Kinky Boots review: Wayne Brady proves the sex is in the heel at the Hollywood Bowl
In its 100-year history, the Hollywood Bowl has played host to everything from jazz concerts to rock bands to lovesick crooners. But each year, once a summer, they return to an annual tradition of staging a musical.
This year it is Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein's ode to authenticity and individuality, Kinky Boots. The Tony winner ran for seven years on Broadway and made a star of Billy Porter, and this new iteration at the Bowl proves why it's a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
As with Porter and the Broadway production, the real star here is Lola/Simon, the drag queen who inspires Charlie Price (Jake Shears) to reinvent his family shoe factory by making footwear for queens. Improv impresario Wayne Brady took over for Porter on the Great White Way, and he shines once again here reprising the role.
His beguiling smile and smooth voice made him a star long ago, but they have perhaps never been put to such effective use as they are in Kinky Boots. Like Brady, Lola is a showman, a performer who knows that razzle-dazzle and a brilliant grin are the keys to hooking your audience. The actor struts his stuff on the Bowl stage like it's his personal catwalk. His Lola is flashy and intriguing, flaunting his toned physique and vocal prowess.
Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging Wayne Brady in 'Kinky Boots'
But it's his quieter scenes out of drag as Simon that truly elevate the performance, underscored with genuine hurt and a yearning to be accepted for who he is. These things aren't so easily visible under Lola's massive wigs and skyscraper heels, but he ensures we know they're there, lurking beneath the drag queen armor.
The real surprise, though, is Kelly Marie Tran, best known as Rose Tico in the Star Wars franchise. Tran channels the can-do attitude of Rose into Lauren, a factory worker, with aplomb. But she also lends her an infectious, bubbly goofiness. Her impossible-to-contain thirst earns well-deserved laughs, and her power ballad, "The History of Wrong Guys," is Boots' standout number. Tran is still a fresh face in the industry, but her work here makes the case for casting her in many more musicals and comedies. (And her British accent is the strongest in the cast!)
Kinky Boots' achilles heel has always been its leading man, Charlie Price. On Broadway, the part became a rotating door for a host of rockers, including the Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears, who reprises the role here. Shears does his level best, particularly with Charlie's vocals — it's not his fault the character is inherently dull next to the pizazz of Lola.
Greg Grudt/Mathew Imaging Kelly Marie Tran in 'Kinky Boots'
The Bowl's productions are always notable for their starry casting, and in addition to its three leads, this show brings well-known musical theater performers like Mark Ballas (Harry) and Marissa Jaret Winokur (Pat) into the mix. They're not given much to do outside of blending into the ensemble, but they do offer a steady backup to the proceedings, particularly in group numbers.
Kinky Boots is set in England, and the dialect work here ranges from the precision of Renee Zellweger in the Bridget Jones movies to the jarring caricature of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. These productions are generally put together within a head-spinningly brief rehearsal period, but some of these actors could've used more time with a dialect coach. Yet that's hardly the point when the show is meant to get the audience dancing in their seats on a balmy summer night.
It's always struck me as strange that the Bowl does this each year when most Broadway shows are crafted with a house of 500-odd people in mind at most. The Bowl holds 17,500 people — and it's easy for the nuances of a musical theater performance, especially choreography or dialogue-heavy scenes, to get lost in its cavernous amphitheater. Some shows are more successful than others at bridging that gap, and Kinky Boots is on the high end of the scale, using its upbeat, pop-infused score and Brady's effervescent, larger-than-life performance to reach to the top of the Hollywood hills.
Our country is currently facing a troubling attack on the rights of anyone who doesn't adhere to a very narrow definition of humanity, and this story is a full-hearted repudiation of that, celebrating the right to be whoever you want to be. So for whatever minor faults the production might have, it scarcely matters when it sends you out into the night in a haze of rainbow glitter and good vibes. B+
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