Kravis show tells irresistible story of unlikely friendship
What’s the toughest thing about performing in “Kinky Boots”? Hands-down, it’s dancing in fancy boots with 6 1/2-inch heels, said associate choreographer Rusty Mowery, who has helped coach seven companies of the musical.
In a show in which drag queen Lola helps save a failing shoe factory by designing a new line of high-heeled boots for crossdressing men, such footwear is paramount. By the fashion-show fifinale not just Lola and her backup singers, the Angels, but factory owner Charlie and his workers are boogieing.
“Some of them have never danced before, and they’re doing a whole number where they’re running down steps and down a runway,” Mowery said.
The show, which opened Tuesday at the Kravis Center, teams veterans director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell and book writer Through Sunday Kravis Center, West Palm Beach 561832-7469 or visit kravis.org Harvey Fierstein with Broadway neophyte Cyndi L auper, who won a Tony Award for the score. The show also captured 2013’s best musical, choreography and orchestration Tonys.
One reason why Mowery spends a lot of time coaching performers to strut their stuffff in heels is that the show made a point of casting everyday-looking people as the factory workers.
“We’ve had rehearsals that start out with everyone looking like cowboys, but by the end, oh yeah, we could take on Beyonce,” Mowery said.
Hard-won odd-couple bonho- mie is at the heart of the musical’s message of tolerance and self-acceptance.
“The lead relationship isn’t a man-woman romance,” associate director D.B. Bonds said. “It’s a friendship between two unlikely friends.”
Charlie, a straight man, forsakes his status-conscious fifiance, Nicola, and his ambition to pursue a career in real estate in London to take over a near-bankrupt factory in Northampton when his father dies. He’s faced with closing the factory and laying offff its workers when he meets Lola.
When Lola agrees to help him, she’s greeted with contempt by some workers. But eventually, Charlie and Lola, and just about everyone else, join forces and realize they’re not so difffffffffffferent after all.
“You never know when you get involved with a new project how the chemistry will work,”
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