A fierce, fabulous performance from Strictly star Johannes Radebe is the unlikely saving grace in this misconceived revival of the 2012 musical about footwear and self-acceptance. Despite winning a Tony, Olivier and Grammy award, Kinky Boots has always been a small and deeply mediocre show, and an oddball, hybrid work.
It’s soused in English awkwardness but created by two brash Americans (songs by Cyndi Lauper, book by Harvey Fierstein), based on a middling 2005 British film, itself based on the kind of quirky story that used to be the stock-in trade of local newspapers: a struggling Northampton shoe factory is saved by making thigh boots for drag queens.
Oops, spoiler. Oh well, at least that means you don’t have to see it now… Nikolai Foster’s production feels overexposed in the 2,359-seat Coliseum (although this is, admittedly, the campest theatre in London, with its Ben-Hur bathhouse décor and staircases made for voguing). The voluminous capacity and shortish four-month run have seemingly been calculated against some metric of celebrity casting to predict profitability.
This has resulted in two performers not primarily known for their acting occupying the lead roles. At least we knew Radebe could dance, as the breakout professional of the 2021 season of Strictly Come Dancing, in the show’s first all-male couple. He also turns out to have a powerful and melodious voice and a charismatic stage presence, enhanced by the outrageous frocks swathing his strapping, six-foot form. We’ll come to the matter of his thick South African accent in a bit.
But oh dear, what are we to make of Matt Cardle, winner of the X Factor back in 2010, in the underwritten role of reluctant factory owner Charlie Price? The singer has done stints in musicals (Memphis, Jesus Christ Superstar, & Juliet) alongside his recording career but doesn’t seem to have picked up much technique or showmanship in the process. In terms of impact, he’s the opposite of Radebe, exhibiting what Terry Pratchett called “charisn’tma”. When Charlie’s employee Lauren (Courtney Bowman) suddenly gets the hots for her morose, seedy-looking boss you think: what, him?
The plot is by-the-numbers. Charlie is set to move to London with his vacuous, shoe-obsessed fiancée when his dad dies leaving him the failing family firm. He’s all set to sack the staff until he helps Lola, who he initially takes to be a woman, fight off two London muggers. Improbably, given Charlie’s neolithic thoughts on drag and gender, they form a partnership to make women’s shoes that can bear a male body. Lola faces down hostility in the workplace, confronting one tormentor in a boxing ring. The message is a muddled one, that we should all accept who we are, but that we can also change, and our destiny is in our hands. Or in our shoes. Or something.
Lauper’s songs are tuneful enough but too many rely on bog-standard “feed the fire/take you higher/light you up like a livewire” rhymes and there’s no standout number. Fierstein’s book is packed with awkward gorblimey English-isms and quite a lot of old-fashioned language about “transvestites” and “nancy boys”. Perhaps the author of Torch Song Trilogy thought Kinky Boots should still represent the attitudes of its original period. But the show looks antiquated in light of the changes in gender politics and in the popularity of drag in the last 14 years.
Oddly, Lola, who should be an isolated figure, is here accompanied everywhere by a cheerleading troupe of drag-club Angels, all making “you-go-girl” gestures of support behind her. What’s odder is that the script hasn’t been tweaked to explain Radebe’s accent. His awkwardly meticulous pronunciation actually adds flavour to Lola’s wintry one-liners. Radebe’s own experience of hardship and homophobia in South Africa could be usefully channeled into Lola’s reinvention. But it’s absurd to think that under the slap and sequins this is “Simon from Clapton”.
Choreographer Leah Hill’s routines don’t challenge Radebe, but he drives them with muscular grace. The ending is just plain nonsense. I feel like a heel for saying it but this Kinky Boots is soulless. Geddit?
To 11 July, kinkybootslondon.com.
