Kinky Boots Review: Stunning Cedric Neal leads an ‘electrifying’ cast
Simon Button also writes that "Lola has never been better served than by Cedric Neal"
Words: Simon Button; pictures: Mark Senior
You can’t keep a good drag queen down for long. Not that Lola in Kinky Boots is merely good. She’s incredible and funny and fierce, declaring “I’m your cocoa butter bitch, not just cookie cutter kitsch” in lyrics by Cyndi Lauper that are as sharp as the score written by Lauper too.
And Lola has never been better served than by Cedric Neal. With the musical (its equally sharp book by Harvey Fierstein based on the 2005 British film, which itself is based on a true story) strutting back into the West End for the first time since it closed in 2019, Neal’s drag goddess extraordinaire brought laughter, tears and standing ovations to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane. Neal hadn’t played Lola before but he simply has to play her again.
Eli Caldwell, Cedric Neal, and Ashley Samuel (Photo: Mark Senior)
A two-night-only affair, Kinky Boots The Musical In Concert does exactly what it says on the tin. Following on from a similar staging of Chess earlier this month, it’s a stripped-back production with no sets, minimal costume changes, and only a few props (including, of course, a pair of fire engine red boots).
But when the music and dialogue are this good and the story – in which London dragster Lola teams up with Northampton shoemaker Charlie Price to fashion a range of high heels for an underserved niche market – is this captivating, you don’t need anything other than great performers to deliver it.
Cedric Neal (Photo: Mark Senior)
On Monday’s (8 August) first night, Neal and his costars weren’t simply great, they were electrifying – as clearly in love with this much-missed show as the audience who packed the place out.
Joel Harper-Jackson was an endearing Charlie Price with rockstar panache in numbers like ‘Step One’ and ‘The Soul of a Man’.
Cedric Neal and Joel Harper-Jackson (Photo: Mark Senior)
Courtney Bowman played Lauren, the factory girl with a crush on Charlie, to ditzy perfection, nailing the comedy of ‘The History of Wrong Guys’ and proving, after Six and Legally Blonde, to be a bright new star.
Hats off to everyone else in the cast as well as the London Musical Theatre Orchestra and London Musical Theatre Chorus, who helped bring out the richness in Lauper’s compositions.
Courtney Bowman (Photo: Mark Senior)
Neal stunned the vast auditorium into silence during ‘Hold Me In Your Heart’, an epic ballad that even the late great Whitney Houston couldn’t have sung with more passion.
He was in tears during the curtain call, as were many in the audience (myself included) – not from sadness but on an emotional high at having this fabulous musical back, albeit only briefly.
Jordan Bennett (Photo: Mark Senior)
There are still a few tickets left for this evening, so sashay to the box office pronto! And there is a new fully-staged production playing in Ipswich and Hornchurch in September and October, reaffirming that there’s life in the old girl yet.
Rating: 5/5
Kinky Boots The Musical In Concert is at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane tonight (August 9). For more information visit lwtheatres.co.uk and for great deals on tickets and shows click here.