Kinky Boots Delivers - Fun, Flirty and Fabulous (for a bit to long)

Kinky Boots, freshly opened at the Al Hirschfeld Theater, is great fun.  A toe-tappy, big dance number, ball of fabulousness - riding in on drag queens and lessons on self-confidence and redemption.  Which is to say, a bit of old-fashioned Broadway.

The cast and the Kinky Boots

What makes Kinky Boots special are the songs by Cyndi Lauper.  Here infectious brand of sweetness and sentimentality, without being saccharin or dull, moves the musical and all the pieces.  Director Jerry Mitchell makes perfect use of the material, and the diverse players to produce a great time.

It is a familiar tale; a young man wants to leave a dry stuffy town to make his way in the big city.  Dad dies and he has to take over the business, all the while yearning for the life he could have had.  Until, he discovers there really is no place like home, once you change it enough.  In the case of Kinky Boots, the dry town is in England, Clarence the Angel is a drag queen named Lola (with her own Angels) and the young man saves the factory and himself by making designer footwear for men that like to dress as women – sequined, shiny, fabulous women.

Stark Sands, Annaleigh Ashford & Billy Porter

Stark Sands plays the young man in question, Charlie Price – recipient of Price and Sons shoes.  Mr. Sands brings a nice understated earnestness to the role, trying to find a way to save the factory, but still be with his fiancé in London.  A veteran of American Idiot, Mr. Stark knows when to let the song take center stage, and also when to belt it out.

Billy Porter has the far showier role of Lola, Drag Queen extraordinaire, sassy show muse and dispenser of wisdom.  I can’t image the role being any good without Ms. Lauper’s songs.  Her songs allow Mr. Porter to explore both sides of a stereotypical role and bring a warm heart to the proceedings.

Two first act numbers, The Sex Is In The Heel and Everybody Say Yeah are big time Broadway at their best.  Infectious and fun, these set up high expectations for Act 2.  Expectations that aren’t, always, meet.  In Act 2, writer Harvey Fierstein hues a little too closely to the movie – taking us down some sentimental lanes better left hinted at or imagined.  Here Kinky Boots occasionally feels formulaic and too obvious.

All is forgiven quickly though as Kinky Boots ends as it should - in a big brassy number that leave the audience happy and the cast in afore mentioned designer footwear.  Great Fun.

Kinky Boots

Jerry Mitchell, Harvey Fierstein & Cyndi Lauper

Book: Harvey Fierstein, Music & Lyrics : Cyndi Lauper

Director: Jerry Mitchell

Cast: Stark Sands, Billy Porter, Annaleigh Ashford, Celina Carvajal, Daniel Stewart Sherman, Marcus Neville, John Jeffery Martin, Nathan Peck, Joey Taranto

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Kinky Boots Dates for Broadway Announced

As expected, Kinky Boots has announced dates for Broadway.
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New York, NY (8/15/2012) – Producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig announced today that Kinky Boots, the highly anticipated new musical that brings together four-time Tony^® Award-winner Harvey Fierstein (Book) and Grammy^® Award-winning rock icon Cyndi Lauper (Music & Lyrics), will begin preview performances on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (302 West 45^th Street) on Tuesday, March 5, 2013, with an official opening night set for Thursday, April 4, 2013.  Group tickets for Kinky Boots, directed and choreographed by Tony^® Award-winnerJerry Mitchell, will go on sale Tuesday, August 21 to groups of 10 or more.

As previously announced, Tony® Award nominee Stark Sands (Journey’s End; American Idiot) and Billy Porter (Angels in America; Smokey Joe’s Café) lead a cast of thirty-two that also includes Annaleigh Ashford (Rent; Legally Blonde), Celina Carvajal (Spiegelworld's Empire), Daniel Sherman (Desire Under the Elms), Marcus Neville (The Full Monty), Paul Canaan (Legally Blonde), Kevin Smith Kirkwood (How to Save the World…), Kyle Taylor Parker (In the Heights National Tour), Kyle Post (Rent), Charlie Sutton (How To Succeed...), Joey Taranto (Rock of Ages), Andy Kelso (Mamma Mia), Tory Ross (Cry-Baby), Jennifer Perry (Mamma Mia), Josh Caggiano (Les Miserables at the Ahmanson Theatre),Aaron Bantum (Finian’s Rainbow), Adinah Alexander (The Wedding Singer), Eric Anderson (South Pacific), Eugene Barry-Hill (The Lion King), Stephen Berger (The Pajama Game), Caroline Bowman (Wicked), Sandra DeNise (Shrek the Musical National Tour), Eric Leviton (Seussical National Tour), Ellyn Marie Marsh (Priscilla Queen of the Desert),John Jeffrey Martin (Hairspray), Nathan Peck (La Cage aux Folles), Robert Pendilla (Wicked), Lucia Spina (South Pacific), Sebastian Hedges Thomas (Priscilla Queen of the Desert), Marquise Neal and Clifton Oliver (In the Heights).

