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”Billy Boy - this is the greatest musical yet” Daily Telegraph.

”Brit Musical of the decade has arrived” Daily Express.

“Billy's a whizz! He'll lift your spirits, make you cry and send you home high with hope” Daily Mail.

Billy Elliot flew into the West End with a great bang 6 years ago now. The Victoria Palace had seen a couple of small hits over previous years, but nobody could have expected Billy Elliot to be the huge smash hit that it's managed to be. Still playing to a packed theatre every night, the show looks set to run and run and rung - plus WE LOVE IT at Hit The Theatre!!!

A funny, heart-warming and feel-good celebration of one young boy's dream in a gripping tale of triumph over adversity. This original story captured the hearts and minds of the world when the movie was released in October 2000. Nominated for 3 Oscars and 13 Bafta awards this poignant film broke box office records across the world.

This brilliant new staging is an adaptation of one of the most adored British films of the last decade. The extraordinary movie written by Lee Hall, directed by Stephen Daldry and choreographed by Peter Darling, has been developed for the stage by the same multi-award winning creative team. The score has been composed by music legend Elton John, the most celebrated UK singer songwriter of the last 30 years.



Please note: Due to the prescence of bad language and violence, the producers of the show recommend that children under the age of 12 not be permitted to attend; however, children above the age of 7 will be admitted. Children under the age of 16 must be accompanied by an adult.

Our Review:

UPDATED (29th April, 2009)

Billy Elliot hasn’t lost it’s charm. One of the reasons you can go back to the show time and time again is that the show is so different. Obviously the star of the show is the young Billy who the producers and director have consistently been able to find not only competent, but outstanding boys to play the lead.

Last night was no different, with Billy Elliot demonstrating the frailties of the character, growing up in a family lacking the motherly influence, yet growing throughout the show and ending the first act with a passionate and improvised routine.

Billy Elliot is still a brilliant show, it’s still a great night out, and best of all in the this age of shows imported from the States, Billy Elliot is as English as any show could possibly be.


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What do you say about the biggest smash hit of the past 5 years?

Billy has been one of the biggest West End sellers from well before it opened and it shows no signs of letting up for a while to come. In fact, it’s recent opening on Broadway has cemented Billy Elliot as one of the biggest worldwide hits!

Anyone who has seen it will appreciate that it's a masterpiece.

The show cleaned up at the Olivier Awards (the Oscars of theatre) and with a story that most know and the added bonus of Elton John lending a hand and you have a dangerous concoction.

It's useful to note that there are three (or four) different sets of wonderfully gifted kids performing the main roles at any one time...something which makes the show even more special!

What The Papers Say:

Billy Elliot succeeds brilliantly because Elton John's music and, especially, Peter Darling's choreography enhance Lee Hall's cinematic concept.
… Stephen Daldry's production is a model of fluidity and intelligence. He constantly reminds us that the special power of the musical is that it can express a lyrical idea through physical action. Thus, when Ann Emery, as Billy's gran, sings of her sour memories of her husband, we get on the other side of the stage a collective demonstration of the slow movements of the inebriated working-class male. It is the kind of effect that can only be achieved in a musical.
… But the show's success rests on its careful balance between Billy and the surrounding community. The 1980s contained individual aspiration, but it was also a grim decade which saw the collapse of a whole way of life. GUARDIAN

Following The Producers, Mary Poppins and The Full Monty comes the stage version of Billy Elliot, based on Stephen Daldry's beautiful and moving Britflick about an 11-year-old boy from a coal mining village in County Durham who is determined to become a ballet dancer.
… This is not a time to beat about the bush. Billy Elliot strikes me as the greatest British musical I have ever seen, and I have not forgotten Lionel Bart's Oliver! or Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera.
… There is a rawness, a warm humour and a sheer humanity here that is worlds removed from the soulless slickness of most musicals.
… The emotion always seems real and spontaneous, rather than cunningly manipulated to pull at the heartstrings. And there is anger as well as joy, bitter resentment as well compassion, above all a sense of nagging grief
… Daldry's production, with a deliberately scruffy design by Ian MacNeil that vividly captures the period and the poverty of the characters' lives, is blessed with great energy, but until the exuberant finale, he never allows glitz to get in the way of awkward emotional truth.
There is a similar balancing act in Peter Darling's choreography, which is gawky as well as graceful, earthbound as well as airborne. And like everything else about the show, his dance routines somehow contrive to be at once funny and poignant - not least the routine in which Billy and his gay friend Michael (wonderful Ryan Longbottom) - perform a hilarious, exquisitely touching number in drag.
… the whole cast is blessed with a freshness and sincerity I have rarely seen equalled, and one leaves this triumphant production in a mist of tears and joy. TELEGRAPH

The principal creative team behind the hit film Billy Elliot, including the director, writer and choreographer, have reunited just five years later to bring it triumphantly to the musical stage. Joined by Elton John, who provides an alternately pounding and tender score that is rooted in a contemporary pop rock idiom and is easily his best theatrical work to date, they have not only deepened the material (and somewhat lengthened it, too) but have also made it far more emotionally penetrating and resonant.
…With a seemingly perpetual flurry of superbly syncopated movement threaded through the evening in Peter Darling’s exhilarating choreography, the joy of dance that the story epitomises also becomes one of the key narrative devices of its telling.
…Lee Hall’s script charts the dance aspirations of an 11-year-old Durham miner’s son, played out against the background of the 1984 miners’ strike. The amazing emotional power of this particular rites-of-passage story is exhilaratingly underlined in the dazzling efforts of the young actor called to play him, who is rarely offstage in nearly three hours. THE STAGE

Billy Elliot The Musical, based upon Stephen Daldry's classic movie, is just irresistible. It catches you - or at least me - in its fervent grasp, and pins you down with all the artfulness of a vintage seducer, right to the misguided, sentimental finale.
…Stephen Daldry, always at his best on the grand scale, deftly marshals a throbbing mixture of angry miners, threatening policemen and little girls in tutus - all singing. Ian MacNeil's versatile designs set the changing scenes
…There is nothing more glorious on the London stage than Billy's dream sequence in which he and his older self (superb Isaac James) dance together in feats of soaring virtuosity. There is nothing more glorious on the London stage than Billy's dream sequence in which he and his older self (superb Isaac James) dance together in feats of soaring virtuosity. EVENING STANDARD

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