FIVE years after the film, Billy Elliot The Musical arrives on stage and has already been described as "the greatest British musical I have ever seen" by one national theatre critic.

With the same team on board - including director Stephen Daldry, writer Lee Hall and choreographer Peter Darling - there was never any risk the show would not be good. But who could have predicted just how good.

You can understand why the show has been earning standing ovations from preview audiences.

The production still needs trimming and tidying up in places, but the rough edges are entirely in keeping with a show that dares to take chances and be more than just another musical.

One of the biggest challenges was finding a boy who can sing, dance and act to play Billy, the North-East miner's son with ambitions to be a ballet dancer. They found three, who are sharing the role.

Twelve-year-old Liam Mower - the Press night Billy - is already a sensational dancer, tripping neatly from tap to ballet. The other Billys are James Loman and George Maguire, and the choreography changes to play to each boy's different strengths.

Tim Healy gives a moving performance as Billy's dad, breaking the picket line to earn money to send his son to ballet school, and Haydn Gwynn is excellent as Mrs Wilkinson, the dance teacher who spots the youngster's potential.

The production doesn't cheat on the Geordie accents for the sake of audiences unused to the dialect, just as Newcastle-born Hall's script pulls no punches over the struggle between the miners and the Government in the 1980s. As well as an anthem about solidarity, the second act opens with a rollicking song called Merry Christmas Maggie Thatcher, complete with a giant puppet lady in blue.

A chorus line of policemen and pickets mingle with a ballet class. Riot shields become part of one of Billy's sizzling solo dances. The piece is political, but not preachy, serious, but never without a sense of fun.

Elton John's music - with lyrics by Hall - takes in everything from flashy showbiz numbers like Shine to the miners' anthem Once We Were Kings, via the exuberant Expressing Yourself, sung by two boys in drag.

Hall has said that the aim was "to create a musical that was truly British that would be rough, lyrical, funny and moving in equal measure." I'm pleased to report that this magnificent production has done just that.

Steve Pratt