Only rarely does a “feel-good musical” come along with the transformative power and emotional punch to set it apart from the rest of the “feel-good” pack. That rare musical is Kinky Boots, the 2013 Tony–winning Best Musical now beginning a two-week stay at Orange County’s Segerstrom Center For The Arts.

 Like the 2005 British movie on which it is based, Kinky Boots The Musical is the true-story-inspired tale of a couldn’t-be-odder couple of 20something English lads—straight-laced Charlie (Steven Booth), owner of a floundering Northhampton shoe factory he has just inherited from his recently deceased father, and flamboyant drag queen Lola né Simon (Kyle Taylor Parker), whose need for a stiletto heel strong enough to support a fully-grown man-in-sequins provides Charlie with an idea that might just give the family business new life.

 Along for the ride are Charlie’s frustrated fiancée Nicola (Grace Stockdale), who’d much rather he just sell Price & Son and get on with their soon-to-be conjugal life in London; a factory-full of workers including lovely Lauren (Lindsay Nicole Chambers), who’s got an eye for her new boss, burly Don (Joe Coots), who’s got a homophobic dislike for Lola, and punctilious George (Craig Waletzo), who’s been Charlie’s father’s right-hand-man for years; and most eye-catchingly of all, Lola’s “Angels,” a sextet of the curviest, leggiest men-in-drag to light up a Broadway stage since La Cage Aux Folles’s Les Cagelles debuted exactly three decades before.

 Proving that coming-of-age stories can extend well into a character’s twenties, Kinky Boots follows its mismatched heroes on their parallel paths to true adulthood, demonstrating along that way that you don’t have to be manly to be a man, you simply need to learn to respect yourself and accept others for who they are, something more easily imagined than done.

Book writer Harvey Fierstein (Tony-nominated for Kinky Boots) knows a thing or two about drag, as his Tony-winning script for Torch Song Trilogy and his Tony-winning book for La Cage Aux Folles made abundantly clear, and his latest hero(ine)-in-spangles joins Torch Song’s Arnold and La Cage’s Albin in three-dimensional, six-inch-stilettoed fabulousness.

Kinky Boot’s dozen or so instantly infectious song are the Tony-winning creations of legendary pop star Cyndi Lauper, and if “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” made Cyndi a star and “True Colors” showed her versatility and depth, Kinky’s “Sex Is In The Heel” made its own history by becoming the first Broadway song to reach the Top Ten of the Billboard club charts in twenty-five years.

Jerry Mitchell does double duty as Kinky Boots’ Tony-nominated director and its Tony-winning choreographer, proving himself tops at eliciting richly-layered, deeply human performances and at providing dazzling dance fireworks, never more so than when Lola and her Angels strut their long-legged, high-kicking stuff, with associate director D.B. Bonds and associate choreographer Rusty Mowery insuring that Mitchell’s vision gets carried out to First National Tour perfection.

 As the one-and-only Lola, an absolutely stupendous Parker takes over the role he understudied in the Original Broadway Cast, a part that had he been the first to play it would surely have won him the Best Actor Tony that went to Billy Porter. Investing Lola with oceans of defiance, sass, and heart, Parker’s is this year’s Touring Performance To Beat—and when you hear him belt out “Land of Lola,” duet “Not My Father’s Son,” and bring down the house with “Soul Of A Man,” you will be cheering as loudly as you have ever cheered a musical theater performer.

 As for Parker’s fellow lead, National Tour Audiences could not ask for a more exquisitely performed partner-in-boots than Booth’s Charlie, the proverbial role of a lifetime for the triple-threat known to Southern California theatergoers as Richie Cunningham in Garry Marshall’s Happy Days and as the title reindeer in the Troubies’ Rudolph The Red-Nosed ReinDOORS two Decembers back. Pitch-perfectly transformed from Midwest Boy-Next-Door to Midlands Bloke-Next-Door, Booth not only has us on Charlie’s side even at his most misunderstanding, he sings so sensationally you’d think the term Blue-Eyed Soul was invented for him.

An incandescent Chambers and her fellow supporting players Coots, Stockdale, and Waletzko each deliver gems of performances, with topnotch support from ensemble members Damien Brett, Lauren Nicole Chapman, Amelia Cormack (Trish), Blair Goldberg, Ross Lekites (Richard Bailey), Mike Longo (Harry), David McDonald (Mr. Price), Bonnie Milligan (Pat), Horace V. Rogers (Simon Sr.), Anne Tolpegin (Milan Stage Manager), and Southland treasure Sam Zeller, along with terrific cameo turns from child actors Andrew Theo Johnson (Young Lola) and Anthony Picarello (Young Charlie).

 As for Angels Darius Harper, Tommy Martinez, Nick McGough, Ricky Schroeder, Juan Torres-Falcon, and Hernando Umana, each is more dragtastically stunning than the next, and that is indeed saying something.

Swings Stephen Carrasco (who doubles as dance captain), J. Harrison Ghee, Crystal Kellogg, Jeff Kuhr, and Patty Lohr are poised to go on in leading, featured, and ensemble roles at a moment’s notice, with Troi Gaines and Jeffrey Kishinevskiy standing by to play Young Lola and Young Charlie as needed.

 Kinky Boots benefits enormously from the music supervision, arrangements, and orchestrations of the uniquely gifted Stephen Oremus, as well as from David Rockwell’s splendid and occasionally spectacular Tony-nominated scenic design, Kenneth Posner’s flashy Tony-nominated lighting design, John Shiver’s crystal-clear Tony-winning sound design, Josh Marquette’s hair and Randy Houston Mercer’s makeup designs (both fabulous), and above all from Gregg Barnes’ sparkly, spangly Tony-nominated costumes, with special snaps for the most to-die-for boots you have ever seen in your life.

Music director Adam Souza conducts and plays keyboards in Kinky Boot’s Broadway-caliber touring orchestra. Peter Van Dyke is production stage manager.

With Kinky Boots still going strong on Broadway and its National Tour running through at least the next year, it will likely be a good long while before any local theater gets its hands on the show’s regional rights. In other words, with Costa Mesa its final West Coast stop before heading Midwest and beyond, now is your one-and-only last chance to get Kinky—and if that’s not reason enough to put Kinky Boots on your New Year’s calendar, I don’t know what is.

Segerstrom Center For The Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.
www.scfta.org

–Steven Stanley
December 30, 2014
Photos: Matthew Murphy

Tags: Cyndi Lauper, Harvey Fierstein, Jerry Mitchell, Orange County Theater Review, Segerstrom Center For The Arts