‘Kinky Boots’ Review: Sequins, Steel-Toe Truths, and a Lesson America Still Needs
I walked into Kinky Boots at the Fisher Theatre expecting the usual comfort-food Broadway formula: a struggling business, a big personality who shakes things up, a finale that sends everyone home humming. What I got instead was a piece of theatre that feels oddly radical in 2026, not because it’s new, but because it refuses to treat acceptance like a debate topic. It treats it like oxygen. You do not get to vote on whether someone deserves to breathe. Which is why Kinky Boots feels like the perfect bonus show to ATG Detroit’s 2025-2026 Broadway series!
[Warning: Spoilers from Kinky Boots are below!]
Kinky Boots is glitter with a backbone
For me, watching this show as a trans person is a specific kind of emotional whiplash. Not because the musical is “about” being trans (it isn’t, and it’s worth saying that clearly), but because it keeps landing on the familiar bruises: the way the world polices gender, the way masculinity becomes a prison, the way “family values” can be weaponized into shame, the way survival often requires performance long before it becomes art. Kinky Boots takes all of that and insists, with glitter and an arena-sized pop score, that dignity is non-negotiable.
The story is deceptively simple: Charlie Price inherits his father’s failing shoe factory and, in a last-ditch attempt to save it, partners with Lola, a fierce performer who needs boots that can actually hold up under the weight of a cis-man’s body. That partnership becomes the beating heart of the show: two people carrying different kinds of disappointment, both shaped by fathers and expectations, both trying to figure out what it means to be “a real man,” “a real son,” “a real success,” “a real anything.” (The musical’s premise and creative team are well documented, with music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper and a book by Harvey Fierstein.)
Acceptance isn’t understanding; it’s practice
What makes Kinky Boots hit right now is that it does not ask the audience to “understand” Lola in order to respect her. It shows you a person. It shows you her work ethic, her humor, her pride, her vulnerability, and the cost of constantly being turned into an argument by strangers. And then it makes the only demand that matters: accept people as they are, because their existence is not a puzzle for you to solve.
In this touring cast, Omari Collins “Scarlett D. Von’Du” as Lola brings that mission into the room with a confidence that reads as earned, not performed. Their Lola is not a caricature, not a drag “bit,” not a wink to the cheap seats. The presence is commanding, yes, but the real power comes from the quiet moments: the split-second calculation behind a smile, the body language of someone who has learned how to scan a room for danger while still refusing to shrink. When Lola lets the armor slip, you feel the ache underneath it.
Opposite that, Noah Silverman as Charlie Price gives us a Charlie who isn’t just the straight man to Lola’s fabulousness. He’s a man who has been taught to equate responsibility with repression. Silverman plays Charlie’s panic with a recognizable tightness: the kind of grief that doesn’t come out as tears, but as control. His journey is not “learning to be tolerant.” It’s learning that leadership isn’t protecting tradition at all costs, it’s protecting people. That distinction matters. A lot.
And then there’s Sophia Gunter as Lauren, who is the show’s not-so-secret weapon. Lauren can easily become the stock “quirky girl” role, but Gunter gives her real specificity: a woman who has been overlooked long enough that her brilliance has started to ferment into bravery. Her comic timing is sharp, but what lands more is the sincerity underneath it. Lauren’s attraction to Charlie isn’t just romantic fluff. It’s recognition: she sees a man trying to be decent, and she sees the parts of herself that have been waiting to be seen, too.
The factory conflict is where Kinky Boots stops being a cute underdog story and becomes a mirror. Bigotry in the show isn’t portrayed as a spooky villain monologue. It’s portrayed as workplace culture: jokes, stares, muttered slurs, sudden silence, the casual cruelty of “just asking questions.” That realism is exactly why it stings. Jason Daniel Chacon as Don embodies that tension in a performance that shows Don is not born a monster; he’s trained to fear. Watching Don wrestle with his own worldview is uncomfortable, and it should be. The show doesn’t excuse him, but it does something more useful: it shows how a person changes when their identity as “a good guy” finally has to compete with the harm they’re doing.
Emma Dean as Nicola is also doing important work, because Nicola is not simply “the fiancée who doesn’t get it.” She represents aspiration without empathy, the kind of social climbing that treats people like accessories. In a show obsessed with shoes as symbols, that’s a clever bit of character design: Nicola wants the look of success, not the soul of it. And if you want to talk about the show’s emotional thesis, look at the father figures. Dominic Pagliaro as Mr. Price and Thomas Ed Purvis as Simon Sr. sit like ghosts over the story. They aren’t just characters, they’re pressure systems. They are the voices that tell these sons what they’re allowed to be, and the grief that follows when love comes with terms and conditions.
That theme punches especially hard if you’ve ever had to negotiate your own humanity with the people who raised you. If you’ve ever had to become fluent in small talk to survive a holiday dinner. If you’ve ever watched someone claim to love you while voting, preaching, or “protecting” you out of existence. Kinky Boots understands that the pain isn’t only rejection. The pain is the way rejection tries to dress itself up as concern.
The boots are a promise, not a punchline
Visually, the show is engineered for release. The boots are a spectacle, of course, and the musical knows exactly when to dazzle you with them. But what makes the big numbers work is that they aren’t random confetti cannons. They are emotional pivots. The choreography and staging (especially in the fashion-show build) feel like a promise being fulfilled: the moment the factory, the town, and the story either evolve or collapse.
And that’s why I keep coming back to the same point: this musical doesn’t ask for permission. It doesn’t ask the audience to approve of queer and gender-nonconforming people like they’re granting a license. It simply depicts them as part of the human inventory. Full stop. In an era where human rights keep getting framed as “differences of opinion,” Kinky Boots is refreshingly blunt: your comfort is not the measure of someone else’s legitimacy.
If you are trans, or queer, or just exhausted from being turned into a talking point, this show can feel like being held up for two and a half hours and told, “You’re not crazy. This is what decency looks like.” And if you are not any of those things, then congratulations: you get to practice the easiest moral skill in the world, the one the show keeps insisting on. You don’t have to fully understand someone to treat them like they belong.
That’s not just a message. That’s a civic requirement. And Kinky Boots delivers it in heels high enough to be seen from the back row.
Kinky Boots is touring across North America, so keep an eye on its arrival in a city near you! Have you seen this production yet? Drop your thoughts and tag @bsb.insider on socials!
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