Eye-popping, over the top and totally Bootylicious!
Kinky Boots (Adelphi Theatre, London) Verdict: Savour that sole!
BROADWAY import Kinky Boots is a cheerily over-the-top musical about, er, the footwear industry in Northampton. Throw in a chorus line — I almost said second row — of statuesque drag queens, some of whom do stage acrobatics in 3in high heels, and I swear the Adelphi’s foundations shuddered.
The way these ‘ ladies’ cavort and roll their eyes and waggle their sixpack-tummied booty, this show is all about tongues — and in a way that would make a shires c obbler t hwack hi s t humb in astonishment.
The score by Cyndi Lauper is middling U.S. rock, by-the-yard fare. Harvey Fierstein’s script has a few jolly moments but as many cliches. And yet the whole thing canters along with engaging verve and vim, once a dull opening 15-minute first quarter is done.
Price & Sons, a third-generation shoe factory, faces closure. Charlie Price (Killian Donnelly), having inherited the business from his late father, does not know how to save it.
Then he meets a drag queen, broad- shouldered Lola ( Matt Henry), who has snapped one of her glittery high-heeled boots. Lola complains that it’s hard to find a good drag-act boot these days.
Ping! Dimmish-witted Charlie has his business solution.
Mr Henry, like his fellow drag artistes, gives a storming performance. Mr Donnelly slowly wins us round as Charlie. Amy Lennox grabs her moment as a factory girl who fancies Charlie. There is predictable self- affirmation stuff about drag queens needing to be accepted.
Little of this feels particularly novel. I preferred the storyline of Charlie learning how to be a factory boss and eventually being accepted thanks to the generosity of his workforce, led by a reformed boor called Don (Jamie Baughan).
Best of all, though, are the boots. Well done the wardrobe mistress and the backstage dressers who squeeze the cast into various items of footwear.
Price & Sons takes a new range of kinky boots to the Milan fashion show and the evening concludes with 6ft 5in blokes on the catwalk in skimpy frocks and Union Jack boots up almost to their armpits. As they say in shoe shops: blistering!