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It’s been years in the making and every nanosecond has been worth the wait. For starters, the ASB Waterfront Theatre is a brand new venue and this is worthy of immense celebration in, and of, itself. Publicity is as publicity does and while this description is certainly accurate, this production of Billy Elliot the Musical is so much more than the few words devoted to it in the press release. “While boys doing ballet is an issue for his macho father Jackie (Stephen Lovatt) and brother Tony (Jack Barry), Billy eventually wins over his family and the entire community thanks to the help of his beloved dance teacher Mrs Wilkinson (Jodie Dorday) and his passion for dance.” We’re told that it’s “funny, uplifting and spectacular” and that “the New Zealand premiere of Billy Elliot the Musical will be a joyous night in the ASB Waterfront Theatre.”
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The show’s publicity tells us that Billy (Jaxson Cook) is a regular eleven-year-old lad who discovers he prefers ballet to his regular boxing lesson. With this in mind, Billy Elliot the Musical delivers on all fronts, some of them unexpected. Thatcher hates unions, all unions, and the National Union of Mineworkers holds a very special place in her litany of unreasoned, working-class loathing. The entire region relies on coal and we’re in staunch Labour country.
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This is Margaret Thatcher’s Britain, we’re in the north, County Durham to be exact, and close to Newcastle. Set in a Geordie mining village and with the 1984 miners' strike as its backdrop, it is the inspiring story of a small boy's struggle ‘against the odds’ to make his dream of becoming a ballet dancer come to life. A disembodied female voice from deep in the dark of the auditorium – we imagine it belongs to the woman (Amy Straker) who co-ordinated Billy’s audition for the Royal Ballet School – says everything that needs to be said about Billy Elliot the Musical in one single line.