David Scheinmann Travis Yates dances as Billy, the coal miner's son, in "Billy Elliot - The Musical." Click photo for larger image. More Coverage: Read reviews of "Billy Elliott," "Edward Scissorshands," "Embers," "Resurrection Blues" and "Honour" On Stage Journal: Follow the PG group through London

LONDON -- The riches of London theater are so many and varied that even when you pack nine shows into six days, as I did in March on a Post-Gazette theater tour (the slim-trim, Critics Choice model), you're aware of how many appealing shows you're missing.

Add to that the Rawson Maxim that no matter how much you see, there's always something particularly enticing that closed just before you got to London and something else opening just after you leave.

But no matter: There's always plenty worth reporting about, whether starry triumphs, classics reinvigorated, the latest adventures of famous companies and playwrights or just new plays starting the journey that will bring them later to New York and Pittsburgh.

This time, though, it wasn't like that. Doubtless there was much just closed or about to open, but the actual offerings didn't match my past experience. Compare the same trip last year, which included Alan Bennett's great "The History Boys" (now coming to Broadway) and David Eldridge's lesser but interesting "Festen" (ditto); a very good musical ("Mary Poppins") and the futuristic design of a lesser musical ("The Woman in White"); plus Derek Jacobi in Schiller's "Don Carlos," which turned out to be all about imperial America.

	Matthew Bourne tackles a Tim Burton original with "Edward Scissorhands," starring Richard Winsor and Kerry Biggin. Click photo for larger image.

This year, expectation was mainly disappointed by an all-star Arthur Miller misdirected by Robert Altman and a static collaboration among Jeremy Irons, Christopher Hampton and Michael Blakemore. Two of my idols, Matthew Bourne and Theatre de Complicite, were underwhelming, and even a much-praised Royal Shakespeare Company "As You Like It" felt ordinary.

Possibly, I just chose badly. I missed the two Ians -- Ian Richardson in Pauline Macaulay's old "The Creeper" and Ian McKellen in Mark Ravenhill's new "The Cut" (which I wanted to see, but a ticket to the tiny Donmar is tough to get). Perhaps I also should have opted for Roger Allam in David Harrower's "Blackbird."

I chose to pass on a couple of probably estimable revivals connected with men named Shaw -- playwright G.B.'s "You Never Can Tell" and actor Martin's "A Man for All Seasons." Ditto the Kathleen Turner-Bill Irwin "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and Woody Harrelson in "The Night of the Iguana" (which meant missing the wonderful Clare Higgins).

But among what I did see, there was nothing to reach even the foothills of "History Boys."

Best was "Billy Elliot -- The Musical," the hit adaptation of the 2000 movie about the coal miner's son who becomes a dancer. Now nearing the end of its first year and still a very tough ticket, it has had English critics ecstatic over what they call the best English musical since maybe ever, with occasional dissents such as John Lahr's in The New Yorker, who felt it too sentimental.

	Robert Altman directs Arthur Miller's "Resurrection Blues" at the Old Vic, where the cast includes, from left, Jane Adams, Maximilian Schell and Matthew Modine. Click photo for larger image.

I found it a stirring story, much better all-round than its so-so score. As I explain below, among its strengths are a gritty working-class texture and an appeal to a communal socialist ideal, both of them very English -- although these are just what will make "Billy Elliot" a tough sell in the United States.

Next I'd rank Complicite's "Measure for Measure" and Bourne's "Edward Scissorhands." Nothing Complicite does is entirely a disappointment, but expectation is rightly high. This "Measure," briefly back in the National Theatre repertory, is the complete antithesis to the Mark Rylance/Globe version we saw in Pittsburgh. Where that recaptured the play for comedy, with Rylance's Duke a charming bumbler, Complicite's is in the modern mode of darkness deepened, with seamy motives everywhere and Simon McBurney's Duke the manipulative worst of the lot.

The match between "Edward Scissorhands" and choreographer Bourne, who famously remade "Swan Lake" for an all-male corps and created the teasingly noir "Play Without Words," seemed perfect. I caught the show just outside London on tour, and it is certainly fun, with Edward wielding his alarming garden shear appendages in a pastel suburbia. But it stays very bright, never approaching the chilly tremors that distinguish Tim Burton's movie.

	Jeremy Irons brings star power to "Embers." Click photo for larger image.

