Billy Elliot

This evening we were off to see Billy Elliot, the Musical at the Victoria Palace Theatre. It’s incredibly popular at the moment; we bought our tickets several months ago and still only get end-of-row.

The story is set during the Miners’ Strike of the 1980’s and has a bit of a Full Monty feel to it as the young Billy finds an unconventional way out of the strike-crippled mining village where he grew up. It’s a quality production; they have a fine cast of youngsters who dance beautifully (when they are not acting that they have two left feet) and the setting provides for both drama and humour (although the sight of grimy miners doing formal ballet in their boiler suits only has so much entertainment value.) It’s a good show, gritty and pulls no punches, but is still quite uplifting (and did I mention the dancing is pretty damn good too?)

After the show we found ‘Victoria’s Only Gay Bar’, The Stag, not far from the theatre and popped in to have a quick drink, but (for a gay bar on a Saturday night) it was still early and not much was happening. That, plus the realisation that I was going to be flying a plane tomorrow and so shouldn’t be drinking too much tonight, meant we decided to head on home rather than join the other Chorus boys for a night out. (A large portion of the Chorus were guesting at Pink Singers concert in town tonight.)