Delaware Theatre Company presents Harvey Fierstein and Cindy Lauper’s Kinky Boots

Created by a stellar team—book by the indomitable Harvey Fierstein, music and lyrics by the inimitable Cindy Lauper—the show opened in Chicago in 2012 and on Broadway in 2013. It won six Tony awards, including Best Musical, and has become an American entertainment staple, but this universal tale of redemption is very, very British at heart.

The show is based on a 2005 British film inspired by a 1995 BBC documentary about a century-old shoe factory in a picturesque English village struggling with competition from abroad and changes in fashion. The business, newly managed by the family’s 30-ish son, expanded into "kinky boots": women's shoes in men's sizes for transgender people.

Charlie and Lola

The two-act musical, filled with Britishisms, stays true to the original tale while considerably amping up the story’s drama. Charlie Price (Adam Hoyak) is expected to take over the family shoe business, but he and fiancée Nicola (Avery Gallagher) decide to decamp for a more urbane life in London. When his father (Paul Guerin) dies, Charlie feels obligated to return, discovering that the business is near bankruptcy.

Unexpectedly, he finds himself at a nightclub act headlined by drag queen Lola (Philly’s Cookie Diorio), who breaks a heel on her boots. When Charlie is able to repair them, the two come to an unexpected partnership to save his factory by serving a new clientele with a unique, niche-market product. They face ridicule from peers and workers, along with production hurdles and internal disagreements, as they prepare for an important shoe expo in Milan.

Energy, depth, and zingers

Directed by Lena Mucchetti, the show is (sometimes overly) packed with boundless energy and inventive staging, much of it courtesy of choreographer Taylor J. Mitchell, whose cadre of athletic dancers drew oohs and aahs from the audience. A hot eight-piece offstage band is conducted from the keyboard by musical director Tom Mucchetti, and the 23-member, largely non-Equity cast features actors and singers with a range of abilities, some clearly more experienced than others, but all fully in sync with the show’s upbeat message of self-realization and liberation.

The two leads anchor this show with excellence and authority. Hoyak adeptly manages Charlie’s transition from carefree young man to reluctant and sometimes angry factory head, and his pop singing voice perfectly suits Lauper’s tuneful and often clever songs.

But any production of Kinky Boots rises or falls on its Lola, and here the DTC production hits the bullseye. Stunning in drag and a stunningly good actor, Diorio is simply magnificent. A classically trained vocalist who “mastered the art of walking in stilettos in the nightclubs of Boston,” she commands the stage with charm and charisma.

Central to the show’s emotional impact is Lola’s revelation to Charlie of her working-class roots, and when Diorio enters the factory ready for work (encased in men’s clothes) you feel the weight of a lifetime striving to be something she’s not. Diorio’s revelatory ballad, sung to Charlie, is the show’s only still moment, heartbreakingly beautiful and acted with great depth.

Fierstein wrote Lola some great zingers, which Diorio delivers with glee. On seeing the first new boot produced by the factory, Lola exclaims “Lord, please tell me I haven’t inspired something burgundy!” And in a rousing musical number she goes on to convince everyone that the boots should be red: “Red is for sex!”

Visual triumphs, audio challenges

The production is visually first-rate, thanks to its team of excellent designers. Brian Froonjian created a well-conceived and well-painted multi-level set that convincingly transforms from factory to club and back again, thanks to Alyssandra Docherty’s lights, stark to stunning. Rebecca Kanach’s costumes—so many of them!—span the range from factory-worker garb to the glorious creations of the drag world, including Diorio’s eye-smashing diva wear.

The production does have some shortcomings. In addition to the uneven range of the actors, it’s overly loud, a tricky balancing act for sound designer Josh Bruton in a theater designed for unamplified sound. And in both solo and company numbers, the cast tends toward frenetic over-singing, often rendering Lauper’s witty lyrics difficult to understand.

A fairytale with big questions

This is the first of a DTC season of partnerships, here with the New Light Theatre, founded in 2018 by the Mucchettis and Newton Buchanan to produce shows that “deepen our empathy and connection with one another.” The production ably succeeds there, and the opening night’s very diverse SRO audience was filled with appreciative and inspired theatergoers, many wearing red shoes.

Kinky Boots has a fairytale quality that belies the fact that this musical juggernaut raises serious, thoughtful, and evermore topical questions about what constitutes masculinity, something Diorio was able to meaningfully address as an actor. The show’s ebullient message and Lola’s journey echo a quote from another great rule-breaker, Dr. Seuss: “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”

Why indeed?