Kinky Boots at Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay – theatre review

Kinky Boots Cardiff

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Thanks to Wales Millennium Centre for providing me with tickets to the show for the purpose of this review.

As much as I love spending the summer holidays with my children, it’s good to have some grown up time once in a while too – and so when Wales Millennium Centre invited me along to the press night of Kinky Boots as the show arrived in Cardiff for two weeks I couldn’t wait. With an age guidance of 10+, I left my children at home with Cardiff Daddy and headed to watch the show with a fellow mum friend and lover-of-musicals, both of us seeing the Broadway and West End smash hit production for the first time.

Kinky Boots Wales Millennium Centre Cardiff

Based on the film of the same name, and inspired by true events, Kinky Boots tells of Charlie Price, a young man who reluctantly finds himself running the once-great-but-now-failing failing family shoe factory after his father dies suddenly. With the Northampton factory on the brink of closure, the solution comes to Charlie after a chance encounter with drag queen and cabaret star Lola (yes, Charlie and Lola… parents of young kids will no doubt be reminded of a different duo with the same names). A broken heel on Lola’s shoe makes Charlie realise that the women’s footwear worn by drag queens cannot support the weight of a man – and so it inspires a change of focus at the factory in producing ‘kinky boots’, decadent and glamorous thigh-high fetish footwear for drag queens.

Kinky Boots Wales Millennium Centre Cardiff

The show is bold and flamboyant in parts, tender and understated in others. It has an air of other British-set musicals such as Billy Elliott, Calendar Girls, The Full Monty and so on where triumph comes against the odds – and dressed in killer heels.

The show was written by Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein with 80s pop star Cyndi Lauper having composed the music, a mix of pop-inspired tunes and slower ballads

There’s a great ensemble cast, both in Lola’s Angels, who accompany her in the cabaret acts, plus the assorted factory workers. However, a few key characters really stand out.

Joel Harper-Jackson is Charlie, a likeable character on a real journey of self-discovery and some beautiful vocal moments.

Paula Lane (pictured above) – best known as Kylie Platt in Coronation Street – is a charismatic and very likeable Lauren, the factory worker with a crush on her boss and some great ideas on saving the factory. Her musical number The History of Wrong Guys is a laugh-out-loud musical highlight.

Demitri Lampara also gives a good performance as Don, the sexist, prejudiced factory worker who is cruel and abusive to Lola but who ultimately comes up good, even if some of the one-liners seem a little outdated and unsympathetic to those facing the issues depicted in the show.

My favourite performance of the night came from Kayi Ushe as Lola who showed incredible depth both as the flamboyant cabaret star who oozes confidence, sass and brilliant put-downs, and in the moments as the more vulnerable and tender Simon.

Kinky Boots Cardiff

Ushe’s duet with Harper-Jackson, Not My Father’s Son, in which both lament their complex relationship with their fathers, is incredibly moving, while the slower-paced Hold Me In Your Heart, in which Lola makes peace with his father in his nursing home, was also very emotive.

In contrast, the show’s energetic finale Raise You Up/Just Be, in which Lola’s Angels (the drag queens who accompany her on the stage) storm the catwalks of Milan in the most flamboyant of costumes, accompanied by the factory staff in their own high heeled kinky boots, had the audience up on their feet singing and clapping along.

A fitting finale for a moving and uplifting show with a message of acceptance and celebrating people for who they are.

Kinky Boots Cardiff

Kinky Boots is at Wales Millennium Centre until Saturday 3 August, with tickets from £19.50 to £72.50. Age guidance: 10+; no under 2s. Book online here

For full UK tour dates, visit the Kinky Boots UK tour website here.

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