“Billy Elliot: Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” – Elton John
May 13, 2010
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Many say that Billy Elliot tickets are selling so fast because of the story. Others say Elton John’s musical score is the driving force behind the Billy Elliot schedule and its amazing success on Broadway, and still others will tell you that the dance routines and cast are the reason. The truth is that Billy Elliot tickets are selling so well because of a combination of all these things. The production is such a perfect fit for the company, the technical crew, the writers and director, that Elton John’s score was like a vast pile of elegant icing on a huge layered cake. But how did Elton John become involved in the Billy Elliot story?
It goes back to the time Elton made a surprise visit to a screening room while at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. Elton made his way there unannounced, with no security staff or special plans, with his partner, David Furnish. Showing that night was a film made by theatre director Stephen Daldry. it was a film about an unlikely lad who dreamed of being a dancer, and it was set in the even more unlikely northeast England, where flat caps, coal-mining and heavy consumption of Newcastle Brown Ale were the order of the day, not pirouetting and prancing.
Daldry had called the film “Dancer” and the main character had been named Billy Elliot by screenwriter Lee Hall. Daldry’s film was set in 1984, at a time when the British coal mining industry was experiencing huge industrial unrest; the miners were on strike across the country and mounted police struggled to control riotious outbreaks of violence whenever “scabs” (men who wanted to work through the strike) tried to cross picket lines. Margaret Thatcher was in power at the time, hated by the blue-collar north, loved by the wealthy in the south, and the mood in Billy’s community was bleak to say the least. As Thatcher fought to destroy the National Union of Mineworkers with police horses, dogs and truncheons, Billy’s father and brother resisted them every day, and much blood was shed. As a backdrop to this dour mayhem the music is relentless, and it is the music of the people: The Jam, The Clash, T. Rex, etc, the kind of glam, rebellious stuff that Britain was full of back in the 70s and 80s.
Apparently, when Elton saw the film it sent him into emotional paroxysms, as he related Billy’s struggles to his own in life, especially his relationship with his father. Elton remembered using music as his escape in life, in the same way Billy used dance, and it moved him to tears. Elton’s partner, David Furnish, could only wonder how he would smuggle Elton John out of there breaking his heart crying at this epic story!
This was the first encounter Elton John had with Billy Elliot, and it is how Elton’s “Billy Elliot the Musical,” score came to be introduced to London’s West End in 2005. Could Elton have dreamed that Billy Elliot tickets would still be selling in the West End, and now on Broadway, and in Chicago?! The Billy Elliot story is one that touches everyone in different ways, and this is the real reason that tickets to Billy Elliot are in such huge demand. It makes no difference who you are, you will be moved by this awesome tale of the extraordinary boy with the talent and the desire to make a dream come true.
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