The Kinky Boots revival at Stage 42 is every bit as fun as the original 2013 Broadway hit and Callum Francis’s performance as sassy drag queen Lola is right up there with Billy Porter’s Tony Award-winning portrayal. With a 25-person cast, it’s a delight from beginning to end.
Directed and choreographed once again by Jerry Mitchell, the simple story of a dying shoe factory in Northampton, England that is revived after its owner discovers a colorful niche market is never overwhelmed by the high energy singing and dancing that surround it. The story belongs to Lola and Charlie (Christian Douglas), the heir to Price and Son Shoes, who form an unexpected partnership that changes both their lives. We are entertained royally with each song and dance number but these two characters come off as real and are not lost. We care about them, as we do Lauren, a young factory worker endearingly played by Danielle Hope, and the other factory workers and Lola’s Angels, the six backup singers and dancers who make up her cabaret act. David Rockwell’s minimalist sets contribute to keeping the focus on the story.
The original Broadway show, with music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper and book by Harvey Fierstein, won the Tony for best new musical. It was inspired by the 2005 British movie, which it follows closely. The inspiration for the movie was a documentary about the death of factories making conservative dress shoes for men as society was becoming more and more informal. One factory reinvented itself by catering to men who wanted women’s shoe styles but with a sturdiness that would support a man’s body. The movie creators then invented the Lola/Charlie story. A musical was a natural next step.
The show begins with Charlie’s father (Ryan Halsaver) indoctrinating his son in the family business, which was established in 1890. The full company backs this up in “The Most Beautiful Thing,” which in Mr. Price’s eyes is a shoe.
But adult Charlie has other things in mind. Much to his father’s dismay, he moves to London with his fiancé, Nicola (Brianna Stoute), to work in marketing. He isn’t gone long before he receives the call that his father has died and he returns to run the factory so the employees, whom he has known all his life and considers to be friends, won’t lose their jobs.
One evening, when he has gone back to London to see Nicola, he has a chance encounter with Lola and ends up in her dressing room where she laments that she has broken the heel of yet another pair of thigh-high boots. Charlie tries to fix it before returning to Northampton to begin what have become inevitable lays offs.
Lauren, though, refuses to see closing the factory as an option. She tells Charlie to find a new market and the lightbulb goes off in his head as he thinks of Lola and all of the other Lolas out there, men who for whatever reason want to wear women’s shoe styles. He arranges to meet Lola in London to take her foot measurements, promising to return with the boots because he doesn’t want her coming to the factory. She picks up on this, telling him “I have a terrible habit of doing exactly the opposite of what people ask.” Her arrival, in a short blue dress with matching blue booties and hat, is a hoot. Gregg Barnes’s costumes are great all around but spectacular for Lola. The factory workers have never seen anyone like Lola.
Charlie proudly shows her a burgundy boot — after she had demanded red — with a thick heel. She turns full drama queen, telling him “burgundy is the color of hot water bottles; red is the color of sex.” She makes this clear in the hilarious “Sex is in the Heel” number, supported by her Angels and the ensemble. Charlie is convinced, saying they will make "two and a half feet of tubular sex."
Determined to make it work, Charlie asks her to stay for three weeks, which horrifies her because she “abandoned the provinces years ago.” When Charlie says he will make her the designer and they will work in partnership, she’s in and they go about creating boots with the goal of taking them to the upcoming Milan shoe exhibition.
The journey to Milan is threaten after Charlie’s harsh words to Lola shatters their relationship but, rest assured, we’ll get to that great closing number, “Raise You Up/Just Be,” with the full company in thigh-high shiny red boots singing and dancing up a storm that will send you out of the theatre in high spirits.
Two other numbers that stand out for me are “Step One” and “I’m Not My Father’s Son.” In “Step” we see Charlie starting to believe in his new venture and enthusiastically singing: “I may be facing the impossible/I may be chasing after miracles./And there may be the steepest/mountain to overcome./But this is step one.
“It’s not just a factory./This is my family/No one’s gonna shut us down. Not while Charlie Price is around.”
“My Father’s Son” is moving. Lola, dressed in men’s clothes to start her designer job at the factory, tells Charlie that her father was a boxer who hated his son for being gay and trained him as a boxer to try to change him before refusing to have anything to do with him, not even when he was dying of lung cancer. “The best part of me/is what he wouldn’t see,” she sings.
“So I jumped in my dreams/and found an escape./Maybe I went to extremes/of leather and lace./But the world seemed brighter/six inches off the ground/and the air seemed lighter./I was profound/And I felt so proud/just to live out loud.”
Charlie joins him at the end: “I’m not my father’s son/I’m not the image of what he dreamed of . . . “
Then Lola extends her hand to shake and sings: “We’re the same, Charlie boy/You and me. Charlie from Northampton, meet Simon from Clacton.” To which Charlie replies: “Let’s make boots!” And they shake.
It’s a credit to Mitchell that such a tender moment is preserved. The movie had tender moments but I’ve seen such scenes destroyed in other musicals, Ghost: The Musical and Bullets Over Broadway come to mind, when the choreographer suffocated them in high-charged dance numbers that ruined all sentiment.
The original Kinky Boots ran for six years, closing as recently as April 2019. I’m happy we didn’t have to wait long for its return.
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