It’s Tony Awards season and that always puts me into a geeky mood since theatre is one of my very favorite things. This season has been a particularly good one too with some stunning productions on stage. It’s been quite a few years since I’ve seen, or at least wanted to see, many of the nominated productions.
The Tonys are four weeks away (CBS, Sunday, June 7), so to celebrate the 2008-09 season, Geek Out is going to look at the things that really got my inner geek raging over the past year.
I’m starting off with Billy Elliot, the musical based on the 2000 film. I love the film and was glad to see that the musical managed to take the film and evolve the story into something even more sublime. Often movies made into musicals can be fun and enjoyable; but this is a movie-to-musical transfer that grew beyond it’s source material (another recent example of this phenomenon is Hairspray).
Billy Elliot is up for 15 Tonys, a record-tying number as The Producers also had 15 nominations back in 2001. As you might imagine, with that number the show is up for virtually everything: Best Musical, Best Director, Best Book, Best Score, Best Actor (the three actors who alternate playing Billy are nominated together as one), Best Featured Actor, Best Featured Actress, Best Choreography…and the list goes on. I think this show is quite likely to get Best Musical and I can’t imagine it not winning Best Choreography and I’m sure it’ll pick up quite a few other awards as well.
Here’s a look at Billy Elliot. In this video Kiril Kulish plays Billy. This has many excellent scenes from the show including the amazing “Dream Ballet” where young Billy gets to dance with himself as an adult.
