Review: Kinky Boots, Leeds Grand Theatre; In The Willows, York Theatre Royal

HERE are two contrasting shows, both musicals, with a common theme of letting people be who they are.

In 35 years of reviewing, diversity has never been such a hot topic in the theatre, albeit that the stage has always been the place to break down boundaries first, to give everyone a voice, to celebrate individuality but common humanity.

West End hit Kinky Boots has been giving a particularly glittery boot up the backside to prejudice and intolerance on the Leeds Grand stage in the wake of such drag staging posts as Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and a revival of La Cage Aux Folles.

This time, "inspired by true events", the setting is Price & Son, a fraying Northampton shoe factory on its last legs, where young Charlie Price (Joel Harper-Jackson) must step into his late father's outmoded shoes.

His girlfriend wants him to climb the ladder in London, but Charlie seems tied by the laces to his home town, his workforce, especially when help swishes into view in the unlikely but fabulous form of Lola (Kayi Ushe), a drag queen supreme in need of sturdy yet slinky stilettos for not only Lola but all the Angels that strut their stuff and fluff with him.

Ushe's Lola is a five-star performance in a show with a three-star book by Harvey Fierstein and four-star music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper, no less. Sex Is In The Heel and What A Woman Wants are particular highs for Ushe and director/choreographer Jerry Mitchell, but the story drags a little, leaving Kinky Boots just short of Priscilla and La Cage's peerless peaks.

Space invaders: Harry Jardine's Toad, left, challenges the Weasels over squatting at Toad Hall in In The Willows. Picture: Richard Davenport

Meanwhile, on tour at York Theatre Royal for Easter holiday family audiences is In The Willows, a hip-hop spin on Kenneth Grahame's Wind In The Willows, transposed to an urban southern secondary school with "ballads, beats and backflips".

To avoid any confusion – apparently some older theatre-goers have not been so wild about the Wildwoods council estate, choosing to leave at half-time – this is a new street dance musical for young people by Poppy Burton-Morgan, Pippa Cleary and Keiran Merrick that "champions diversity".

The familiar characters are now school children in their teens, working out who they are, who they want to be, at that ever vulnerable age. Rapper Rattie (Zara Macintosh) is torn between the street and academic aspirations; Harry Jardine's DJ Toad has his hall but is always in a hole; Chief Weasel (Bradley Charles) has a grievance with outsider Mole (Victoria Boyce) from years back.

Otter (deaf dancer Chris Fonseca), Owl (Abiola Efunshile) and Duck (Seann Miley Moore) are woven into the story, and guiding their path is the sage schoolteacher Mr Badger (the formidable Clive Rowe, towering soul voice and all). In The Willows is fun, funky, inclusive, of the moment, and if I may add one sign to all the sign language, it's a thumbs-up.

Charles Hutchinson