Review of Kinky Boots (Broadway in Chicago)

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called Kinky Boots. The book was by Harvey Fierstein and the music and lyrics were by Cyndi Lauper. It was directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell and the music supervision, orchestration, and arrangements were by Stephen Oremus. It was about this man named Charlie (Steven Booth) who owned a shoe factory. And he met this drag performer named Lola (Kyle Taylor Parker) and he hired her to work as a designer at his factory so now they could make boots for men who dressed like women. The shoes they used to make aren't selling because nobody wants to buy those kind of shoes anymore. But then a lot of conflict happens between Lola and Charlie, Charlie and his fiancée Nicola (Grace Stockdale), and Lola and Don (Joe Coots), who is one of her co-workers who says Lola can't be a man and dress like a woman. And a girl named Lauren (Lindsay Nicole Chambers) is in love with Charlie but thinks she shouldn't be because he has a fiancée. What they are trying to do is to sell kinky boots to the world and not make people think they are just weirdos. It is about friendship, acceptance, fashion, and trying to find your passion.

Lola was my favorite character. Sometimes she was the comic relief but sometimes she had hard parts in her life like anyone does. She was very funny and colorful and just an amazing character. One of my favorite funny moments was when Lola comes out of the shoe factory and sees Charlie and his fiancee and she just introduced herself and said this entire long sentence really fast and then had this big smile. And everyone just stared at her like, "What's the matter with her?" even though she is an amazing person. If she were real I would totally want to be friends with her. I really thought it was touching but kind of sad when she came and performed "Hold Me in Your Heart" at the nursing home and her dad (Horace V. Rogers) was there. I thought the kid playing young Lola (Jomil Elijah Robinson) was also amazing and had a great voice. I really saw the similarities between young Lola and the grown up version, because young Lola liked women's shoes but her dad wouldn't let his son wear them because he felt like they weren't manly. I understand that because women's shoes are not manly in everyone's mind. But manly should not even be a word because manly doesn't mean anything. Anything a person who is a man does can be manly and I don't think a man has to do pushups every day to be a man.

I really liked Lola's song that she sang called "Land of Lola" which is the introduction to the grown-up character. And she does this dance with sparkly outfits that were amazing (costumes by Gregg Barnes) and her backup dancers the Angels (Joe Beauregard, Darius Harper, Tommy Martinez, Ricky Schroeder, Juan Torres-Falcon, Hernando Umana) and I thought it was amazing. I thought the song was so catchy and I loved the tune of it. And all the great dance moves were so crazy. There was also a song that I really liked called "The Sex Is in the Heel" which was all about how amazing these kind of shoes were and how you can't just have a flat boot. And one of the backup dancers did this insane going-int-the-splits-and-just-bouncing-up thing. It was just insane and I want to learn how to do that. I mean, all the dancing was amazing. And there was another dancer who came out and did a crazy backflip and backflipped all the way off to dance some more.

I also really liked "Everybody Say Yeah." It was all about how happy they were that they made their first kinky-boots boot. I thought it was a great way to end act one because it was so hyper and peppy. It kind of tricks you into thinking the whole rest of the play is going to be happy, but then act two gets sadder. There was this big dance number that happened on the conveyor belt for the shoes where they would jog with the boots and then they would do like some cool shuffle arm move and it was crazy. I thought this dance number was amazing.

One of my other favorite songs was "The History of Wrong Guys" which was sung by Lauren which was all about all the weird guys she has dated and that maybe she has finally found one she can really love. I loved it when she got out one of the driers that was hooked on to the conveyer belt and used it to blow around her hair and dry under her armpits so then she smelled better. It was funny because she was trying to be sexy but she was kind of failing because she was just blowing around her hair with a utensil from work basically. I thought that was really funny.

I think they should have ended with a different song than "Raise You Up/Just Be." I just thought it was kind of repetitive. I liked it fine, but I thought it could have better if it had been a more peppy song. I think they should have done "The Most Beautiful Thing in the World" as a reprise because it was all about shoes and being yourself, and that is what the last scene was about.

People who would like this show are people who like inspiring drag performers, sparkly outfits, and conveyor-belt dancing. I think people should definitely go see this show. I really liked it and I would see it again!

Photos: Matthew Murphy