Here in Israel, there was no need for glossaries; the Hebrew adaptation did all the work for the audience.
There was a two-minute crash course on Mrs Thatcher at the start, spoken in her own words, by an impressionist capturing what the Iron Lady would have sounded like at ulpan.
The main Christmas-themed song was still about Christmas but its lyrics used the catch-all holiday greeting, "chag sameach".
And the miners' struggle was expressed with the help of some protest banners that appealed to the specifically Israeli sense of social justice. They called for "tzedek" (justice) and not "tzedaka" (charity).
"It's a universal story," says director Eldar Groisman. "Even though it's happening in Britain and it's about Margaret Thatcher's regime and what happened in the 1980s, it's absolutely happening now in Israel." For him, the wide social gaps in Israel and the country's social justice protests, such as those that took place in 2011, are reminiscent of the coal miners' struggle. And, he points out, "the main narrative is the kid who is going to change a whole town to get his dream."
Mr Groisman did not turn the musical into an anti-Bibi tome, but there are some subtle digs at Israel's prime minister. In last year's election campaign, Benjamin Netanyahu provoked outrage by playing down social issues and saying that he was focused on Iran. "When we talk about the price of housing, about the cost of living, I don't forget life itself for a single moment," he said. When Billy's brother parodied Mrs Thatcher, he sang sarcastically that even "life itself" is "nonsense".
Translator Eli Bijaoui had a difficult task. Much of the original Billy Elliot is told in the Geordie accent, using foul language, and phrases that play on the British class system. And some songs, like Born to Boogie or Electricity, in which Billy says that dancing makes him feel like he is flowing with electricity, were never going to have the same ring to them. But all came out well in Hebrew - and there were points when the change of language actually enhanced the poetry.
In the English, Billy's granny sings about her regrets, and how, by the age of 17, her life was over. In the Hebrew, this translated by her singing that by 17, "hachayim nigmarim" (life is finished).
And when Billy and his friend, Michael, try on clothes together and sing about self-expression, part of the famous saying by Hillel, sage of the Mishna, is integrated into the script: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" It worked dramatically - and left one wondering what Hillel would have made of his wisdom becoming the sound-track for Hebrew-speaking Geordie boys in frocks.
Mr Bijaoui, whose past translations include Shakespeare and West Side Story, said that his challenge was how to get the audience to understand the miners' anger towards Mrs Thatcher. "I tried to capture the cynicism of the miners by using terms that connect the audience," he says.
One memorable phrase that stuck in people's minds was Billy's father hearing Mrs Thatcher on the radio and spitting to his family: "Silence that witch!"
The audience on opening night, surprisingly, was mostly native Hebrew-speakers, with few British expats in attendance. Some, such as Shai Eldar, a 38-year-old from Hod Hasharon, thought there was Thatcher overkill. "It was a bit archaic," she said, adding that the political backdrop was "still current".
Overall, though, she loved the performance telling the story of Billy and his dream, and was "crying through 80 per cent of it."
Asaf Lahav, who lives on a kibbutz near Tel Aviv, was there with his 12-year-old daughter, Ori. "I'm not sure she gets all the relevance of the strike and Thatcher but she loved the movie and loved the performance tonight," he said - before Ori disagreed and said that she "learned a lot".
Elton John was in Tel Aviv a week before curtain-up, and the cast invited him to go along to rehearsals and see his music with Hebrew lyrics, but to no avail. He certainly missed out.