Hampton's "Embers" is based on the 1942 novel by Hungarian Sandor Marai. I had great hopes, since it stars Irons and is directed by Blakemore. But this story of an elderly Hungarian aristocrat confronting his boyhood friend with an old betrayal never develops drama. The only suspense is over whether the friend will finally respond to what is nearly an interminable monologue of reminiscence, but he doesn't, and we're left with only an enigma and the richness of Irons' palpable intelligence.

Come to think of it, this is not unlike my response to the last time I saw Irons on the London stage, in the RSC's "Richard II" in 1987.

The flashier failure is Altman's, directing Miller's "Resurrection Blues" at the Old Vic, where Kevin Spacey is artistic director. One of Miller's last plays (first staged in 2002, revised in 2004), it's a robust satire of political corruption and commercial greed, set in a South American country high in the Andes.

	Manuel Harlem In "Honour," Natascha McElhone plays Claudia (left) and Diana Rigg plays Honor. Click photo for larger image.

A charismatic radical leader who just may be Christ reborn has been captured, and the dictator has sold the TV rights to his crucifixion to an American TV network. But the different Americans and locals are at cross-purposes (the aging dictator is more interested in his impotence), and the rebel leader emits blinding light and walks through walls.

It's a mix of real and hyper-real, satire and pathos, most interesting perhaps for its underlying wariness of death, a frequent theme in Miller's later plays. But it needs a firm hand to provide a style and propel it through scenes that seem unrelated, and Altman doesn't provide that. The cast is starry -- Matthew Modine, Maximilian Schell (miscast in a role that needs an Ernie Kovacs type), Neve Campbell, Jane Adams and James Fox -- but the acting lacks verve, almost (an easy suspicion) as if it were conceived for the camera, not the stage.

Surprisingly, the play that was most enjoyed by the PG group (which also saw "Embers," "Resurrection Blues" and "Once in a Lifetime") was Joanna Murray-Smith's "Honour," a 1995 Australian play given a starry revival. An older celebrity writer (Martin Jarvis) breaks up his marriage to pursue an affair with a young journalist (Natascha McElhone), while his poet wife (Diana Rigg) and daughter (newcomer Georgina Rich) try to adjust to the cataclysm. There's nothing earth-shaking, but there's good observational detail, fine acting and lots to talk about afterward -- as we were able to do backstage at a gathering hosted by Jarvis in memory of his time playing the title role in "By Jeeves" at the Pittsburgh Public Theatre.

The two great institutional theaters acquitted themselves well, though without revelation. The RSC's "As You Like It" features a willowy, luminous Lia Williams as Rosalind and a refreshing take on the very English countryside, but much of it is pretty standard and the Jaques is bland.

	Manuel Harlem David Suchet as Herman Glogauer and Issy Van Randwyck as Helen Hobart in "Once in a Lifetime" at the National Theatre. Click photo for larger image.

The National Theatre's "Once in a Lifetime" by our Kaufman and Hart was the reverse -- a splendid production of a 1930 play that has been upstaged by all the similar Hollywood satires that have followed. But as the playwright's daughter, Anne Kaufman (so billed, without the Schneider), noted in a pre-show onstage discussion with the knowledgeable Laurence Maslon, "I've never seen it done with so much scenery." The NT pulled out all the stops, dressing a cast of 30 (and live band of seven) with the stylish production values of a major musical. In fact, with song and dance inserted between scenes, that's what it seemed to aspire to be, except such a musical already exists, called "Singin' in the Rain."

Style of a determinedly other sort was represented by "Amato Saltone," a participatory theater event staged by Shunt in the echoing vaults at the London Bridge Underground station. Gritty and funny, spooky and silly, it's a reminder just how much variety London theater encompasses.

REVIEWS

"Billy Elliot -- The Musical"

	David Scheinmann In "Billy Elliot," Haydn Gwynne plays the hardened dance instructor, here seen with her students. Click photo for larger image.

The reviewers' debate has been over whether "Billy Elliot" is the best new British musical of the year, of the decade or possibly of all time -- to which some have had the temerity to suggest that's like debating who makes the best bagel in Arkansas or the best opera in McKees Rocks. Without getting into that, I'll say the musical is very satisfying, even exhilarating to the extent that you identify with the distressed coal mining milieu during the epic 1984-85 miners' war with the Thatcher government and the release that dance provides for one small boy.

