Kinky Boots: “Comfort Theatre” After the Before Times
Lissa Tyler Renaud*
Kinky Boots; music and lyrics: Cyndi Lauper; book: Harvey Fierstein. Directed and choreographed by William Thomas Hodgson. Music direction by Kenji Harada. Premiere: 8 September 2023. Venue: Julia Morgan Theater, Berkeley, California.
It’s all in the context. Kinky Boots the musical is basically the story of two people from vastly different backgrounds, each with a problem that’s solved by their banding together. Some critics—once again finding fault with a show that audiences have stubbornly insisted on loving—complained that the show was cheesy, sermonizing, overly earnest, novice. Herewith, I am coining the term “comfort theatre,” theatre’s version of “comfort food,” or food that may not satisfy the snobs but is deeply satisfying, consoling. After so many years of intentionally “difficult” theatre, and several years of the pandemic’s devouring many of our most beloved theatres and changing our overall lives irreversibly, the production I saw at the Berkeley Playhouse arrived in our post-pandemic midst like a shiny red bird alighting in an ashen landscape. Sophisticated, exuberant, tender; Kinky Boots: comfort theatre from the Before Times flying resplendent in today’s context—nerve-wracking, bedeviled Now.
Well-known in the U.S. as actor and writer, four-time Tony winner Harvey Fierstein based his book for Kinky Boots on a film based on a “mostly” true story. The show first ran on Broadway 2013–19 and started its national touring in 2014. After a critic-savaged start, it garnered a dizzying number of coveted awards. These included Tonys for Best Musical and Best Actor and a historic Tony for Cyndi Lauper for her ingenious, high-wattage score. From very early on, the show has “had legs” in productions around the world.
Along the way, time and travel have changed the productions: scenes have come and gone, emphases have shifted depending on audience and social milieu. One focus of debates has been whether a major character, Lola, has to be played black and gay. Billy Porter originated the role that way, so definitively that where possible, it’s been assumed. But, in fact, Fierstein himself said he wrote the role white and straight; there are wild rumors of successful shows featuring white, straight Lolas in various national and international locations. Nevertheless, social media types still argue about it, underlining that “changes” mean we haven’t all necessarily seen the same show.
In his program notes, director-choreographer William Thomas Hodgson wrote: “I feel like we have our own special sauce in Berkeley.” Indeed, even the theatre itself is “Berkeley”: it was built by crack architect Julia Morgan (1872–1957), the local girl who made good here, Paris, here again, breaking professional barriers to women, giving California 700 of its best buildings with her Classical/Arts and Crafts vision. She said the Berkeley Playhouse, originally designed as a church, was her best Craftsman style building; now, the architecture makes the audience feel like a congregation at the Church of Performing Arts. The music pit is under the stage; from there, the music seems to emanate uncannily from the whole structure. For this show, Kenji Harada conducted, with pizzazz and delicacy, nine game, impressive musicians, to resounding affect.
Berkeley is also famous for an ethnically-culturally inclusive, adventurous-in-the-arts, Nobel Prize-rich population. Here, and in its next-door cities Oakland and San Francisco, gay culture in all its forms has pretty much come with the territory since the 1970s. This meant that the show wasn’t “introducing” most of the audience to the notion of male performers dressed as, or having become, women. I thought this freed the show to mine themes, ideas, relationships. A case in point: B Noel Thomas (Bay Area Theatre Critics Award winner) played Lola with all the over-the-top, sparkly glamor and wit we could hope for; her four-octave, “baritone-to-soprano” singing voice was something to hear. Thomas is an outspokenly trans woman, and she apparently tweaked some of the play to make it what she called “relevant.” But it was her hushed, spare moments that really made her performance—the times she made friends with people outside her world, showed kindness to a bully, or forgave her friend, Charlie Price.
Charlie, played with marvelous range by Seth Hanson (San Francisco Conservatory of Music), started out as something of a schlemiel, and it was a long haul to his transformation. Reluctantly in London with Nicola, clearly the Wrong Girl, (charming Grace Margaret Craig), Charlie reluctantly inherited a failing shoe factory back home, where he reluctantly laid off the longtime factory workers. He and Lola met by chance: she and her drag performing cohorts needed a sturdier boot than the ones made for women; Charlie needed a new footwear product to resuscitate the factory . . . and the “kinky boot” was born. They became partners, and we followed Charlie as he and Lola re-built the business, re-built his relationships with his factory workers and found Lauren (No’eau Kahalekulu), clearly the Right Girl right under his nose. As Hanson took us pitch perfect through Charlie’s steps and many missteps, his free movement and fully gorgeous singing voice emerged gradually, with splendid impact.
An important component of Comfort Theatre is plot, and never has a show had more plot than Kinky Boots. It also had sub-plots so developed and rich that it seemed to have multiple plots: when one plot needed to slow down, there was always another one at the ready. Although each of these storylines could have stood alone, they were all loosely then tightly linked until, finally, all the stories perfectly, triumphantly interlocked on a makeshift runway in Italy.
Sample plots
Girlfriend Nicola tried deviously to carry out Charlie’s father’s plan to demolish the shoe factory and build condominiums and dumped Charlie when he refused.
Girlfriend-to-be, Lauren, the worker who first gave Charlie the idea not to close but to revamp the factory, stayed by him in tough times and, in the end, won his heart.
No’eau Kahalekulu created a hilarious picture of having a secret crush and gave Lauren’s “The History of Wrong Guys” an extraordinary rendition: at first reserved, slowly building to a heart-stopping leap onto a table in adorable, full-throated agony. Inventive and unforgettable.
The Milan Fashion Show: under pressure of an upcoming show in Milan, Charlie had a meltdown, managed to offend everyone, they all walked out on him—Lola, her companion “angels,” the factory workers—leaving him without boots or travel money. Solutions were found.
The Two Challenges of Lola and Don, the factory homophobe. Don demanded to meet Lola in the boxing ring; she (a trained boxer) trounced him and then let him win—winning his friendship. In return, she enjoined him to “accept someone as they are.” Don “accepted” Charlie’s frailties and got the protesting workers to return and chip in a week’s pay each for boots for Milan.
It was always the titular Boots that were the central character, and all they came to stand for: loneliness and other not-belonging, hurtful father-son relationships, grief, the role the expectations of others should play in our lives, lovers mis-matched, friendships broken, loyalties frayed—all balanced by sacrifice, self-definition, resourcefulness and, just right for Berkeley, community and the power of workers’ cooperation.
*Lissa Tyler Renaud, lifelong actress, MFA Directing, PhD Theatre History/Criticism (UC Berkeley). Founder, InterArts Training, Oakland, CA. Has taught and lectured on theatre training and the early European avant-garde in the U.S.; extensively in Asia; in England, Mexico, Sweden, Russia. Writer, critic, scholar, editor: The Politics of American Actor Training (Routledge); Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky (invited chapter); English-French Critical Stages (UNESCO); Wuzhen Theatre Festival, China; Selected Plays of Stan Lai (UMich, 3 vols.); Scene4 international arts and culture magazine.
Copyright © 2023 Lissa Tyler Renaud
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