Through May 21
KINKY BOOTS Shea’s 710 Theatre/MusicalFare Theatre
By Augustine Warner
The one problem with “Kinky Boots” is that this marvelous production has opened at the end of the local theatre season rather than earlier to encourage people to try other plays.
Get your tickets quickly.
“Kinky Boots” also showcases the skill of local production people, as well as a strong cast of performers, demonstrating what the local theater community has built and kept during the Pandemic.
The show is another of those plays and musicals built around a shrinking industry or failing company saved by thinking out of the box (or dancing out of the box).
Here, it’s a shoe company in England’s Midlands.
As the show opens, the fourth-generation owner of the family (John Fredo) is learning son Charlie (Steve Copps) doesn’t want any part of Price & Son and is heading to the joys of London.
Dad dies and it’s Charlie’s company.
There remains the problem of people not wanting Price’s expensive shoes.
The clear choice is shutting the factory down and laying off all the employees, people Charlie has known all his life.
Then Charlie trips over a London drag show and has an epiphany about dancing shoes.
Of course, it helps when the knee-high boots are being worn by drag queen Lola (Lorenzo Shawn Parnell) in a wonderful performance.
Show creators Harvey Fierstein and Cyndi Lauper spend a lot of time exploring the societal pressures on Lola and his backup dancers, the Angels.
That’s also shown by the shoemakers, with Don (Dave Spychalski) unalterably opposed to shifting manufacturing from bland street shoes to flashy, hip-high dancing boots which look like something out of one of those Hollywood films of the Days of Sail or “Robin Hood,” “What A Woman Wants.”
Faced with losing his job or making boots he doesn’t like, Don goes along and many of the other workers are even more interested in the new product, highly visible because of the boot mounted on the sign on the outside of the factory.
Charlie changes, also, as he buys into the factory and the workers and begins to reject his long-time love, Nicola (Anna Fernandez), who wants to turn the factory into housing and take the money for a permanent move from Northampton to London.
He becomes more interested in one of the workers, Lauren (Bethany Burrows), who is clearly interested in him.
The show’s arc is pretty obvious.
That leaves the dancing and it’s wonderful, with veteran dancer Michael Oliver-Walline outstanding as director and choreographer, numbers like “The Sex is in the Heel” and “Everybody Say Yeah.”
It’s all a great show with a great cast, from top to bottom.
See “Kinky Boots.”
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