“Ladies, Gentlemen, and those who have yet to make up your minds ...
” Such is the emcee’s favored greeting at the London drag club temporarily transplanted to the Little Theatre of Virginia Beach through Aug. 11. It’s where the elite (and effete) meet and greet — not to proselytize audiences but to humanize us.
You may already recognize this as the high-stepping musical version of “Kinky Boots” (book by Harvey Fierstein; music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper). Based on the 2005 film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as drag queen Lola and chameleonic Joel Edgerton as the young factory owner Charlie Price, “Kinky Boots” tells the mostly true story of a Northampton, England shoe factory just a thinning sole’s breadth from closure. Charlie (played in VB by fresh-faced charmer Zack Kattwinkel) develops a purely economic fetish for kinky boots, hoping to market them to drag queens and other fearless fellows who can finally stand on stilettos reinforced with steel to bear their manly weight.
(See and hear songs such as “Sex is in the Heel.”) The British setting calls for accents (uh-oh), executed only sporadically by this cast. It’s a formulaic musical in composition and structure, including corny rhymes and forgettable tunes by Lauper, who nevertheless won a 2013 Tony for Best Original Score.
This LTVB production is additionally hampered by Kattwinkel’s tendency to stray off-key. But the trite tunes and off notes matter little when the lessons are taught so sweetly .