This Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical – adapted by Harvey Fierstein with songs by Cyndi Lauper from the 2005 Britflick – was first seen in the West End a decade ago. And now it struts back into town with energy to spare. It arrives at the London Coliseum in a production directed by Nikolai Foster, artistic director of Leicester’s Curve Theatre, where it debuted last year.
Charlie Price (Matt Cardle) has reluctantly inherited his recently deceased dad’s Northampton shoe factory, which will be forced to close in a matter of weeks due to dwindling sales. But a chance encounter with cabaret and drag performer Lola (Johannes Radebe) and the broken heel of a boot she used to whack a couple of bigots sparks an idea. Together, can they meet a market need for durable, fabulous footwear while saving the factory by making boots not brogues?
Fierstein’s book steers hard into the connection between two seemingly completely different people linked by a shared struggle to find their place in the world and a sense of not living up to their fathers’ ambitions (in Lola’s case, not following her dad into the boxing ring). Lauper’s music similarly aims directly at the heart in duets like ‘I’m Not My Father’s Son’. However, while the show follows a well-trodden path to self-acceptance, it does so with an intoxicating exuberance.
Foster’s staging is gorgeous, cutting through the industrial tones of Robert Jones’s multi-dimensioned set – production lines of shoes and sewing machines – with vivid splashes of red whenever the Angels, Lola’s cabaret troupe, appear on stage. If Ben Cracknell’s lighting is the glow-up, Leah Hill’s choreography is playfully breathless. The joyful swagger of it all compensates for the book’s cheesier moments. Foster fully recognises that this musical thrives on display rather than introspection.
This show’s not-so-secret weapon is Strictly Come Dancing professional Radebe, who is a tornado of charisma as Lola. It’s hard to think of another role better suited for his theatre debut. Unsurprisingly, he burns up the choreography, turning the stage into a runway. But he also brings an intensity to this larger-than-life character that’s operatic in pitch and disco-fabulous in tone. And he wears the hell out of Robert Jones and Tom Rogers’ glitteringly ethereal costumes.
If there’s a weak link here, sadly, it’s pop star Cardle, whose stiff and hesitant performance turns Charlie from everyman into nowhere man. He’s fine during the songs, particularly in ‘Soul Of A Man’, but doesn’t seem able to tap into that depth of emotion when he’s not singing. His post-interval conflicts with Lola consequently feel weightless and diminished as the show leans heavily on Radebe to compensate for the lop-sided chemistry.
Fortunately, though, this production spills over with great performances from the rest of the cast, particularly Scott Paige as factory foreman George, palpably relishing exploring his wilder side, and Courtney Bowman, who brings an endearing gawkiness (and a powerful voice) to Lauren, Charlie’s schoolfriend and would-be love interest. The Angels, who Foster brilliantly conceives of as a kind of fierce Greek Chorus of drag queens, clustered around Lola, are also vividly and wittily drawn.
And the current political and social climate has given this musical’s headline message about acceptance a sharper edge. Even before the appearance of the inclusion Pride flag, there’s something joyfully subversive about keeping business local – a trope so often co-opted by the far right – by manufacturing high-heeled boots for drag queens. This production is a blaze of colour at a dismally grey time.
