EXCLUSIVE: Beloved musical Billy Elliot will return to London’s West End in February 2027 eleven years after it ended an acclaimed eleven-year run.
Writer Lee Hall’s story follows young miner’s son from a boxing ring to ballet classes, and was a stage and screen hit in the earlier part of the century. “It still has legs,” Stephen Daldry, the show’s director, exclaims down the phone from New York. “Oh my God… Still dancing after all these years. It’s coming back. We’re very excited.”
Daldry (The Crown, The Reader) directed and developed the original 2005 Victoria Palace,London production with book and lyric writer Hall, composer Elton John and choreographer Peter Darling.
It was based on the 2000 Universal and Working Title film that the same creative team worked on that launched at that year’s Cannes Film Festival with stars Jamie Bell and Julie Walters in attendance.
Both Daldry and Working Title’s Eric Fellner confirmed to Deadline that the Working Title and Universal Stage Productions show will perform its first preview in London’s Adelphi Theatre on February 12, 2027, beginning a six-month season.
However, the show will tour outta town this year first. Fans can catch Billy Elliot at the Sunderland Empire from November 4-28. It’s proper that it should play this northern city, which in its 18th and 20th century heyday was home to a massive colliery, plus it’s 20 minutes from Durham County where the Billy Elliot story is set during the tumultuous 1980s British coal miners’ strike.
The tour will continue on to the Palace Theatre, Manchester from December 2 through January 9 before upping sticks to the Edinburgh Playhouse January 19 through February 6. It will then take up residency at the Adelphi, afterwhich it will resume touring for a further nine months. Tickets for all venues are on sale from March 9.
“Myself, Elton, and Lee are all over the moon,” Daldry tells Deadline, while noting that every time they get to do the show, they love to see how it resonates again. “We’re thrilled that another generation of people will get to see the show as if it’s brand new.”
There’s a power to the story, Daldry continues, “that actually has always amazed me – how it’s always played internationally. Some musicals don’t play internationally, but this one’s always played around the world – It’s just finished a run in Zurich. It’s about to open again in South Korea.
“It resonates with such different cultures apart from the coal mines of Durham County. It’s such a specific story, but it does still profoundly resonate, particularly in these dark days. The idea of hope and the hope imbued within this dancing boy is something that people really respond to, and in the end, despite the hardships that the community is going through, we can all buy into the extraordinary joy invested in this child’s future.”
The key word there is the c-word… community, something we want back, I say.
Smiling at my having introduced the c-word in such an inoffensive manner, Daldry observes the story “is about a community coming together against huge odds and investing in the hope and aspirations of this one child. And yes, and you’re right, community is something we need very badly – and this celebrates community in a very profound way.”
Another zinger beginning with a c-word is choreography – the show’s breathtaking dance narrative driven by dazzling displays of ballet, tap, jazz, back flips and gymnastics forged, as if by magic, by Peter Darling and his team. Anyhow, Darling’s steps will certainly be back, says Daldry.
The staging will be basically the same in terms of it being the same set, Daldry maintains, but he merrily suggests that once rehearsals start, he and Hall are bound to “be able to change things around in the show once again. We always have, and we will again.”
The search for lads to play the young teen began a few months ago. Casting directors have been scouring communities right across the UK and even in the United States looking for Billies. “We always open the doors to international potential and talent, but obviously our focus is in the UK, but you never know,” says Daldry.
He readily acknowledges that it’s easier now to cast the eponymous part than it was back in 2004 when teams fanned out across the country auditioning nippers to play the lead. Those with the most potential were put through months of acting and dance training. Even when rehearsals began at an old film studio in East London, Daldry and his creative team weren’t sure which lads would make the grade. Eventually, they decided on Liam Mower, James Lomas and George Maguire, who went on to share an Olivier Award for Best Actor in A Musical.
The film and stage creative hopes that one of the reasons for the uptick in boys taking a keener interest is “hopefully” down to Billy Elliot, although Daldry acknowledges that there are probably “multiple” other reasons.
In any event, he states: “There are many more young dancing boys now than they were when we first started, so we’re getting an extraordinary array of talent from the search that we’re doing right now. We’re not quite looking for a needle in a haystack, which is what we’re doing the first time round. There’s a much bigger community of boys who dance.”
Echoing Daldry’s comments, Fellner remarks that it’s a “wonderful irony” that the film and the musical itself “has created a scenario where actually it’s a tiny bit easier now to make the show, but we’re incredibly grateful to the dancing communities around the UK and America who are training these young kids.”
In a recent column, I recalled extraordinary privilege of watching Daldry, Darling and their colleagues put the show together during weeks of previews before official opening night, Which the former says is “the most nerve-wracking thing you could ever do in your life.
He sighs as he adds: “Yes, we made the show, created the show in front of an audience, which was challenging and also exhilarating at the same time. We could do it at that point, of course. We didn’t know what was possible, and what was actually literally possible for the boys to do. Hopefully we’ve now created the show, which is just on the edge of possibility. In other words, the young performer is pushed to a point where he can just do it, but you can feel the effort.”
Daldry’s currently working with producer Sonia Friedman on preparations to put a new cast into Stranger Things: The First Shadow, now into its second year on Broadway and its third in the West End.
On the movie front, there no plans, he insists, to direct a picture anytime soon. Queried on this, he responds that he’s “avoiding them.”
Meanwhile, there are no conversations at present about a Billy Elliot return to Broadway, where it won ten Tony Awards, including a Best Musical. “At the moment, we’re just looking at the UK, but as always, we’ll keep an open mind as to what happens next,” says Fellner.
Following Billy Elliot around the world, back in the day, I used to marvel about how the story resonated so deeply with audiences wherever I saw it. Fellner encapsulates my sense of it. “The beautiful thing about Billy is it’s a universal story all about having a dream and finding a way to fulfil it.
“It doesn’t matter what country you grow up in, what political beliefs you have or where you’re from geographically, we all want our children to achieve their dreams, and kids want to have a dream and an ambition to believe in. That’s what Billy is all about.”
English (US) ·