The Cast

Credit both the quality and the low ticket prices to the estimable hard-working Chicago talent pool. While Drury Lane has often brought in New York talent for its leads (Gregg Edelman and Liz McCartney in the theatre's Sweeney Todd come to mind), this Billy Elliot is entirely homegrown and every performer is a knockout. Ok, they have just two boys alternating as Billy, not three, but the opening night Billy, Nicholas Dantes, is entirely worthy of the title role. He may not be quite as polished a dancer as the Billys I saw on Broadway and on tour (none of whom were from the trio who shared a Tony Award for originating the role), but he's a better actor—keeping us focused on Billy and his journey. Dantes is a heck of a singer and all-round musical theater pro as well. He shares the role here with Kyle Halford.

The adult leads are equally impressive. As Mrs. Wilkinson, Susie McMonagle gives a hard-edged, lower class tone to the character that adds a special dimension to it. Her Mrs. Wilkinson is one of the townspeople—no better than the coal miners. When she tells Billy's father Jackie she's with the miners, you believe her—and you know when she tells Billy on his leaving town to go to the Royal Ballet School that he'll forget her, you know she believes it. Her Mrs. Wilkinson is smart enough to know there's a better life outside of coal country and that she is not going to get that life for herself.

Ron E. Rains (not to be confused with Broadway's Ron Raines) similarly has a perfect take on Jackie. He's a rough and tumble coal miner, but with a good heart—and likeable but not as cuddly as Gregory Jbara who played Jackie on Broadway (in a Tony-winning performance, I concede). Liam Quealy is the intense older brother Tony, and Michael Harp is a riot (even if a bit too far over the top for my tastes) as Billy's friend Michael. We also get a virtuoso dance performance from Rhett Guter as the older Billy. Maureen Gallagher is broadly comic as Grandma. Not counting the multiple Billys and this company's single Michael vs. the two of Broadway and touring companies, this productions has as large a cast of singers, dancers, young boys, and young girls as did its predecessors, and they all perform with complete polish and professionalism.

The money here has gone into the cast rather than the set by Kevin Depinet, and that's one of those smart choices I mentioned earlier. Depinet gives us a simple recreation hall that's all we need—and he still manages to create a chilling effect at the show's ending when, with the help of an elevator and Lee Fiskness's lighting design, the miners return to work "deep in the ground." Dustin Cross's costumes look authentic for the time and place.

Director-choreographer Rachel Rockwell has stuck within the general outlines of the original direction and dances (by Stephen Daldry and Peter Darling respectively), but added some new elements of her own. In Grandma's song "We'd Go Dancing," we see the young grandma and grandpa dancing (by Allyson Graves and Guter). In the "Solidarity" number, Rockwell has the kids, strikers, and police all in proximity to each other—even touching—suggesting the interconnection of these three diverse groups as fellow citizens in the same small community. It's a less threatening image than the violence of the Daldry/Darling staging and it's a key to her direction, which by softening the harsher elements of the story evens out the tone more and makes the piece more cohesive than it seemed in Daldry's stage vision, stunning as his depiction of the conflict was.

This is my third time seeing Billy Elliot: The Musical and while I've always been a fan, I've been bothered by that dichotomy of tones. The story—particularly as it was told in the film written by the musical's bookwriter Lee Hall and directed by Daldry—had a grittiness along with its feel-good uplift. The reality on which it is based was grim indeed—men whose families had worked in the mines for generations were being forced out of their livelihoods by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's policies. Lives that were never too comfortable or pretty to begin with had gotten a lot harder. Putting that alongside the broad comedy of the little girls dancing and mugging, or the campiness of the like of Michael and pianist Mr Braithwaite, Billy Elliot seemed to be two different shows. Here—and Rockwell if anything has amped up the camp a bit—we see miners emerge in tutus during the "Born to Boogie" number, for example, and it all feels more of a piece. I'd still like someday to see a director play the piece in a style closer to that of the movie, but it's hard to argue with Daldry and Hall's choices in adapting their own material as they saw fit—and audiences have been loving it on both sides of the Atlantic for years.

So maybe as I've come to accept that that's what Billy Elliot: The Musical is—with each viewing and especially this one—I'm more and more convinced what a good show Hall and Elton John have written. The strength of the three central performances from McMonagle, Rains and Dantes show this to be a good story. The characters are quite grounded in reality, but they're still characters who sing—and John has given them tunes that sound like the music they'd sing, whether it be music with roots in English folk songs or '80s pop. Maybe this show will be with us for years to come after all.

Billy Elliot will play the Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace, IL , through June 7, 2015. For tickets or information, call 630-530-0111 or visit www.drurylane.com.

Photo: Brett Beiner

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-- John Olson