Newsies: Carrying the Banner

Can a movie, widely considered “disappointing” on release, but later a cult hit on video, become an amazing musical on Broadway?  Depends on the movie; with Cry Baby, not so much.  However Newsies is an altogether different beast.

  

Newsies with Jeremy Jordan (center) storms into the Nederlander Theater

Newsies, in case you are one of the few Broadway fans that hasn’t heard, is based on the cult film of the same name, which luckily came with some fine songs and the bones of a good story.  Twenty years later, Team Disney brought in an excellent group to refresh the piece. Alan Menken and Jack Feldmen reworked much of their own music, and then wrote some new pieces for this show.  Harvey Fierstein reworked the book to streamline the story.  This show was created, and launched at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey, as a vehicle for Disney productions to license the rights.  But an appreciative audience and great reviews brought this show to Broadway, a true to life “let’s put on a show” story.

And it is a hell of a show.  A cast of exuberant and talented singers and dancers bring a vibrancy to Newsies that rivals anything else on Broadway.  It is the story of the Newsboy union strike in the late 1890s, based – however loosely – on real events.  Generous liberties have been taken, but underneath is still the story of the underdogs taking on the powerful.  And that story gives Newsies its heart. 

Jeremy Jordan plays Jack Kelly, unofficial patriarch of a chaotic clan of boys selling the New York World newspaper.  After an arbitrary rise in the wholesale prices, he leads a rag-tag gang of Newsboys in a strike.  Mr. Jordan has the voice, expression and defiance to bring to life what might easily have been a cartoon character, in a cartoon show.

Mr. Jordan played Jack Kelly in the New Jersey incarnation of the show, while rehearsing for Bonnie and Clyde.  The producers were lucky he was available for Newsies again, because Mr. Jordan can carry much of this production with a wink and a grin, not to mention the exceptional voice he has.  His presence, as much as anything grounds the show in the real world.

His love interest, written for the show, is Katherine, sweetly played by Kara Lindsey.  There is just enough sass to make her Katherine likeable.  But Jack’s real family is the newsboys he works with day in and day out – this is the family he has to sacrifice for.  The newsboys are an amazing ensemble of dancers and singers that raise the energy from the second they appear until the curtain falls.

Sven Ortel matches their non-stop energy in the production design (with scenic design by Tobin Ost).  Newsies is played on a set reminiscent of girders and tenements, which functions perfectly, without overpowering the actors.  Special credit has to go to Christopher Gattelli for choreography that is youthful and fun, befitting the young men who are dancing.  Director Jeff Calhoun does a great job with a story which drift quickly into the schmaltzy - getting the emotions underneath.

Like in the movie, which I confess to having seen once or twice myself, the adult characters are rather thin.  Good actors, like John Dosset and Capathia Jones, do a fine job with what they have, but they aren’t the focus of the story.

Newsies is a terrifically fun show and a welcome addition to Broadway. Like many Disney shows, it is kid friendly, but, unlike many, it isn’t child focused.  It is aimed squarely at musical theater lovers, and it delivers.

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Newsies at Nederlander Theatre

Music: Alan Menken

Lyrics: Jack Feldman

Book by: Harvey Fierstein (based on the film by Bob Tzudiker & Noni White)

Director: Jeff Calhoun

Cast includes: Jeremy Jordan, John Dosset, Kara Lindsey, Capathis Jenkins, Ben Frankhauser, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, Lewis Grosso, Matthew J. Schechter

Runs Through: Aug 19th

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