Chicago Tribune - Highly Recommended
"...The cast here is superb and determinedly unsentimental. Emily Skinner adds a big Broadway belt to the role of the dance teacher; she eschews flitty sentiment, driving the character to a more fearless place. Armand Schultz, who plays Billy's dad, has the most crucial emotional journey in the show. He takes you along, and yet you also never doubt he could be a miner. The show is well-seasoned with Chicago actors, including Patrick Mulvey's passionate Tony, Jim Ortlieb's gruff boxer and, as Billy's mum, Susie McMonagle, who had me in tears pretty much from the moment she showed up."
Chicago Sun Times - Highly Recommended
"...this is a gorgeous musical from top to bottom, with Elton John's score immensely varied, infectious, evocative and oh so English (whether the songs take the form of a traditional ballad, a Christmas panto romp, a rollicking boogie number, a half-spoken letter or a blast of rage); with Hall's lyrics so sharp and tender and funny and poetic; with Stephen Daldry's direction so alternately earthy and galvanic, playful and lyrical, and with Peter Darling's superb choreography such a masterful blend of ballet, tap, interpretive and gestural movement that it feels like a richly layered language all its own."
Daily Herald - Highly Recommended
"...Billy Elliot the Musical" - the Broadway blockbuster that opened at Chicago's Ford Center for the Performing Arts Sunday - includes moments so moving, so fundamentally honest and so unabashedly joyful they take your breath away."
Chicago Reader - Somewhat Recommended
"...I know I was prepared to be wowed by the Chicago production. But I wasn't. It's not that the emperor has no clothes, it's that the clothes he's wearing are far too elaborate. This is basically an endearing little story, with a few nice songs and some interesting things to say about family love, talent, individuality, and the light and dark sides of working-class solidarity. But author Lee Hall (who also wrote the movie) and composer Elton John have seized on its political aspect to blow it up into a cluttered three-hour spectacle. They shouldn't have."
Examiner - Highly Recommended
"...Billy Elliot captures all those complex, overlapping and overwhelming and just plain, old, ridiculously human emotions without a whit of schmaltz or superficiality. It’s sentiment-free, yet it twists the heartstrings into knots, while delivering showstopper after showstopper. Such is the power of Stephen Daldry’s canny direction, and the components of a show that deserves a wicked-long – which is to say Wicked-long – run here."
Windy City Times - Highly Recommended
"...Billy Elliot the Musical is, for boys, what Wicked was for girls—reassurance that the path to happiness may be hard, but rewards come to those who persevere. This wisdom may be a heavy burden to lay on the shoulders of actors barely past puberty, even with the lead role divided among four of them. But despite a few inevitable traces of Broadway bloat—musicals demand textual room for the music, after all—the hope its lesson proffers is a timely gift to audiences of all ages and livelihoods."
Copley News Service - Highly Recommended
"...overall the production uses commendable restraint in its use of sentiment, though opportunities for emotional excess are everywhere in the story. This show has boundless heart, but it never panders. Yet I suspect there will be plenty of moist eyes from spectators at the end of every performance. So, to everyone’s relief, “Billy Elliot” delivers on its buzz and hype. There should be happy days on Randolph Street for months, if not years, ahead."
Talkin Broadway - Highly Recommended
"...Already a hit for the past five years in its London and New York incarnations, the creators might have easily chosen not to tinker with something that, from a commercial standpoint, was not broken. Their willingness to continue refining Billy Elliot: The Musical may just increase its critical and artistic stature as the years pass."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Let the cheering begin! "Billy Elliot" is a heartfelt celebration about being true to yourself and following your dream, especially in the face of obstacles such as family, friends, finances and fear of failure, has finally set up home in the Windy City. We can only hope that Chicagoans will support this well-written, superbly acted, sung and danced winner of 10 2008 Tony and Drama Desk Awards so it will stick around for a few years, much like recent productions of "Wicked" and "Jersey Boys." It deserves a long life in the heartland as it has in both London and New York."
Chicago Stage Review - Not Recommended
"...Perhaps the most vitally important and most profoundly absent element of the story is Billy’s passion to dance. Cesar Corrales is an extremely gifted young dancer, but with the exception of his actual dance numbers, we never get the critical notion that dancing is Billy’s redemption and potential salvation."
Time Out Chicago - Highly Recommended
"...
The whole, however, greatly exceeds the sum of Billy Elliot’s parts. Though John’s score is largely generic soft rock, Hall’s ingenious intermingling of mine workers, cops and tiny ballerinas in the “Solidarity” sequence deftly illustrates how the strike affects the entire Northern England community, while the divine Emily Skinner brings gritty wit and glamour as Billy’s jaded dance teacher. And what’s asked of, and achieved by, the young performers in the title role is simply astonishing. Talk about electricity."
ShowBizChicago - Highly Recommended
"..The truthfulness in its storytelling has always been the immortalizing root of Billy Elliot, a task that the wholly superb cast at the Oriental Theatre is resolute to embrace. Cesar Corrales, one of the four adolescent performers rotating in the title role, nimbly displays his physical virtuoso in every production number, most winningly in “Billy’s Angry Dance” and the second act pas de deux. Corrales approaches Peter Darling’s finely realized character-driven choreography with precocious insight into the emotional and political barriers that comprise the heart of the matter."
7DAYS - Highly Recommended
"...There are of course a lot more songs with music by Elton John and lyrics by Lee Hall, who also made the movie script adaptations. This is a story about overcoming obstacles and making one's dreams realities. It is over 2 hours with one intermission, but speaking as one who truly felt every emotion in this piece, you will not want it to be over."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"...The show grew on me as it eventually had enough heart and passion to become winning theatrical event. The movement from the coal miner’s plight to Billy’s struggle bogged down the show but Billy’s journey created enough truth expressed through song and dance to captivate me."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Recommended
"...One can't ignore the poignant timeliness of this story's historical drama with the current West Virginia mining community's horrific ordeal. And yet the human spirit often thrives under adversities such as these, as does the pursuit of creative expression. Billy's dead mother inspired her son to always be himself, and that is an important life lesson we can all benefit from at any age. Whether you have ever danced a step in your life or like me you're lucky to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, you are likely to be touched by young Billy's story."
Chicago Theater Beat - Highly Recommended
"...After four Laurence Olivier Awards, ten Tony Awards and ten Drama Desk Awards, you don’t need me to tell you that Billy Elliot: The Musical is worth seeing. Time Magazine also named it the "Best musical of the decade," an assessment I don’t agree with — my vote goes to Urinetown — but I will say Billy Elliot has everything a good musical ought to have: Fine music, outstanding choreography and a heartwarming, if clichéd, story full of triumphs and pathos."