Radio IST List: Graham Williams
Austinist's Will Mills Gets Dunked For Charity [Video]
Bibles and Rhymes: An Interview with Why?'s Yoni Wolf
An import that gives new meaning to the lyrics of Kristy MacColl’s “In These Shoes,” is the British feel good comedy with a sexy twist, Kinky Boots. Easily compared to The Full Monty and Calendar Girls, it's a fun and fast-paced story inspired by true events at a shoe factory in the conservative English town of Northamptonshire.
Charlie Price is the chosen son of a proud lineage of shoemakers, who have made sensible brown wingtips for generations. When he is thrust into the role of running the flailing factory, Charlie becomes painfully aware that the company’s primary product can no longer stand up in the current market for cheap and disposable shoes. Facing certain failure--both professionally and personally--Charlie finds inspiration from the broken heel of a red patent leather boot while kissing concrete in a pub’s back alley. The booted heel belongs to a cabaret singer who becomes Charlie’s link to “the other side” of shoemaking for men.
With the flamboyant and red-shoe-lovin’ Lola as his insight into this untapped market, Charlie’s adventure begins. Lola—who is “Simon” when glitter free—becomes the designer for the company’s new product amidst the beer-drinking, arm-wrestling and deeply-rooted-in-tradition factory workers. Charlie is the bridge between old world values and new world ingenuity. His goal of attending a show in the fashion mecca of Milan is both risky and seemingly impossible. Charlie must motivate the doubting group who mock his authority and vision.
Chiwetel Ejiofor (pronounced “chew-it-tell edge-ee-oh-for”) is a difficult name to say, but belongs to an easily recognizable British actor of Nigerian origin (Inside Man, Serenity, Dirty Pretty Things, Love Actually) who is brilliant as the Naomi Campbell-esque, Lola. Rumor has it Ejiofor showed up for his audition in full drag for full effect and wowed TV-turned-feature director, Julian Jarrold.
To say it takes a “broad” acting range to deliver Lola’s zinger-filled dialogue would be an understatement. Upon seeing Charlie’s first attempt at kinky boots for a man’s build, the larger than life Lola cries out, “Please tell me I haven’t inspired something in burgundy!” While guiding Charlie’s efforts toward a desirable thigh-high boot she declares, “The sex is in the heel,” and “Sex shouldn’t be comfy!” Before long Charlie is quoting Lola’s drag queen gospel to his workers: “You are making 2-1/2 feet of irresistible, tubular sex!”
Ejiofor’s renditions of “What Lola Wants, Lola Gets,” “I Want To Be Evil,” and “Yes, Sir I Can Boogie” are a small part of his big part in a soundtrack that, in true cabaret tradition, has a winking flipside to its lyrics.
Culminating in a fashion extravaganza of an ending, Kinky Boots stays true to its themes about what it really means to be a man, the ability to find camaraderie by looking past social differences and the fact that true legacy comes from what we inspire others to do.
Kinky Boots opens today.
Showtimes
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Post a comment (Comment Policy)