Review: KINKY BOOTS - A Premier Broadway Musical

KINKY BOOTS: BROADWAY'S FINEST MUSICAL

Sparkling! Spectacular! Superb! Sensational! Glitzy! Awesome! Thought-Provoking! Entertaining! I would run out of positive adjectives to describe the best musical I've seen in a long time, Kinky Boots. It certainly earns the kudo and accolade as 2013 Tony-Award Winning Best Musical, with a season-high six awards. Kinky Boots depicts a young man named Charlie (Steven Booth), who grows up in a shoe factory, entitled Price & Son in Northhampton, England. Void of desire to follow in "his father's footsteps", he escapes to London to establish a career in business marketing. His pursuit of happiness is interrupted when his father dies and leaves the potentially bankrupted shoe factory as his inheritance. In an effort to resurrect the factory to keep his father's dream alive, Charlie meets a "larger than life" drag queen named, Lola (J. Harrison Ghee). After an eye-catching performance, Charlie meets Lola backstage, where he discovers that she has broken the heel on her boot. I am a "quote lover" and one (of many) symbolic statement(s) that Lola made while conversing with Charlie about the broken heel was "Like most things in life, they cannot stand the weight of a man!"

There is so much life-affirming symbolism in Kinky Boots. Although the main storyline concerns the resurrection of an inheritance left to a son by his father, it also parallels the similarity of the father/son relationship of Charlie and Simon, Jr. (aka "Lola") and the hardships they experience because of their non-traditional individuality and the desire to be "accepted for who they are" that creates a wedge between both fathers and sons. Another thought-provoking and applicable quote came from the wisdom of Oscar Wilde, "Be yourself, everyone else is already taken".

Anyway, the meeting between Charlie and Lola sparked a partnership to provide a "niche" (shoemaker and designer prospectively) making spectacular stiletto boots for transvestites that would not break under pressure. The new shoe line would be revealed at a fashion show which was unveiled at the end with the glamour of a Paris fashion extravaganza.

The whole ordeal highlighted the prejudices of others and the assumptions made concerning those perceived as "different" or "abnormal". After Lola accepted Charlie's proposal to stay three weeks in Northhampton to design the new boots, she was met with the piercing stares and macho comments, especially from one of the stereotypical masculine employees called, "Don" (Joe Coots). During one of Don's and Lola's intense gender-fueled conversation, Lola proposes a challenge to Don as proof of manhood to pick any task and Lola would perform it. In return, Don would have to meet Lola's challenge as well. Don challenged Lola to a boxing match. What Don didn't know was that Lola's father was a professional boxer and had trained Lola as such to provide an "image" of a son who was a "chip off the old block". However, Lola threw the fight in order for Don to preserve his manhood. Now it was time for Don to fulfill the challenge that Lola had for him and it was to "accept someone the way they are". With this challenge/discovery, Don, in an essence, "saves the day' when it appeared that all hopes of resurrecting the shoe factory had been exhausted, because he accepted Charlie for who he was and sought to implement his vision.

Kinko Boots is also filled with great music and lyrics by none other than "Ms. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" Cyndi Lauper. One of my favorites is What A Woman Wants. The song is preceded by the three things a woman wants: 1) Compassion, 2) Sensitivity, and 3) Affection. The mixture of music and dancing was electrifying and kept the audience entertained and clapping.

I thoroughly enjoyed the elements of comedy, romance, message of equality...it was just an all-around, premier, Broadway musical production. If you want to have a great, fun, evening that will make you want to "dance in the aisles" and leave with a "smile", then I recommend you see Kinky Boots.

*Kinky Boots is being performed at The Belk Theater, Blumenthal Performing Arts Center, March 17-22. Visit http://www.blumenthalarts.org for performance times and to purchase tickets.

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