Unashamedly, outrageously great. That description doesn’t do justice to one of the best and brightest performances I have had the good fortune to see on stage. I am talking about Callum Francis in the Australian premiere production of Kinky Boots, the musical. This is a richly colourful, most engaging, highly entertaining fish out of water story about a British shoe factory facing closure unless it changes its ways. It charts a young man’s struggle to save the family business.
Charlie Price (Toby Francis) has suddenly inherited his father’s long running concern, now on the verge of bankruptcy. Trying to live up to the legacy, Charlie finds inspiration in the form of drag queen Lola (Callum Francis). Lola turns out to be the one person who can help Charlie become the man he was meant to be. As they work to turn the factory around, this unlikely pair finds that they have more in common than they dreamed possible … and discover that when you change your mind about someone, you can change your whole world. The show is a celebration of love, friendship and the power of belief.
Inspired by a true story, Kinky Boots the musical is based upon the 2005 film written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth that starred Joel Edgerton and which garnered Chiwetel Ejiofor a Golden Globe nomination. In 1999, BBC2 aired a documentary as part of its series Trouble at the Top about the real-life struggles of Steve Pateman as he tried to keep his family-run shoe business W.J. Brookes in Northamptonshire afloat. He reinvented it for a niche market and out poured fetish and erotic shoes under the brand name Divine Footwear.
After the doco aired, Hollywood came a knocking and when the resultant movie was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in 2006, it caught the attention of a Tony Award-winning producer. The musical premiered on Broadway on April 4th, 2013. It received 13 Tony Award nominations and claimed six of those, including Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Choreography. It also captured a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album. The music and lyrics are by Cyndi Lauper, with book by Harvey Fierstein.
Kinky Boots opened on the West End on September 15th, 2015 and was nominated for seven Laurence Olivier Awards, winning three, including Best New Musical. Now it is destined for a successful run here. It is a big, bold and brassy production. Like the best shows, it has large dollops of drama, humour and pathos. I kept thinking it channels my fondest memories of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. As with the finest musicals, the songs – 10 in the first act, which finishes on a high with the number Everybody Say Yeah, as factory workers take to conveyer belts, and six in the second – are a feature and resonate in your brain.
Hats off to Cyndi Lauper for doing such a fabulous job in what was her Broadway debut. She worked closely with arranger and orchestrator Stephen Oremus. Direction and choreography is by Jerry Mitchell and boy, does he chart a wonderful, crowd-pleasing path! The set design by David Rockwell (predominantly the inside of a warehouse, complete with colourful windows, decked out to make shoes) and costuming by Gregg Barnes (from drab to dramatic) are real features.
The leads, Toby Francis and Callum Francis, build an immediate rapport with the audience that simply strengthens as the story evolves. Both work a treat. Daniel Williston fires up as the larger than life oaf Don – supposedly a “man’s man”, but really someone with tunnel vision – who, at one point, gets into a gloved fight with Lola. Sophie Wright’s facial expressions as Lauren – whose heart unexpectedly skips a beat when Charlie reluctantly takes over the factory and whose rise from shop floor to executive also catches her by surprise – are priceless. They and the other 20 plus cast members hold us in the palms of their hands for more than two hours.
With its themes of tolerance, understanding, persistence and endeavour, Kinky Boots is a musical triumph from go to whoa and hits all the right notes. It is playing at Her Majesty’s Theatre until 11th December 2016.
Alex First
David Edwards is the editor of The Blurb and a contributor on film and television
