Kinky Boots – London Coliseum

Pictures: Roy Tan

Kinky Boots continues at the London Coliseum until 11 July 2026.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

It hardly seems any time since Kinky Boots left its original West End run at the Adelphi Theatre. That was January 2019, though, which is a lifetime ago in commercial theatre terms.

The musical itself is a welcome returnee, though. Despite its American writer team of librettist Harvey Fierstein and composer/lyricist Cyndi Lauper, the story is a very British one, based on a 2005 film that was itself based on true events. Set in Northampton, a town renowned for shoemaking, Charlie Price (Matt Cardle) reluctantly returns to the family shoe factory after his father’s death. As the orders for the company’s traditional brogues start to dry up, a chance encounter with a drag queen, Johannes Radebe’s Lola, suggests a new line of footwear that might just save the company fortunes.

Director Nikolai Foster’s new interpretation relies heavily on the factory floor set. Robert Jones’ grimy industrial design features some cast iron pillar work that, from some angles, threatens to obscure action taking place in the further reaches of the Coliseum’s deep stage.

Thankfully, such moments are rare, the floor space instead taken over to a large cast supporting the leads. The ensemble helps to make both the factory scenes and Lola’s entourage of fellow drag artists (the “Angels”) swarm with life.

It is a shame, then, that Cardle’s own performance feels so much smaller in comparison. Between songs, his Charlie never really feels inhabited as a character, dialogue lines thrown away as something to get through en route to the next song. When his musical numbers start, though, it is an entirely different story. Cardle’s deeply impressive vocals are accompanied by acting performances – especially in his Act II powerhouse, ‘Soul of a Man’ – that make one wish that he could express the same level of emotion when talking and not just singing.

It is a performance that weakens Courtney Bowman’s performance as Lauren, Charlie’s right-hand woman and potential romantic interest. Bowman, one of British musical theatre’s greatest young talents, imbues her character with immense passion, humour and warmth, but it never quite feels as if her attraction to Charlie is reconciled with Cardle’s underpowered performance.

Underpowered is not a word one could use for Radebe, though. Well known as a dancer and choreographer from his years as a pro dancer on Strictly Come Dancing, Radebe’s dance skills are frequently on display here. Choreographer Leah Hill ensures that the rest of the cast can keep up with his energy, making this production of Kinky Boots feel like a much more dance-focused production than its Adelphi predecessor.

What sells the whole show, though, is Radebe’s skills as a singer and actor. In sharp contrast to Cardle, Radebe feels like he inhabits the character throughout. Partly that’s made easier by Fierstein’s book making Lola a character who is being an overt performer even when strutting between the factory workbenches, but it’s also down to Radebe’s innate charisma and a genuinely great performance. The character is called upon for smaller, quieter moments, and Radebe proves as adept here as he does in the big show numbers. Only his Johannesburg accent, at odds with the book’s insistence that Lola was brought up in Clacton, betrays that Radebe has been cast for name recognition as much as his intrinsic skill.

The result is a show whose big musical numbers feel as delightful, camp and entertaining as ever. The book feels less so, having dated in the near 15 years since Kinky Boots made its first US debut. Comments about the differences between drag queens and trans women were always crudely drawn, but in 2026 the transphobia feels harder to justify.

That, and Cardle’s difficulty in crafting a truly sympathetic character when not singing, make Charlie’s Act II fight with Lola in which he outpours a stream of homophobic and transphobic abuse feel all the more unpleasant. Foster’s direction enables Radebe to articulate Lola/Simon’s difficult childhood so sensitively that it further highlights how slight Charlie’s apology and subsequent redemption is.

That aside, it is Lauper’s killer songs that make this show so welcoming and warm. From ‘The Most Beautiful Thing’ to the finale’s ‘Raise You Up’, the show is bustling with anthemic numbers that remind one just how great Kinky Boots really is.

Scott Matthewman