Review: Kinky Boots

Kinky Boots shines at the Helsinki City Theatre

The start-up year of the Helsinki City Theatre’s new machinery, which was freed from the torment of a long renovation last autumn, has come to an end, and now it’s time to really let off steam when the new controversial musical Kinky Boots takes to the big stage.

Kinky Boots, written by Harvey Fierstein and composed by Cyndi Lauper, is one of the international musical events of the decade. The hit, which was completed on Broadway five years ago, has now been translated into fluent Finnish for the City Theatre by Kari Arffman and Hanna Kaila, and it is directed by Samuel Harjanne, an up-and-coming talent who has learned his directing skills in England.

Kinky Boots tells the story of Charlie, who has inherited a bankrupt shoe factory, and Simon, who performs as a drag artist named Lola, who are literally thrown on a collision course by chance. After recovering from the initial shock, Charlie has an idea to save the family business, and he manages to convince Lola to join him.

Underneath all the glitter and drag, Kinky Boots highlights themes bubbling in time, such as the possibility of broadening gender roles, and also reflects on what will happen to the West when work and production disappear to distant countries due to globalization.

In addition, Kinky Boots speaks – at least not preaching – about accepting others and oneself as everyone happens to be. Lola’s line wraps it up lightly and concisely: “Be yourself – the other roles have already been taken!”

HKT’s performance starts with high expectations with the introduction of the starting point, the people and the factory, and when old friends Charlie (Petrus Kähkönen) and Harry (Heikki Ranta) have been able to pull off their handsome duet in a pub scene, we move on to the core that everyone is waiting for, i.e. the hidden, sinful sparkle of drag clubs.
The premiere auditorium is torn apart when the big tap of HKT’s dizzying theatre machine opens, and an incredible horde of drag queens take over the big stage to kicking disco funk. It looks stunning and sounds juicy, and on top of the ban, HKT’s cast of actors also shoots parts from behind the scenes for the evening’s absolute “queen”, Lola.

The role of Lola has been played by dark-skinned performers around the world, but it is fortunate for the Finnish viewer that the Finnish version has been looking for the best instead of pigment. The new musical promise Lauri Mikkola (Lola/Simon) is full of talent from head to toe, and director Harjanne is a bold but right choice for one of the most demanding musical roles of the moment. And don’t worry, Mikkola’s voice and interpretation have plenty of soul and soul – whether the genre is disco funk, traditional pop power ballad or even Whitney Houston-inspired R&B diva.

In other parts of the world, the role of Charlie has been crammed with fresh singer discoveries found in TV idol competitions, a solution that has not always proven successful. In an international comparison, Petrus Kähkönen beats Broadway and West End Charlie by a wide margin. HKT’s Kähkönen is not only an unbeatable singer, but also a full-blooded actor who has internalized the most important thing: in a musical, storytelling must continue seamlessly from speech to song and back again. “Sielukas mies”, which rolls in the tones of piano blues and gospel, elicits spontaneous applause from the audience as the most handsome solo performance of the evening.

And even though all the seamless teamwork, both on stage and behind the scenes, is the greatest delicacy of this HKT musical, the text and score of Kinky Boots are inevitably made for two, or perhaps even three, main roles.
Kähkönen and Mikkola’s strong duo is joined by Anna Victoria Eriksson (Lauren, who has a crush on Charlie), who has already done many prominent musical roles in different parts of the country, but now presents a whole new side of herself as a flamboyant comedian.

The music of Kinky Boots is embedded in a stylistically rather narrow template. There is a concoction cooked entirely from rhythm music ingredients, where rattling indie rock and old-school disco are bubbling in the same pot. The finale of the musical is like something snatched from Madonna’s early production or Stock-Aitken-Waterman’s hit shelf, from the time of Kylie Minogue’s breakthrough.

The 11-piece band of the performance – and of course the entire stage ensemble – is led from the orchestra pit behind the piano by Eeva Kontu, who got to show her theatre conductor’s claws in rock-inspired performances on the Peacock stage in the musical Dance of the Vampires a couple of years ago.
Even now, in the renovated big pit of HKT’s own theatre building, Konttu has a group of the country’s champions in her hands. Strings and woodwinds bring even more delicate tones to the synth-driven electric sound of the six-member rhythm group (drums, bass, two guitars and two guitar kiosks). Also the sturdy brass sometimes comes to the fore nicely in the arrangements.

In particular, the percussion and guitar section is enriched with backing tracks, which have been produced by HKT in-house. The traditional drummer & percussionist setup has been replaced by a live drummer playing standard drums and Roland’s V-kit, and all percussion has been programmed and/or played in advance, as the performance rolls after the click anyway.

Kinky Boots is a clear rock/pop musical, where the band sometimes plays quite briskly, and the power of the playing is transmitted through Meyer’s new PA all the way to the stands. Sound designer Kai Poutanen occasionally spreads the band’s sound away from the front line, and the audience is amazed when the knocking synth loupe begins to spin around the space in a bucket.

Kinky Boots is not only a jubilee of artistically and technically precise singing and playing, drama and comedy, but also other essentials – from the lighting designed by William Iles to Gunilla Olsson-Karlsson’s choreographies and Peter Ahlqvist’s set design – have been polished, rehearsed and tuned to such a hard beat that it almost hurts.

Samuel Harjanne, who made his debut at the City Theatre, seems to have brought the last element that was missing to HKT’s talented ensemble and state-of-the-art technology as a souvenir from the world – some magical touch that will now make Finnish musical expertise rise from the top of the league to the international top.
HKT’s Kinky Boots is a technical and artistic hit, and it doesn’t mirror a single clip of the Broadway premiere, but the setting went completely wrong. The Finnish Kinky Boots is not only more energetic, going, inventive, strict and skillful than the versions seen around the world, but also more visionary and funny, more genuine, touching and more believable.

It is Helsinki that is now showing New York and London how to do these things!