Book and lyrics by Lee Hall. Music by Elton John. Directed by Bill Millerd. An Arts Club Theatre production. At the Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage on Wednesday, May 18. Continues until July 10

Sometimes you want to cry because moments are so moving. At other times, the Arts Club’s production of Billy Elliot the Musical, feels disappointingly provincial.

Based on the 2000 hit film, which was simply called Billy Elliot, the musical tells the same story of an 11-year-old boy in North East England who’d rather study ballet than boxing, much to the distress of his widowed coal-miner father. It’s 1984 and the miners are on strike in their famously prolonged and ultimately futile confrontation with Maggie Thatcher.

The story is all about being a weirdo, especially in terms of male behaviour. While the macho miners and police clash bloodily, Billy finds solace in more traditionally feminine arenas, through artistic expression and imaginary chats with his dead mom.

Although it doesn’t identify Billy as gay, the musical celebrates homosexuality much more openly than the film does. Billy and his best friend Michael do a show-stopping drag number, and there’s even a hint of pubescent gay romance.

This mainstream entertainment dares to embrace the struggle—and beauty—of a boy who would once have been derided as a sissy. So, in this performance, when Billy started dance classes and his body suddenly and naturally fell into a graceful balletic attitude, the moment was so loaded that it was all I could do to stop from gushing like a burst water main.

Bill Millerd has not directed this production well, however. His casting is imperfect. Although Catriona Murphy, who plays Billy’s ballet teacher Mrs. Wilkinson, is an excellent singer and actor, she can’t dance well enough for the part. Off the top, almost all of the actors are yelling so loudly that the scenes have little emotional nuance or impact. Danny Balkwill, who plays Billy’s older brother Tony, is pretty much one-note furious throughout. The accents are ridiculously all over the place. And Valerie Easton’s choreography of the Act 1 finale, “Angry Dance”, which should be a barnburner, fails to hit that mark.

But… there’s also beauty, and lots of it. Young Nolan Fahey, who plays Billy, has a lovely voice, and, to his enormous credit, even when the adults around him are hollering, he delivers a subtle performance. The musical is all about being consumed by the transcendent rush of artistic expression, and Fahey’s dancing doesn’t always embody that thrill, but there’s an astonishing moment when he’s leaping into a forward flip and he seems to suspend time. And although the number is a bit corny in its use of a flying rig, the duet that Billy dances with his older self (played by Matthew Cluff) is another tearjerker.

Barbara Pollard does an excellent job of realizing “Grandma’s Song”, in which Billy’s nan remembers how dance was her refuge in an abusive marriage. Although he mostly wastes his talents in bluster in Act 1, Warren Kimmel is touching as Billy’s dad in the more sustained scenes in Act 2. And Valin Shinyei is the perfect little showboat as Billy’s gay pal, Michael.

The show’s politics, in which traditional masculinity and working-class values are placed in opposition to a supposedly new order that’s represented by an arguably elitist art form, feel a bit wonky. But it’s hard to argue against self-expression. And there are enough successes in this production that it is sure to be a summer hit.