Broadway hit kicks up its heels
When performer Kyle Taylor Parker blasts onstage in his low-cut glittery minidress and begins to gyrate and sing, the musical Kinky Boots takes off. His glittery minidress? Yes. Donning the garment, he transforms into Lola, a sassy drag queen entertainer, and boy does he entertain. He and his drag queen cohorts, in the London club in which they strut their stuff, practically blow the top off the Orpheum Theater, where the roadshow company of this Tony Award winning hit has just landed.
With a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by Cindi Lauper, show biz royalty, the musical is based on the 2005 movie of the same name, which was in turn drawn from real events in England’s Northhamptonshire. There a long-time manufacturer of men’s shoes, the stodgy English kind, was about to go under. The death of the business would have struck a bruising blow to the gritty industrial town, so the company’s young inheritor, Charlie Price in the musical, decided to take a big chance: to change his product to a line of colorful, far-out shoes for the men-who-dress-like-women crowd.
If ever there’s ever been a niche market, this is it.
Did the daring plan succeed? You probably don’t have to see Kinky Boots to discover the answer, but if you do you’ll have a good time. Though it’s set in a depressed industrial area, the show is bright and cheery, with smart, character-driven dialogue, some of it straight from the movie. When Lola sashays up from London to help design the brash new line of boots, and she gets handed the first drably brownish pair off the line, she rolls her long-lashed eyes: “Please God, tell me I’ve not inspired something…burgundy.”
It’s red she wants, red that will sell, she insists, red, the color of sex, and she belts a number, “Sex Is in the Heel,” to nail the point. Yes, the musical is about that three-letter subject, but it’s much more about discovering who you are, about accepting yourself, and about learning to accept others as well. When Lola and her nightclub cohorts descend on Northhamptonshire, they have to accommodate to the stares of its working class citizens, and the citizens have to come to terms with the flashily dressed guys who bat their eyes at them.
All parties come together in smashing song-and-dance numbers choreographed by director Jerry Mitchell, climaxing at a fashion show, where the sizzling new product gets its first outing.
The show’s second act has to get along on the head of steam built up by the first, but it manages, and you leave the theater with a smile. Steven Booth plays the company’s owner, Charlie, with easy charm. As the factory girl smitten with him, Lindsay Nicole Chambers has one of the evening’s best moments in the song, “The History of Wrong Guys,” and Joe Coots adds expert comic moments as gruff, sexist Don, who gets softened up by Lola. The rest of the cast sings and dances with heady expertise.
Under SHN auspices, Kinky Boots holds forth on Market Street. SHN’s holiday offering, Elf, opens at the Curran next week. Upcoming shows include Newsies, Matilda and The Book of Mormon. Angela Lansbury arrives in January in Blithe Spirit. For tickets/information call 666-746-1799 or visit shnsf.com.
–ROBERT HALL