The Broadway success currently running at the Forrest Theatre in Center City, explores identity, purpose and personal relationships.
Hal Luftig has seen Kinky Boots, the hit Broadway musical based on the 2006 movie of the same name, a lot. He has lost count of exactly how many times, but recently, it has been once every few weeks, including this week’s opening night performance of the show’s national touring company at the Forrest Theatre.
To be sure, Luftig loves theater, but he has a more viable reason for seeing the show so frequently: He is one of its two lead producers, along with fellow Broadway veteran Daryl Roth.
“Every time I see the show, I see something different — it’s one of the things I like about it,” Luftig says.
Inspired by true events, the play follows the story of Charlie Price, who comes back to his father’s shoe factory in Northampton, England, to try to save the business, and the unlikely friendship and partnership he strikes up with Lola, a drag performer.
The story first came to Luftig’s attention when he saw it in a London movie theater. As the producer of critically and commercially acclaimed plays like Death and the Maiden, Movin’ Out and Angels in America, Luftig regularly travels to London, bringing productions back and forth across the Atlantic. Every time he goes to London, he explains, “I try to leave an afternoon free to go to the cinema, as they call it over there.”
While he was watching Kinky Boots, he recalls, “I didn’t think, ‘Oh, it’s a musical;’ but I did think it had the DNA of a musical.”
At the 2006 Sundance Festival, where Kinky Boots made its U.S. premiere, Daryl Roth was thinking the same thing. The eight-time Tony winner for productions like August: Osage County, Proof and Clybourne Park remembers having a visceral reaction to the film.
“I felt struck by the story of the father-son relationship, of how and what it takes to be true to yourself, and I felt that the story at the core — the relationship that Charlie and Lola form, coming together to have the journey of finding out what they are to do in this world — is a universal one,” she says. “You could tell the whole story from start to finish with music.”
Roth says it was a natural fit to work with Luftig on the project, as they had worked together before. It wasn’t long before Kinky Boots began its second life as a musical. Of course, time is relative — the play, directed by Jerry Mitchell, with a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by Cyndi Lauper, didn’t debut on Broadway until 2013, seven years after the duo first saw it onscreen.
“In theater years, it’s not that long,” Luftig says with a laugh. “It takes a long time to get the rights — when I was doing Legally Blonde it took over two years just to get the stage rights!”
Based on the play’s success — it won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Choreography, and it recouped its initial $13.5 million investment in just 30 weeks — it was worth the effort for Luftig and Roth. It has also proved to be a cathartic experience for each of them.
Roth, who says she has made her career by following her instincts to produce the shows others weren’t interested in doing, identifies with the play’s outsiders finding their own community and succeeding against the odds.
As the only Jewish student at her high school in Wayne, N.J. — until her younger sister became a freshman — she is intimately acquainted with having otherness become the catalyst for a stronger persona. “My Jewish identity is very important to me, and that comes from when I was an outsider,” she says. “It gave me a strong belief in my heritage.”
For Luftig, who grew up amid the potato fields and duck farms of eastern Long Island, it took until he was an adult before he felt at home with his Judaism. “Until 24 years ago, I felt like the temples I had belonged to didn’t speak to me as a gay man,” he recalls. “Then a friend told me about the gay synagogue” — Congregation Beit Simchat Torah — “and he took me there on Yom Kippur.” Not only did he find a home that day, but he also met the man who would later become his husband.
While Kinky Boots does not have a Jewish theme to it, it falls squarely within Roth’s interpretation of l’dor v’dor. “I feel that there are so many good stories to tell, to pass from generation to generation” she enthuses.
“The most potent line in the play for me is, ‘You change the world when you change your mind.’ I get notes, letters and calls from people from all over, telling me, ‘The show really changed me.’ It has resonance for people; that’s what I want.”
IF YOU GO
Kinky Boots
Now through May 10
at the Forrest Theatre
1114 Walnut St., Philadelphia
forrest-theatre.com;
1-800-447-7400
