One famous quote about dancer Ginger Rogers smirked that she did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in high heels.
Well, ladies, the shoe company/drag queen musical Kinky Boots is putting its own stamp on that, in fact, elevating it to a new level with platform shoes and six-inch heels.
This heartwarming look at diversity and mutual respect, now at the Benedum Center, goes above and beyond any chorus line musicals we’ve ever seen. It tells the tale of a young Brit named Charlie Price (Adam Kaplan) who inherits a failing men’s shoe company. He accidentally bumps into Lola (J. Harrison Ghee), star of a drag show, and thinks that he could save her from some ruffians.
But Lola doesn’t need help in a lot of ways. In fact, she could give Ginger and any other woman a run for her money. But not with a broken heel. As a result, the intrepid drag queen turns herself into a fashion consultant who knows a niche market when she sees one. And the men’s shoe company transforms itself into a custom boot corporation, making “a range of shoes for a range of men” like Lola. Along the way, everyone involved, from the employees to Lola and Charlie themselves undergo personal transformations.
This musical was the perfect vehicle for hometown favorite Billy Porter, who won a Tony Award as Lola last year. But would it stand on its own without him? Kinky Boots is, in many ways, an old-fashioned, uplifting evening of musical theater. It sports a rousing score by Cyndi Lauper, a versatile industrial scenic design by David Rockwell.
But most of all, it is yet another working class British musical (Billy Elliot, The Full Monty) that is able to make the leap across the pond to America because it strikes a universal emotional chord.
In this production, sans Porter, I sensed a new-found danger, though. Kudos to the Angels, Lola’s back-up singers and dancers. Full of unquenchable energy, the six performer/athletes zipped up and down stairs in their eye-catching platforms, could high kick and split with the best, and, most daringly, danced along moving conveyor belts as well.
I don’t know ladies — I can’t imagine Ginger keeping up, even in her heyday.
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