kinky

Kinky Boots

Birmingham Hippodrome

*****

 

It’s got polish, it’s got shine, it’s got glamour and it’s got shoes by the leggy yard – what more could you ask? It’s just a cracker of a show.

The leads are superb, story heart-warming, even if it does have tad too much sugar in the mix, and it has inventive choreography that has punch and pizazz. You leave the theatre with smile and a warm, feel-good glow from tip to well shod toe, Theatrical tonic.

It is the first, and let’s be honest, probably the last musical to be set in Northampton, but that is where the story of Kinky Boots originated. Old established bootmaker W.J. Brooks, maker of fine traditional men’s and women’s shoes since 1899, with 90 per cent exported, was struggling with a rising pound, rising interest rates and a flood of lower quality, but much cheaper foreign shoes. Thirty staff out of eighty had been made redundant and the business was failing.

Then in 1998, Laces, a shop in Folkstone, specialising in outfits favoured by drag artists and transgender customers, inquired if Brooks could make ladies shoes and boots, some thigh high, in men’s sizes and widths . . . the rest is, well, the Devine brand of footwear which saved the factory, a film and then this Broadway musical.  

charlie and simon

Joel Harper-Jackson as Charlie nd Kayi Ushe as Simon, the non-drag version of Lola

A BBC documentary in 1999 spawned the 2005 British film and in 2012, the boots were strutting along on Broadway with a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper.

The story has been nudged, rather than changed. Brooks has become Price and son, with son, Charlie, a lovely performance from Joel Harper-Jackson, now taking over the business upon the death of his father.

The firm is losing orders, cheap imports are flooding in and jobs are about to be lost until Charlie, by chance, meets Lola, a drag artist, with a broken heel on his pair of women’s boots not designed for a man’s weight.

That could have been that except as Charlie is making staff redundant, one, Lauren, explodes and lays into the new boss, telling him firms don’t just give up, they survive by moving into new niche markets and storms off. This is what is known as the idea moment – Charlie asks Lolo to work for him, designing men’s kinky boots for the drag and cross-dressing market.

And Lolo makes quite an impression on the shoe factory staff, particularly the rotund Don, Demitri Lampra, a rather belligerent and bullying character who has a somewhat intolerant attitude to any man he does not regard as meeting his undefined criteria for a real bloke – Lola failing on pretty well every count. 

lola

Kayi Ushe as Lolo and the powerful anthem Hold Me In Your Heart

Kayi Ushe as Lola is just magnificent. You would never guess that until he landed the part he had never worn a dress or worn heels. Whether as Simon from Clacton, Lola’s other life, or as Lola the drag queen, he commands the stage, strutting about, and remarkably, dancing on 6in heels and with some wonderful funny lines - the difference between a drag queen and a transvestite is a gem, while on fashion advice we are told red is for seeeeeeex, while green is for pickles.

He has some raunchy numbers in his drag act, such as Land of Lola, or the verbal battle with Don, with What a Woman Wants, but he also has two of the stand-out numbers in the show, the bittersweet, sad Not My Father’s Son, about rejection when his pro-boxer father found out Simon was not the macho son he wanted, and the heartfelt showstopper, Hold Me in Your Heart, which has the same power as I am what I am in La Cage aux Folles. Great show songs sung with power and emotion.

There are other good songs, with a gloriously funny The History of Wrong Guys from the lovely Paula Lane (Kylie Platt in Coronation Street) as she realises she is falling for Charlie. She is just a delight.

Charlie has his moments as well with his soliloquies and his song of regret, Soul of a Man, after clashing with Lola, his entire staff and everyone walking out on him.

There is excellent support from the likes of Helen Ternent as ambitious girlfriend Nicola and the entire staff at the shoe factory, not forgetting Lola’s angels, a chorus line of six men in drag, check the programme to make sure, with legs many a girl would give eye teeth for, and whichever one of them it was, anyone who even attempts a back flip in six inch heels has my undying admiration – and they succeeded by the way. 

They are great fun and boy can they dance, even in sky-high heels with splits, high kicks and all the things we haven’t seen since The Tiller Girls and Pan’s People. Choreography from director Jerry Mitchell is outstanding and David Rockwell’s setting helps things move along quickly with a moveable central rostrum, and machines and props gliding in and out. There is a wonderful dance routine using a collection of conveyor belts which end as a stage wide line.

Gregg Barnes’ costumes are spectacular when it comes to drag and boots, brown coats when it comes to workers, Kenneth Posner’s lighting adds atmosphere and creates moments while the nine piece band under musical director Patrick Hurley, do a fund job hidden in the pit.

The plot is about the saving of a failing shoe factory by going into the kinky boot market, but the real story is about friendship, about acceptance, about being able to be who you are and the realisation that we all have much more in common than our differences. As Lola tells us, Oscar Wilde had it right: “Be yourself, everyone else is taken.” To 23-03-19

Roger Clarke

12-03-19

Index page Hippodrome Reviews A-Z Reviews by Theatre