Featuring a toe-tapping score from Cyndi Lauper and a largely effective — though considerably flawed — book by Harvey Fierstein, “Kinky Boots” sashayed onto Broadway in 2013, won the Tony Award for best musical and played more than 2,500 performances before closing in 2019. For Olney’s revival, director Jason Loewith doesn’t reinvent the heel with a staging that’s straightforward but sufficiently stirring.
It helps that, in shopping around for his “Kinky Boots” leads, Loewith found just the right fit in Olney’s backyard. As Charlie, the neurotic heir to a flailing English shoe factory, Vincent Kempski makes uneasiness look effortless while converting his character’s foibles into audience chuckles. It’s a significant departure from Kempski’s most recent performances, as down-and-out rocker Roger in “Rent” and the Wolf/Cinderella’s Prince in “Into the Woods,” both at Signature Theatre. But Kempski’s range serves him well as he traverses a score that runs the gamut from tender ballads to synth-pop earworms and rocking romps.
Kempski shares crisp chemistry with Solomon Parker III as Lola, the fiery drag queen Charlie recruits to design high heels in a last-ditch effort to save his late father’s factory. Parker, a D.C. theater staple who performs in drag under the persona Echinacea Monroe, keeps his balance while strutting through Lola’s dueling moods of over-the-top extravagance and underlying anxiety. Vocally, he harmonizes handsomely with Kempski on “I’m Not My Father’s Son,” a soulful exploration of familial legacy, and exudes megawatt stardom on the 11 o’clock number “Hold Me in Your Heart.”
Lola’s showstopping gown on that tune marks a high point for costume designer Kendra Rai, whose candy-colored get-ups leave an impression during the climactic Milan runway show and accompanying finale “Raise You Up/Just Be.” That sequence also highlights the work of scenic designer Milagros Ponce de León, whose conventional bricks-and-beams set undergoes an eye-catching transformation. Choreographer Tara Jeanne Vallee lends particular vibrancy to that number and the Act 1 finale “Everybody Say Yeah,” a rousing rocker that, in an evocation of Jerry Mitchell’s Broadway staging, gets a lot of mileage out of the factory’s rolling conveyor belts.
Unfortunately for Olney, the company can’t do anything about the show’s inherent shortcomings — specifically, a trope-laden book from Fierstein that teeters from economical in Act 1 to lackadaisical after intermission. Adapted from the 2005 British film of the same name, the musical cuts corners from the start — most noticeably with a love triangle involving Charlie; Nicola (Candice Shedd-Thompson), his caricature of a fiancee; and Lauren (Alex De Bard), the plucky factory worker whose inexplicable infatuation with her boss is explained away via song (“The History of Wrong Guys,” an admittedly delightful romp). Yet it’s Charlie’s transformation into an insufferable schmuck in Act 2 and just-as-sudden redemption that make one wish Fierstein had taken another pass at his plotting.
Still, there’s no denying that Fierstein’s sly comic sensibility and unabashed earnestness serve the material. And Olney’s staging does include at least one book update: the addition of “theys” when Lola addresses her drag show audience as “ladies, gentleman, theys and those who are yet to make up their minds.” It’s a welcome nod to nonbinary identities for a show rooted in accepting people for who they are. When it comes to promoting empathy, “Kinky Boots” isn’t going out of style anytime soon.
Kinky Boots, music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper, book by Harvey Fierstein. Directed by Jason Loewith. Music direction, Christopher Youstra; choreography, Tara Jeanne Vallee; scenic design, Milagros Ponce de León; costumes, Kendra Rai; lighting, Max Doolittle; sound, Matt Rowe; wigs, Larry Peterson; drag consulting and makeup, Devon Vaow. With Chris Genebach, Kaiyla Gross, Karl Kippola, Calvin McCullough and Sarah Anne Sillers. About 2 hours 30 minutes. Tickets: $42-$95. Through March 26 at Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Rd., Olney. 301-924-3400. olneytheatre.org.