NEW YORK, NY.- The sex is back in the heel.
Producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig announced Thursday that an off-Broadway revival of Kinky Boots, the Cyndi Lauper-Harvey Fierstein collaboration that won the Tony Award for best new musical in 2013, would begin performances at the theater in July.
The revival at the 499-seat Shubert theater is set to be directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell (La Cage aux Folles, Legally Blonde), who directed and choreographed the original Broadway production, which won him his second Tony for choreography.
The feel-good musical tells the story of a young Englishman, Charlie Price, who attempts to save his familys shoe factory by making boots for drag performers. The Broadway production which starred Stark Sands as Price and Billy Porter as drag queen Lola, a performance for which Porter won a Tony closed in April 2019 after 34 preview and 2,505 regular performances.
In his Critics Pick review, New York Times critic Ben Brantley called the musical, which features music and lyrics by Lauper and a book by Fierstein, a shameless emotional button pusher. He described its pulsing, earworm-y score as performing like a pop star on Ecstasy. (The cast recording won a Grammy for best musical theater album.)
Kinky Boots has been a significant hit in the nine years since it opened on Broadway, where it grossed $297 million and won six Tony Awards. The show has toured North America and Britain, and productions have been staged in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Poland and Spain.
The off-Broadway production is scheduled to begin performances July 26 and open Aug. 25 at Stage 42 in Hells Kitchen. No casting has been announced.
This article originally appeared in
The New York Times.