Everybody Say Yeah! Original KINKY BOOTS Stars Billy Porter and Stark Sands Will Return this Fall

Producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig announced today that Tony Award winner Billy Porter (whose recent studio album: Billy Porter Presents The Soul of Richard Rodgers debuted at #2 on the iTunes R&B charts) and Tony Award nominee Stark Sands (who appears alongside Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in Spielberg's upcoming The Papers) will return to Kinky Boots this fall, reprising the roles they created as Lola and Charlie, respectively, from September 26, 2017 through January 7, 2018.

"We're so excited that the schedules have aligned for this to happen," Roth and Luftig said. "It's rare that we get to welcome an original star back to a show almost five years into its run, so to get to welcome both Billy and Stark back together is a thrill for all of us!"

Original cast member Andy Kelso, who succeeded Sands as Charlie Price in 2014, returns to the role on August 8 for a limited 7- week engagement. He joins current Lola J. Harrison Ghee, who also starred as Lola in the touring production of Kinky Boots. In a recent re-review in The New York Times, Ben Brantley said about Ghee: "As Lola, he plies a plush satin voice that suggests Dionne Warwick as a contralto ... he towers and sashays most impressively in heels and spangles, and the crowd treated him as if he were a Bette [Midler] in the making!"

DeLaney Westfall will join the Broadway company of Kinky Boots as 'Lauren' starting August 22.

It was also announced that a new block of tickets for the Tony Award-winning Best Musical are now available. Kinky Boots, which has played more than 1750 performance on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre, are now on sale through August 26, 2018.

The winner of six 2013 Tony® Awards, including Best Musical, Kinky Boots features a Tony® Award-winning score by Cyndi Lauper, a book by Tony® Award-winnerHarvey Fierstein and direction and choreography by Tony Award-winner Jerry Mitchell. Kinky Boots tells the uplifting and heartwarming tale of Charlie Price, a young man reluctantly taking over his family's struggling shoe factory and looking for a fresh idea. Charlie meets and finds inspiration in Lola and together, they discover that it takes a good friend to make a great pair.

Kinky Boots has won every major Best Musical Award and is represented around the world with the Tony Award-winning Broadway company now in its fifth year, an Olivier Award-winning production in London, an Australian production that opened in October 2016 and an upcoming production in Germany. Other previous productions include a National Tour that played more than US 80 cities, an Award-winning, extended run in Toronto, two productions in Korea, and a Japanese language production. The Grammy Award-winning Original Broadway Cast Recording of Kinky Boots is available on Sony Masterworks Broadway.

The current Broadway cast of Kinky Boots includes J. Harrison Ghee (as Lola), Brendon Urie (as Charlie Price), Taylor Louderman (as Lauren), Daniel Stewart Sherman, Shannon O'Boyle, Marcus Neville, Joseph Anthony Byrd Kevin Smith Kirkwood, Fred Odgaard, Kyle Post, Charlie Sutton, Hernando Umana, Adinah Alexander, EuGene Barry-Hill, Stephen Berger, Devin Trey Campbell, Justin Colombo, Christopher Convery, Holly Davis, Jesus Del Orden, Stephane Duret, Christy Faber, Mia Gentile, Blair Goldberg, Natalie Joy Johnson, Jake Katzman, Eric Leviton, Ellyn Marie Marsh, John Jeffrey Martin, Michael Milkanin, Jake Odmark, Nathan Peck, Jennifer Perry, and Stephen Tewksbury.

The design team for Kinky Boots includes Tony® Award nominee David Rockwell (Scenic Design), Tony® Award-winner Gregg Barnes (Costume Design), Tony Award-winner Kenneth Posner (Lighting Design), Tony® Award-winner John Shivers (Sound Design), Josh Marquette (Hair Design), Randy Houston Mercer (Make-up Design), Telsey + Company, Justin Huff, CSA (Casting), Will Van Dyke (Musical Direction), with Musical Supervision, Arrangements and Orchestrations by Tony and Grammy Award-winner Stephen Oremus.

Tickets for Kinky Boots ($55 - $189) are available for purchase in person at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre box office (Monday - Saturday, 10am - 8pm; Sunday, 12pm - 6 pm), online at www.ticketmaster.com. For information on group sales, contact Group Sales Box Office/Broadway.com at groups@broadway.com or 1-800-BROADWAY, ext 2.

The performance schedule for Kinky Boots is as follows: Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday at 2pm and 8pm, Thursday at 7pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, andSunday at 3pm (see KinkyBootsTheMusical.com for variations). There is a general ticket lottery each day; lottery entries will be accepted online (lottery.kinkybootsthemusical.com) beginning at the curtain time of the previous performance up to 3.5 hours prior to curtain of the desired performance, and names will be chosen at random, for a limited number of $40 tickets. See KinkyBootsTheMusical.com for details and restrictions.

Kinky Boots is produced on Broadway by Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig, James L. Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, Independent Presenters Network, CJ E&M, Jayne Baron Sherman, Just for Laughs Theatricals/Judith Ann Abrams, Yasuhiro Kawana, Jane Bergere, Allan S. Gordon & Adam S. Gordon, Ken Davenport, Hunter Arnold, Lucy and Phil Suarez, Bryan Bantry, Ron Fierstein and Dorsey Regal, Jim Kierstead/Gregory Rae, BB Group/Christina Papagjika, Michael DeSantis/Patrick Baugh, BrIan Smith/Tom and Connie Walsh, Warren Trepp, and Jujamcyn Theaters.

Photo credit: Sean Williams