The musical is all about its story. That milieu is well conveyed by director Stephen Daldry and his designers, and I like as much of the book and lyrics by Lee Hall as I can understand. Though Elton John's score has some appealing comic numbers and an occasional working-class anthem, it mainly provides support for the expression of feeling through dance. There are three 12 year-olds playing Billy, and I'm sure the others are as good as Travis Yates at expressing his pugnacity, loneliness and yearning.

But there's an interesting issue here. When singing is the main mode of expression, as in many musicals, it's not a measure of character when someone sings especially well -- it's simply their mode. So when the main mode of expression is dance, isn't it sleight of hand to make the quality of the dance a major plot point? It's as though someone heard Eliza Dolittle or Dolly Levi singing and said, "You ought to be on stage!"

	Billy Elliot Company A different Billy, Liam Mower, leads the dance students, with battling miners and police at the rear. Click photo for larger image.

No matter, I guess. Somehow we're able to accept dance as both mode and matter. I'm told Billy's aspiration isn't captured as well on stage as in the movie, but it works for me. What especially works is the stirring rallies and protests arranged by Daldry and choreographer Peter Darling. In them, the socialist ideal still has resonance, though you can see it receding into nostalgia, too. My favorite segment is the Christmas show, with its pungent satire of Thatcher.

But will class struggle play in the U.S.? Blue-collar tragedy may not be hard for us in Pittsburgh, where we know something about industrial decline. And Americans have responded to such movie expressions of that British experience as "Billy Elliot," "The Full Monty" and "Brassed Off." But the socialist ideal that colors the miners' desperation in the musical has never had such widespread pull in the U.S., and certainly not today.

Ultimately, I think the success of "Billy Elliot" in the U.S. will have everything to do with the rewriting. For an American, I'm pretty much at home in England, but I was at sea a lot. The thick regional British accents can be softened, but what about the thicker texture of specific references? Are there enough alternatives available that will be intelligible to Americans but still convey the ironic humor or anger?

I hope so.

At Victoria Palace Theatre, booking now through Oct., but it will run for years; from the U.S., call 011-44-870-895-5577.

"Edward Scissorhands"

Matthew Bourne is a genius, as shown by strange vibrations he built into his playfully subversive remakes of "Swan Lake" and "Car Men" (Bizet's opera transposed to the southern U.S. of auto workers and carhops). And when he took on "Play Without Words," based on the Joseph Losey-Harold Pinter film, "The Servant," he put his imaginative re-creation at the service of material that had dark enigma built in. So Tim Burton's comic/dark and disturbing "Scissorhands" should have been just his meat.

Why, then, is the result so anticlimactic? The theater in suburban Wimbledon, where I went on the theory that you should follow Bourne anywhere, was thronged with young girls, and I thought they were in for a pretty disturbing night. But their mothers knew better: Bourne's "Scissorhands" is the cheery comic-book version, with the deep sadness of the movie largely absent.

Or perhaps I'm expressing this backwards. Perhaps, rather than failing to seize on the tragic side of Burton's story, Bourne made a conscious decision to aim just at the colorful fairy tale. This "Scissorhands" seems even influenced by the English panto tradition; it's that jolly. Entertaining, it certainly is. So I will continue to pursue Bourne's adventures.

"Scissorhands" remains in the repertory of Bourne's company, Adventures in Motion Pictures. It will reappear.

"Embers"

	Embers Company Jeremy Irons plays a Hungarian aristcrat in "Embers." Click photo for larger image.

That previously mentioned link back to "Richard II" is suggestive. Irons' 1987 appearance for the RSC was his last time on the London stage, except for a recent one-night reading. As we all know, he has devoted himself with great effect to film, where he is a fastidious and precise actor of visible intelligence.

On stage, he can be that and more -- I still thrill at the memory of his Henry in Tom Stoppard's "The Real Thing" on Broadway (1984). The problem with his Richard II was interpretation: Irons played him as a saint from the start, rather than exploring Richard's waywardness, first.

Coincidentally that's the problem with his Henrik in "Embers" -- nothing develops. Irons gives us a full measure of sinewy intelligence and banked passion, but, whether the problem belongs to Marai's novel or Hampton's static adaptation, there's no where for him to go.

