Ultimately, Mower gave up his scholarship and place at the Royal Ballet School. It got to be too much, I think, and I needed to make a decision.” “Then, I’d perform the show, and then, they’d bring me back in a taxi. “I was a boarder at the Royal Ballet School, and I would do my school during the morning, and I would get picked up in the afternoon, after my ballet classes, by a chaperone, and they would take me to the show in town,” Mower said. “You’ve got your few hours at the ball, and then, you must leave.”īut Mower’s real-life Cinderella story took a turn when he struggled balancing his ballet studies with playing Billy. “I remember at the time being like, ‘You’ve got to soak this experience up because … you’ll probably never go to the Met ball ever again,’ ” he said. He became one of the youngest winners of an Olivier Award, sharing the honor with his fellow Billys, and during his 18-month run in the role, he performed at the Met Gala at the invitation of Anna Wintour.
Though he shared the role, his opening night performance quickly thrust him into the spotlight. Mower was cast as one of three Billys in the original 2005 production after a nationwide search. “But actually, now looking back, it’s just so uncanny how my life was panning out and the similarities I had with the role.”įROM THE ARCHIVE: Bourne’s “Early Adventures” at the Wallis » “It’s totally weird, and obviously, it’s something that I never planned,” Mower said last month via Skype from a New Adventures tour stop in Washington, D.C.
But he’s always in charge of what happens.” … Sometimes that’s not good, because there are times in the story where things are not going so right for her. “He’s more of a symbol of hope, I guess, and of positivity, and of Cinderella’s fate,” Mower said of the spirit whose presence hovers about Bourne’s World War II-era re-imagining of the classic fairy tale, set during the Blitz of London. through March 10, he’s a fairy godfather-like figure known as the Angel. premiere at the Ahmanson Theatre in 1999 and is back in L.A. In Bourne’s “Cinderella,” which had its U.S. In “Sleeping Beauty,” Mower plays not a mauve-clad queen of the fairies but a blood-sucking Count Lilac. Now 26, the dancer travels the world with Matthew Bourne’s company New Adventures, performing roles that most male dancers only dream of: the Lilac Fairy from “Sleeping Beauty” and the fairy godmother from “Cinderella” - roles that come with a particularly Bourneian twist. “One can very well be gay and conservative at the same time,” he wrote.īilly Elliot – The Musical is on stage at Budapest’s Erkel Theatre from 19 June until 14 July, 2018.If “Billy Elliot” had a sequel, it might look like the life of Liam Mower.Īt age 12, Mower won the title role of the original West End production of “Billy Elliot: The Musical” in London. She also criticised the theatre for failing to support the government’s new “conservative values”, blaming a “delayed regime change” across the arts.ĭirector Szilveszter Ókovács hit back at the claims, writing in Hungarian newspaper Magyar Idők that “showing something which is an undeniable part of life doesn’t mean you are propagating it.” This year’s rendition is set to feature some of Hungary’s most popular stage actors, as well as a scene from Swan Lake performed by the Hungarian National Ballet.īut the production came under attack from Hungarian writer Zsófia Horváth, who claimed that the show was a “eulogy of homosexuality”, declaring that children could “become homosexuals” after merely watching the show. The show, which follows the story of a working class boy who dreams of becoming a ballet dancer, was first performed by the theatre in 2016. Hungary’s State Opera has defended their latest staging of musical Billy Elliotafter accusations that the play could “turn children gay”.