Working-Class Kid With A Posh Price Tag

The Broadway-bound musical version of Billy Elliot “which will open in the fall of 2008 at the Imperial Theatre, is budgeted at $18.5 million, making it one of the most expensive non-Disney musicals ever… One thing is clear: Broadway has turned its back on the working and middle classes. If you’re not rich, if you don’t have a loft in SoHo or a three-bedroom on the Upper West Side or a house in Westport, get lost, we don’t need you, you can’t afford us.” So it’s ironic that the story of a young working-class boy fighting to break free of his status should be so expensively embraced by the Broadway power brokers.