The summer theatre season is in full swing in West Michigan. Last Friday night was the opening night of the Grand Rapids Civic Theatre's run of Avenue Q, and today Broadway Grand Rapids will perform the first official showing of Kinky Boots, a Tony-award winning musical that most people agree is both humorous and heartwarming. Kinky Boots is a musical about embracing who you are, even if it means that you stick out a bit. The songs for the musical were written by Cyndi Lauper, which is a perfect fit for the theme of the show. The book was written by Harry Fierstein and is based on a 2005 movie of the same name, which is based on a true story.
Kinky Boots tells the story of Charlie Prince, who inherits a struggling shoe factory from his father. They make high quality and high cost dress shoes for men, and the market is rapidly dwindling. Desperate for a way to save the family business, Charlie discovers help in the least expected place: a local drag queen and cabaret performer named Lola. After seeing Lola perform, Charlie is inspired to create shoes for performers like Lola, who have a man's physique but perform in feminine attire. With help from the female staff at the factory, who can see Lola' promise, Lola and Charlie begin working to design an entire, new line of kinky boots in time for a big show in Milan while overcoming resistance to Lola's presence in the factory.
While some of the themes, such as gender identity, are more adult, the show overall is considered to the PG, meaning that supervised and older children could enjoy this show with their family. The opening show is tonight, and given the level of promotion for this show, it promises to be one of the must-see events of the summer here in West Michigan.
For those who aren't familiar with the organization, Broadway Grand Rapids has been bringing Broadway-quality performances of musical theatre favorites to Grand Rapids for twenty-eight years. They host these shows at the DeVos Performing Arts Center in downtown Grand Rapids, and have brought major shows such as Wicked in the past. After the run of Kinky Boots, Broadway Grand Rapids will be offering Newsies later this year and The Book of Mormon next year.
The run of Kinky Boots is from today, June 2nd, to Sunday, June 7th, and there are still tickets available for most shows, starting at $30 per ticket and going up to $86.25 per seat. There are 7:30 pm shows on June 2nd, 3rd, 4th, with 8 pm shows on the 5th and 6th.. There is also a 2 pm showing on Saturday, June 6th, and Sunday will have performances at 1 pm and 6:30 pm.
Tickets are available for sale on the TicketMaster website, though seats for the performances are selling quickly! If you have some free time this week, an excursion downtown to check out one of the most popular musical productions of the last decade would certainly be a worthy way to spend it!