REVIEW: KINKY BOOTS (Adelphi Theatre) ★★★★

Kinky Boots is celebrating its third birthday at London’s Adelphi, and what a celebration – resplendent with enough high-kicks, slut-drops and stilettos for everyone. This is the musical I was always vaguely in the business of getting around to seeing, but never quite prioritising. Yes, it looked brashly fun and glittery, but like a high-camp butterfly I just got distracted by other London shows featuring a similar quotient of drag queens but without the West End prices.

I should’ve gone sooner. It’s a wonderfully strong cast, with Simon-Anthony Rhoden breathing pure-diva life into Lola, the drag queen with a penchant for heels who brings a much-needed entrepreneurial zeal to the failing Price & Sons shoe factory. Lola becomes a unique kind of fairy godmother to Charlie Price (Oliver Tompsett), who is having an existential crisis over more than one of his life choices following the death of his father.

Now heir to the Northampton-based factory, will he step up to the platform-sized challenge? Of course he will – we know this from the very first number, and that’s what makes it so great. It’s a joyful, genuinely feel-good show with multiple, glitzy outfit changes, intermittent drag queen dance sequences and warm-your-cockles themes of acceptance, love and friendship.

Aside from the glorious casting, what really sets the show apart are the songs and choreography combination. From punchy number ‘The History of Wrong Guys’ to the ballad duet of ‘Not my Father’s Son’, Cyndi Lauper’s score leaves little room for filler, and the direction (from Jerry Mitchell) really makes the most of its power. Me and my companion skipped out into the London night as gaily as is possible for a Thursday evening on the Strand. Kinky Boots will close in London before starting its UK tour – in Northampton no less – on January 19th. Don’t let it sashay away without you.

Reviewed by April Delaney

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