Billy Elliot in Canada

Universal Pictures Stage Productions, Working Title Films and Old Vic Productions in association with Weinstein Live Entertainment - have announced today that there are some new additions to the Toronto cast of BILLY ELLIOT, now in its fifth month at the Canon Theatre. Over the coming weeks, five Canadian actors will join the cast, three in major roles.

New in the role of Billy will be Julian Elia, a 12-year-old dancer from Markham, Ontario. Julian joins fellow Canadians Myles Erlick, of Burlington, and TY FORHAN, of Newmarket, as the third Canadian among the four boys who alternate the title role.

In the role of Billy's dad will be David Keeley, one of Canada's finest musical theatre actors who starred as the "rocked-out hippie" Dennis Dupree in last season's Rock of Ages at the Royal Alexandra Theatre and also starred as Sam Carmichael in Mamma Mia! at the same venue (a role he repeated in the show's Broadway premiere). David's is a well-known face on Canadian stages, with credits ranging from the North American premiere of Brad Fraser's True Love Lies to numerous seasons at the Stratford Festival - where he was seen in Hamlet, Richard III, Oklahoma, Fuente Ovejuna and Trojan Women - to Tuesdays With Morrie, with Jamie Farr, and his Dora Award-winning performance as Officer Lockstock in Urinetown. David's television roles include guest-starring appearances in XIII, Rookie Blue, Mud Pit, Lost Girl, Turn The Beat Around, At Risk, Hotel, Due South and Code Name Eternity.

New in the role of TONY, Billy's older brother, will be Jake Epstein. A graduate of The National Theatre School of Canada, Jake is probably best known for starring on television in Degrassi: The Next Generation (Gemini Award) and on stage in Spring Awakening (U.S. National Tour). Other theatre credits include Dani Girl (World Premiere, Talk Is Free Theatre), Beauty And The Beast and Cinderella (Ross Petty Productions), Dog Sees God (Rubinoff Productions), Dangerous Liaisons (Segal Centre) and Oliver! (Mirvish Productions). His Film/TV credits also include Jesus Henry Christ (with Toni Collette), Living In Your Car (HBO), My Babysitter's A Vampire (Teletoon), Being Erica (CBC), Charlie Bartlett (with Robert Downey Jr.) and The Zack Files (YTV).


BILLY ELLIOT THE MUSICAL began performances in Toronto on February 1, 2011 and officially opened on March 1. From the very first performance, Toronto audiences have embraced this show, lavishing the performers with standing ovations at every single curtain call (and standing ovations at certain points in the middle of the show, as well).

The critics have been equally enthusiastic about the production.

National Broadway Tours

The Tony Awards, Broadway's highest accolades, will be televised Sunday - the night each year when Broadway is most clearly on the nation's radar. But in cities big and small, Broadway means more than a Manhattan street or the 40 stages that represent the pinnacle of American commercial theater.

Broadway, because of a vibrant schedule of popular national tours, is no longer confined to Broadway. Consider:

The national tour of Billy Elliot, a Tony winner still running on Broadway, is playing in Dallas. The cast is one of two Billy Elliot ensembles playing around the country.

Fort Lauderdale, let the sun shine in - in the box office: People are buying or holding tickets for the national Broadway tour of Hair.

Jersey Boys, a big favorite for almost three months in Philadelphia last season and set to return this year, is about to head to Cleveland.

Anyone for Broadway theater in Boise, Idaho? Well, you'll find the ever-popular Mamma Mia! there.


In all, 13 national tours from Broadway producers are on the road - and in a slower summertime week than those during the regular theater season. This is the legacy of the tryout system that benefited Philadelphia with constant stops for decades, until it faded in the '70s - tours that took shows out on trial before they hit Broadway.

As you can guess, it's much more profitable to take them out after they've made it there (some more successfully than others) and have a buzz, the sort of thing created in part by winning Tonys.

To be clear, these are not the productions you find on the annual roster at, say, the Walnut Street Theatre, where a full-blown staging of Miss Saigon now plays nightly, or the Arden, Philadelphia Theatre Company, or Media Theatre, which is devoted to the American musical. Those professional productions are locally financed and created specifically for audiences in this region by almost 50 companies producing professional theater here. The regional theaters do it for art, not for profit, and sell more than a million tickets a year.

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Shows actually on Broadway - not the tours - sell about 800,000 tickets to metropolitan Philadelphians each year, according to figures tracked from zip codes in credit-card sales. Still, says Wolf, "a great deal of people do not want to go to New York and see shows. They consider Philadelphia the big city, and quality of the touring productions has reached such a high level, you're getting the same thing you're getting on Broadway."

The Broadway League, a trade association spearheaded by Broadway producers, calculates that in the 2008-09 season - when it most recently monitored tours - about 40 shows played in 192 theaters around North America (a few were in Canada) and generated $3.35 billion in the communities where they played. That figure includes the local artists and crew members hired by the shows - everyone from additional makeup stylists to load-in and load-out movers of scenery - and dining and parking expenses audiences pay for a night on the town.

If Philadelphia is an example, touring shows do very well. Jersey Boys broke weekly box-office records at the 1,800-seat Forrest Theatre. The tour of Broadway's South Pacific revival had "a smash week - over $1 million in gross, fantastic for a touring production," Wolf says. In the Heights had the highest weekly gross in its national tour - $700 shy of a million.

Perhaps the biggest sign of Broadway's touring success in Philadelphia comes from its increased visibility. Two seasons back, the Broadway series offered four shows to subscribers. This past season, there were six, plus three titles not included in the subscriptions. Beginning this fall, nine Broadway tour shows will again give their regards to Broad . . . Street.