much - tell many good stories, but it is not among miners or those, we most forgather with, when the theater lets the music, the colors and the adventure play before our eyes. In 'Billy Elliot' the double drama is told in a beautiful way about a boy who succeed in the struggle to fulfill an absurd dream, and the miners who fail in the struggle to keep their dirty work.

RISE AND FALL

The most beautiful spot in the show is virtually the moment when the boy has packed the bags and drags - 'drag', must it be called in honor of the occasion! - off to London, and the pit lift simultaneously descends through the stage floor with his father and his work mates on the way down to the last call in the dirty dark. How can we start our report with the end? But the end is wonderful speaking about the fine contrast between career towards the top of one of the most exclusive arts of civilized society, and the striking miner's shattered dreams of winning a year-long strike. Rise and downfall in one image. The show has some little agglutinated extra-finals, that affect our heart-pounding strings - the blissful boy's deceased mother rises from the grave - for the second time - and mother and child sing together and it's touching and beautiful, and we would like to be touched, but it does not touch the dramatic climax that were just preceding.

THE AIR COMES TO A HALT

Enough about that. This musical has so many highlights along the way, we hover on them, even when they blatantly edge to sentimentality, for example when - no, here we hold our horses - when Billy's father sitting at the workers Christmas party singing a song his father taught him about the hard miner's life. That moment's sentimentality goes far across the border to real proximity, because the text is without a hollow tone, and the song is sung by Kristian Boland in a way to form a veritable space around him. He keeps us stuck in the man's scope of thoughts and reminiscence. The air comes to a halt. Back to the beginning: Margaret Thatcher hangs in large portraits wallpapered on a grid curtain - it was her, the Iron Lady, who knocked the big miners' strike to the ground in the early 80s, and that's the story we follow through to completion, while we follow little Billy who's headed for the ballet. She is the wicked witch of the mining people, who have a daily battle song where each verse ends with 'We are one day closer to your death.' There was hatred in the game. As there is energy and power playing in Elton John's music to 'Billy Elliot'. Good solo numbers for both Kristian Boland as Father Elliot, Julie Steincke portraying her provincial ballet teacher Mrs. Wilkinson spiralling command rawness to the poor children of her small school, a forbidding mistress resolute in voice and action, but with a warmth that hardly comes forward a few centimeters behind the sharp tongue.

ADVENTUROUS

Jesper Asholt is her partner in boxing lessons. You have not the heart to call him a slob, but we do it because it's his job, but then again he glows for the poor youngsters, and now that we have seen Jesper Asholt entangle himself into pirouettes, we forgive everything. In general: The adventurous boy - on opening night: Carl-Emil Lohmann (he'll get some words later) - is surrounded by characters that no matter how bawdy and loudmouthed they are as the mine working people, they have to be - Billy's older brother, played by Sebastian Harris (whom is he related to, with that last name?) or Billy's grandmother, Lane Lind in mummy-disguise, a warming center in the family - they are a bunch of good people, full of good and genuine thoughts wanting the best but having a hard time getting through with it. Is this a 'Billy Elliot' we can recommend here from a late night seat on top of the premiere? Without hesitation and with true conviction. 'Billy Elliot' delivered by the resident director at the New Theatre, Lisa Kent, with stunning precision. It's fulminant. By the resident MD Per Engström equally great. By the set designer Paul Farnsworth with a decorative show, showing how incredibly strong The New Theatre can go. A revolving stage that reveals interior of interior in an amazing flow, street view, houses, stairs, spaces of smooth interaction. Can any Danish stage outperform this? Although the Opera 'The Magic Flute' the other day, that has the best stage mechanism, a Danish theatre owns - beats it, what the 'New' can? Naaah.

BILLY

And finally: The title role. Billy. A thirteen year old boy named Carl-Emil. According to the program in full swing with professional engagements, also formerly at The New Theatre. What should one do with such a guy who can look a moment in the mirror, hear Tchaikovsky's music for the final scene of Act 1 of 'Swan Lake' with the magic annunciation theme in the orchestra, put body and soul to the music and keep it in a large solo track through over five minutes? Play up and tap with his companion Michael, tonight played by Magnus Sterling Borchert with humour and fun and mischief lurking in the corners of their eyes? In addition, be smart, cute and both eloquent and melodic singing in numerous scenes? Others stand ready for the same roles on other evenings. Possibly as well talented. All in all. Yet another uppercut from the musical factory in Vesterbro(borough of Copenhagen). Well prepared, thoroughly elaborated, well cast, refined in all corners.
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