A fierce, fabulous performance from Strictly star Johannes Radebe is the unlikely saving grace in this misconceived revival of the 2012 musical about footwear and self-acceptance. Despite winning a Tony, Olivier and Grammy award, Kinky Boots has always been a small and deeply mediocre show, and an oddball, hybrid work.
It’s soused in English awkwardness but created by two brash Americans (songs by Cyndi Lauper, book by Harvey Fierstein), based on a middling 2005 British film, itself based on the kind of quirky story that used to be the stock-in trade of local newspapers: a struggling Northampton shoe factory is saved by making thigh boots for drag queens.
