So I went again to see "Billy Elliot" in Tel Aviv (for the second time) . In contrary to the first show I've seen this show had 2 major differences: I was sitting in a great location (last time I had really lousy seats) and at there were no technical problems this time. This of course caused everything to look a lot better, especially the dancing and the choreography. The dancing was still not in perfect sync like the original show, but last time 2 of the dance routines were ruined by technical difficulties. "Angry Dance" was the best dance this time.
Let's talk about the cast:
Billy – Arnon Hering. Acting skills and singing were pretty good (His singing voice is very different from his regular voice, but in a good way). Dancing skills were great especially "Angry Dance" and "Electricity".
Michael – Amit Brener. He is an excellent singer, and acting skills were also very good. Did a fine job on the dance routine with Billy.
Debbie – Sasha Bezerkov. Did a great job in acting and dancing.
All the other cast was the same. They were all great.
In summary: The show is really entertaining and almost all the scenes are identical. The stage is smaller, and the set is a little different and that's why the choreography is different in some scenes. The changes in "angry dance" works pretty good, while the changes in "I like to boogie" scene were a bit awkward. "Solidarity" was pretty much the same.
The only problem I have with the show is the ending.
The last song where Billy wrote a letter to his mom was completely gone (this changes the whole story completly). The audition scene is also gone and Billy have no real reason to punch the other kid . The ending scene is too short and a lot less dramatic (with Micheal). The finale was very different with just a short tap number which was done by Dad (
). Those changes were unnecessary, and I think they wanted to make the play shorter.
The show is very entertaining and in a very high standard and everybody did a great job. (but only if you have good seats
.)