At least Irons is continually talking. The capable Patrick Malahide, as his antagonist, is reduced to a blank presence, like the guy in the old vaudeville joke listening to a long oration who is revealed to have been dead the whole time. We spend the entire play (though it's not long) gradually learning one detail after another of this long-ago betrayal, but there's no payoff, just a fatalistic shrug. Incremental revelation is what passes for drama. We see embers, but never any fire.

"Embers" is at the intimate Duke Of Yorks, booking through June 24; call 011-44-20-7359-4404.

"Resurrection Blues"

	Manuel Harlem At the Old Vic: Maximilian Schell plays the dictator of a country somewhere in the Andes in "Resurrection Blues." Click photo for larger image.

This is really an opportunity missed -- I trust Miller's play will have future productions more stylistically coherent, able to play the broad satire without undercutting it with unbelievable realism.

As I say above, the acting feels as if it were aimed at the camera, or at least no farther back than the third row. I exempt Schell, who blusters about at sufficient pitch as the dictator, but he's working against the grain of his strength as an actor. Adams, a deliciously delicate comic actor, is also oddly cast, playing a sensuous TV producer (she looks more like an intern) who sets the dictator on amorous fire. Modine is most in scale as an ad man for sale, and Campbell is stuck in a throw-away role.

"Resurrection Blues" is at the Old Vic and closes April 15; call 011-44-870-060-6628.

"Honour"

	Manuel Harlem Martin Jarvis and Diana Rigg spar in "Honour." Click photo for larger image.

The relative appeal of "Honour" was surprising only because of the flashier promise of "Embers" and "Resurrection Blues." But a thoughtful play about marital and familial crisis always strikes responsive sparks, particularly when acted with the deft reserve (reserving passion for spice) of Rigg and Jarvis.

Jarvis' George is in his 50s. He and Honor have been married 32 years and have a daughter, Sophie, 25, who overlapped briefly at university with Claudia, the journalist, now 28, who was already then the confident, attractive type who gets attention. The crisis envelops them all, though cool Claudia can't really fathom the pain felt by the other women.

Playwright Murray-Smith is at her best with stiff-upper-lip aphorisms like, "wishing [for the young] has the currency that doing does in middle age"; "history kills passion"; and "why do you want to trade a Bentley for a Toyota?" [Honor for Claudia]. The debate is all about the conflicting appeal and claims of security, passion and love.

And of course honour, as the British spell it. Just as the play alludes to her character, it is Rigg's play. Jarvis makes the best case possible for the infatuated George, who is simply a fool and an embarrassment, at least to another middle aged man like me. Rigg delicately registers Honor's pain. But with very economical means (I wish the playwright had given her a bit more stage time) she also shows her shed some skin and start to change.

The striking McElhone never really engages us -- Claudia is too cool for that. We get more involved with Sophie, whom the playwright gives the habit of saying everything twice, a quirk that Rich played to good advantage, making us feel her betrayal and needy confusion, in which she sees that both parents are to blame.

"Honour" made its London debut at the National Theatre in a much-praised 2002 production with Eileen Atkins and Corin Redgrave. I imagine this version measures up well.

"Honour" is at Wyndham's Theatre, booking through May 6; call 001-44-870-950-0925.

If you go: London theaters

The essential Internet site for the West End (London's Broadway) is www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk, where listings include box-office phone numbers. (Other sites try to funnel you through ticket brokers.) The National Theatre site is www.nationaltheatre.org.uk.

The weekly Time Out London magazine (sometimes available at Borders or Barnes & Noble) has a comprehensive list of plays with reliable capsule reviews and box-office phones.

The best way to buy tickets in advance is by phone directly from the theaters, to avoid a broker's fee that's usually at least 25 percent. To phone England, dial 011-44 followed by the number. You have to drop the initial 0 in the London number: e.g. for central London, dial 20 or 870, not the 020 or 0870 you'll see listed.

But except for the few hottest plays ("Billy Elliot") or just about anything at the National Theatre or Donmar, it's easier to buy tickets at the last minute than it is on Broadway. And there's a half-price booth in Leicester Square, now named tkts, also offering some shows at full price or 25 percent off. It's open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. and, on Sundays, from noon to 6 p.m. You can see a list of what's available each day at www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk.

The next Post-Gazette London theater tour is set for October, 2006. For information call 412-441-3131.