song "Merry Christmas, Maggie Thatcher," whose lyrics might have been fun to hear but alas, even amplified, evaporate in the vast cavern of the Opera House.)

Billy's quest is drawn against the Thatcherite mission of privatizing industries and snuffing out unions, policies that compel miners such as Billy's widowed father to go on strike. Billy is doubly cursed: The government's action is stealing food from his family's table, making it impossible for him to nourish his aspiration, instilled by Mrs. Wilkinson, to go to the Royal Ballet School. And the prideful miners, viewing ballet as the domain of the elites seeking to bring them down, can't comprehend Billy's desire to be a part of that.

How Billy endures, and how the broke village rallies around him, are themes that seemto have even more currency now than when the musical opened on Broadway in November 2008. "You're fighting a battle that was lost long ago," Mrs. Wilkinson explains to Billy's dad, drawing for him in shorthand a portrait of the inequity that has turned him into economic collateral damage. The musical may reductively suggest the miners as heroes as they stirringly descend into the pit once more, singing "Once We Were Kings," but it also succeeds in evoking a communal tragedy.

The balance achieved by this touring cast, performing in the shabby environment conjured by Ian MacNeil's portable set pieces and Nicky Gillibrand's down-market costumes, stamps its work as a finer filter of the show than even the solid Broadway incarnation. (The curtain call, by the way, is a