The genius of Billy Elliot the Musical and secret of its success is that this stage adaptation of the 2000 movie Billy Elliot written by Lee Hall and directed by Stephen Daldry combines two distinct theatrical esthetics. On the one hand, you have Broadway musicals, with all the glitz, razzmatazz, spectacle and foot stomping often associated with this generally commercial, crowd-pleasing form of expression, as in, say, Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun. On the other hand, Elliot also incorporates the dialectic of proletarian drama, which roots the characters and plot firmly in class conflict and consciousness, as in Clifford Odets' 1930sWaiting for Lefty.