Film-to-stage adaptations are a Broadway staple. One of the most successful of the past two decades is Kinky Boots, a musical about tolerance based on the true story of Charlie Price, an ambitious young man who inherits his father’s failing shoe business. Charlie’s unlikely source to turn things around? Fetish footwear for drag queens.
Women’s high-heeled boots don’t fit men well, Charlie learns from Lola, soon to be his new partner. So there’s money to be made filling the need. The musical was adapted from a 2005 British film version of the story.
Kinky Boots ran for a whopping six years on Broadway and was nominated for 13 Tony Awards, winning six, including best musical. It has repeatedly toured North America and was produced all over the world, from Asia (South Korea, Japan and the Philippines) to Europe (the United Kingdom, Poland, Germany, Spain, Denmark and Estonia) to Australia and Argentina.
It even has been mounted at sea on Norwegian Cruise Line ships and is returning to Dallas on tour, presented by the AT&T Performing Arts Center.
The musical’s writers, Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein, know something about hits. Lauper is one of the most successful female pop artists of all time. Her 1983 debut album, She’s So Unusual, garnered a record four top-five hits. In 2006, she made her Broadway debut as Jenny in The Threepenny Opera. Her songs for Kinky Boots marked her musical theater writing debut.
The more stage-experienced Fierstein, who wrote the book, is known as the writer or star or sometimes both of such theater and film successes as Torch Song Trilogy, La Cage aux Folles and Hairspray.
While the initial reviews were mixed, New York Times critic Ben Brantley was wowed, citing “the heat-seeking score that performs like a pop star on Ecstasy” and calling the show “a reminder that you don’t always have to be a masochist to enjoy being smashed by a steamroller.”
“Try to resist if you must,” he wrote of the 2013 Broadway premiere. “But for at least the first act … you might as well just give it up to the audience-hugging charisma of [Lauper’s] songs.”
April 23-25 at Winspear Opera House. Tickets at attpac.org.