Sole sisters come out in droves as ‘Kinky Boots’ opens at Smith Center

By John Katsilometes

Sunday, Sept. 7, 2014 | 5:33 p.m.

The costumes at the gala premiere of “Kinky Boots” at the Smith Center were something to behold.

There was the gentleman wearing a tuxedo top, black hot pants and what appeared to be six-inch stiletto heels. Another wore a full-length ball gown, a shimmering black number laced with silver sequins. Yet another opted for a frilly red cocktail dress, his legs zipped into a pair of matching thigh-high boots.

And that was just in the men’s room.

You understand that you are in a uniquely fabulous environment when you have to performed double- and even triple-takes when walking into the gentlemen’s loo at Reynolds Hall for all the requisite gender bafflement supplied by the show’s fired-up fans.

“Kinky Boots” is that kind of scene, a festival of drag not experienced in this fashion since the opening of “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” at the Venetian last summer. Unlike that show, which struggled to sustain ticket sales and closed early, “Kinky Boots” has … legs. It’s a hot ticket, with a Wednesday 2 p.m. matinee added to satisfy high demand at the box office.

Running through Sept. 14, “Kinky Boots” opened for previews Thursday and celebrated the formal (and, baby, was it formal) premiere Saturday.

It was indeed a star-laden affair. Steve Wynn and his wife, Andrea, were in attendance. The person in the seat behind me also was somewhat famous because he was Jerry Lewis. He went on and on about the show, the writing and staging and choreography, and was especially impressed by co-lead Kyle Taylor Parker, who plays the drag queen and the show’s primary instigator, Lola.

“I have seen a lot of drag queens in my career,” Lewis said during intermission, “and that guy is great.”

Co-lead Steven Booth, as the nonplussed shoe-factory owner Charlie Price, is a deceptively powerful performer, growing in stature as the show’s story blooms. His female pursuant, Lindsay Nicole Chambers (who plays the factory employee Laura), is a master of facial dynamism, hair flipping and even the use of a common air hose as wind effect.

Such inventive prop application is the work of Jerry Mitchell, whose choreography in the show earned him his second Tony Award. Such acclaim is no accident. This man is so imaginative — in one scene the factory’s conveyor belt at the newly dubbed Price & Simon shoe factory rolls out the new line of kinky boots and the drag queens who are to model them, posing fabulously as they scoot along the machine while the crowd roars in delight.

For all its camp and style, “Kinky Boots” carries with it a profoundly uplifting message of acceptance. Mitchell and Cyndi Lauper, who also won a Tony for composing the musical’s score, promised this.

The plot itself is fairly linear: A shoe factory owned by the Price family is in danger of shutting down after the death of its proprietor, “Mr. Price,” and young Charlie is forced into management of the plant. He incidentally and accidentally meets up with a drag queen, Lola (real name of Simon), after a street altercation.

The two realize that they are bonded by the attitudes of their respective fathers who always yearned for them to be something they are not (Charlie to serve as fourth-generation shoe manufacturer, Simon to build a career as a professional boxer). The song “Not My Father’s Son” is one of Lauper’s gems as the two men fasten their friendship and go about saving the plant. How? By making durable “kinky boots” worn by drag performers in Lola’s culture.

Joe Coots plays the hardheaded factory worker Don, a friend of young Charlie since both were children, and Don is the character with whom any guy who isn’t particularly interested in musical theater can identify. He is gruff, macho, intolerant — and also is the person Lola and Charlie need to win over to make their kinky boots strategy a winner.

Not to spoil the result of this effort, but Don does come around, and when he does, the crowd goes ape.

As Mitchell and Lauper said last week, the music not only boosts the story, but also stands alone as a series of terrific tunes. Many numbers could be hit singles even absent the shoes. “Not My Father’s Son,” “Sex Is in the Heel,” “Everybody Say Yeah” and the show-closing “Raise You Up/Just Be” were singled out by Mitchell, and those songs pulsate through the theater, giving the audience the feel that it is listening to a Broadway musical and a rock-concert performance.

And the writing is brisk, as Harvey Fierstein’s script is crisp and crackling with wisecracks that might seem trite in a slower-paced show but hit the target in “Kinky Boots.”

Detractors have said the show leans to predictability, that it enforces rather entices love from its audiences. Some might see it as preachy, yes. But it is a message that needs to be preached, even today: Accept those who are not like you. That’s what you hear from “Kinky Boots.”

And if you see it, well, dress appropriately.

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.