A scene from the Broadway production of Kinky Boots. Picture: Matthew Murphy
Opened April 4 at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, New York, for an open-ended run.
La Cage Aux Folles comes to Northampton, England, a town filled with failing shoe factories, in Broadway’s new dazzler Kinky Boots. Based on a 2005 movie, the show tells how a flamboyant drag queen and her sextet of high-stepping pals of similar persuasion reverse the fortunes of one of those factories, Price & Son, by changing over its product from sturdy brogues to sexy, perilously high-heeled, thigh-high boots glittery enough for outrageous cross-dressers, but strong enough to support their manly avoirdupois.
If the highly improbable storyline doesn’t exactly ring your bell, don’t worry. The plot is not the thing in this high-spirited entertainment. What’s important is how its captures all the sassy fun of Jerry Herman’s musical and contrasts it against the grittiness of a foundering factory town. This infusion of fizz is hardly a coincidence – after all, Harvey Fierstein, who wrote the book for La Cage Aux Folles has authored the script for Kinky Boots. And Jerry Mitchell, the director/choreographer of this production, picked up a 2005 Tony Award for the breathtaking dances he created for the first Broadway revival of La Cage.
Fierstein’s writing here is not always silky smooth. Act II becomes a bit awkward with a patently manufactured crisis, and familiar life lessons about tolerance, self-knowledge and coming to terms with problematic fathers. But Mitchell‘s pacing rarely falters, as the show moves in and out of a barrage of show-stopping production numbers. And a great cast of 32, led by Billy Porter as the drag queen Lola, and Stark Sands as the youthful heir to the faltering Price & Son family business, keeps the audience totally engaged.
Equally impressive is the score from pop icon Cyndi Lauper, making a fairly astonishing debut as a musical theatre composer and lyricist. Her melodies, joyfully orchestrated by Stephen Oremus, tingle with a contemporary beat but are never oppressive, and her lyrics are sharp realisations of what’s happening with the show’s characters.
Lauper further provides not only one but two show-stopping 11 o’clock numbers, one a soul-searching, gut-wrenching aria for Sands, and the other a torchy anthem for Porter, beautifully gowned, bewigged and sounding like he could be a long-lost member of the Dionne Warwick-Whitney Houston clan. The eye-popping costumes by Gregg Barnes and sets by David Rockwell further add to the feel-good rush of this high-heeled, high-voltage package.
Ron Cohen
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