People singing about shoes? Not a particularly auspicious subject for a night’s entertainment you might think. But following a sluggish start, Kinky Boots tears off the humdrum and delivers a mad musical, peeling away prejudice while serving up a thunderingly good time.

Charlie Price finds himself in line to take over his father’s failing boot and shoe factory. Faced with sacking loyal staff who have given their lives to the firm, Charlie packs off to London with ambitious girlfriend Nicola, who encourages him to sell up and go into real estate instead. But, with the sudden death of his father, Charlie returns to the midlands to try to rescue the failing business. Returning briefly to London, Charlie is knocked unconscious outside a pub as he intervenes to stop two drunks accosting a woman. He comes round in a nightclub where he discovers that the ‘woman’ he has tried to help is in fact ‘Lola’, the drag queen star of the club. Lola and her troupe the ‘Angels’ like to perform in stiletto-heeled boots, which are always falling apart as they are not made to take the weight of a man’s body. Later the penny drops when employee Lauren furiously ticks him off for not coming up with new ideas that will save the business. Maybe Lola can provide the answer?

Lola certainly does. Kayi Ushe puts in a fabulous shift strutting his stuff and owning the stage as an irrepressible drag star suddenly turned business saviour. With gospel fervour, Ushe pumps out some boot-stomping disco numbers (Land of Lola and Sex Is in The Heel), accompanied by the slick nine-strong Kinky Boots Orchestra. The Hippodrome was quickly seduced. This was fun.

Joel Harper-Jackson was an excellent foil for Ushe’s Lola, delivering the angst-filled role of Charlie with conviction while rendering some of the quieter songs, Soul of a Man and his duet with Lola, Not My father’s Son, with absolute command of tone and mood.

The ensemble, together with Lola’s cross-dressing dancing ‘Angels’ have a big part to play. And Director and Choreographer Jerry Mitchell has made the most out of what could have been a dowdy backdrop. An astonishingly complex and witty dance routine involving the conveyor belts of the shoe factory is a show-stopper.

While Kinky Boots certainly entertains, it also explores a raft of attitudes to gender stereotyping. Demitri Lampra does a great job as the intimidating factory worker Don, who meets an unlikely match in Lola, while Charlie’s aspiring girlfriend Nicola (Helen Ternent) is strong enough to dump him when his ambitions fail to match her own. It is Lauren, played with great ebullience by Paula Lane, who makes the first moves on her boss. And Simon from Clacton, AKA Lola, reveals a much more vulnerable side when exploring his masculinity and the attraction of drag.   ★★★★☆  Simon Bishop   27^th February 2019