Harvey Fierstein, Jerry Mitchell, Cyndi Lauper and more get Kinky at the Kinky Boots Round Table

If you’ve seen the fantastic new musical “Kinky Boots” at the Adelphi Theatre, you may have wondered where all of that unadulterated energy comes from. Having met some of the stars and creators of the show, it is no longer a mystery to me. I was lucky enough to sit down with Harvey Fierstein (Book), Cyndi Lauper (Music & Lyrics), Jerry Mitchell (Director & Choreographer), Matt Henry (Lola/Simon), Killian Donnelly (Charlie) and Amy Lennox (Lauren) for a roundtable interviewing about their exciting new show. What followed was an onslaught of passion and enthusiasm that made me want to jump back into the theatre to watch it again!

They came in chatting, full of life. Jerry Mitchell sat down and immediately starting telling us the story of visiting Trickers. Our only major problem from here on in was finding a pause long enough to ask another question. Quite frankly, an interviewers dream.

Jerry Mitchell: All the factory workers from Northampton were invited, by us, to come see the show. We took the cast to Northampton for the very first day of rehearsal, to tour the factory where they made the film, Trickers, because I had done it when we were preparing the New York production, and then we invited them all to see the show. There’s one particular young woman, whose hair I loved so much, I made the wig maker make her hair and put it in all of the productions.

Amy Lennox: The mullet!

[Laughter]

Jerry Mitchell: I’ve got a picture of her with the girls. It was sensational. They loved the show, they were in tears, they felt so special. The factory on stage looks very much like Trickers.

Cyndi, had you always thought of writing for Broadway?

Cyndi Lauper: Never

So how did this come about?

Cyndi Lauper: I got a phone call from my buddy over here [indicates Harvey Fierstein]. I had wanted to do this story, you know how one thing leads to another, I did an album and I chose all these old songs from the time when I was growing up. Where I grew up was very influential for the rest of my life because of the people. It was one of those places with the backyards and the gates, where you could just look down and see everybody else in their backyards, and there was a lot of people who were characters. I had gone to see Harvey to help me write it and have him actually write it and he was doing Hairspray. I remember because he came in and he said: “I gotta eat pasta, I need a lot of energy for this one!” [laughs].he talked to me about stories and the possibility of what could happen in the story. After I finished “Bring Me To The Brink” and the tour, it was around 2008 and he called me up, I’d just finished washing the dinner dishes, and he said: “What are you doing?” and I said: “Really, not much” and he said: “How would you like to write this thing, Kinky Boots?” and I said: “Absolutely” and he said: “How about you look at the film first” because I wanted to work with him. I know nothing but I do know there are, on one hand, the best musical book writers and Mr Fierstein is right up there on the top, in my opinion, and I think that it is a real hard and tricky thing to write a musical, you have to know how and he did. I didn’t know what I was doing so I didn’t know what the hell I was getting into. I just knew I was going to work with him and then he said he was working with him [indicates Jerry Mitchell]

[Laughter]

Cyndi Lauper: And he was my friend too so I thought: “What the hell? I’m gonna have a good time. Just one thing, no crazy people!” and he said: “Fine, no crazy people.”

Harvey Fierstein: Then the producers showed up…

[Laughter]

Tell me about the writing process between the two of you.

Cyndi Lauper: He would call me up and he would say: [imitates Harvey’s famously raspy voice] “I need a song called Sex Is In The Heel” so I said; “Fine” and would go and write the song and then he’d say [indicates Jerry Mitchell]…

Jerry Mitchell: …I would say: “Listen, write me a song where everybody says ‘Yeah! I like this boot…Yeah! I want a boot…Yeah!’”

Harvey Fierstein: You danced it through the room!

[Laughter]

Cyndi Lauper: So I wrote a song where they all said ‘Yeah’. It’s catchy! At least people remember it. And then it became a process…..

Harvey Fierstein: It’s a process. You’re story telling. There’s nobody in the show who is an ‘I want…’ character. They don’t know what they want. The show should open with one of them singing: “I want…” neither fucking one of them knows what they want!

[Laughter]

Harvey Fierstein: It’s a very hard thing to do so I said: “At least let them tell the audience who they are and everyone defines their lives by the shoes.” Cyndi actually turned around at one point and said: “They do know they’re shoes, right?”

[Laughter]

Harvey Fierstein: I’ll give you an example of how the three of us work; we were starting to write the show, Cyndi and I were writing and this one [Jerry] had to run off to London because he was working on Legally Blonde. He calls me from outside a pub and he says: “You’re not gonna fucking believe where I am. I’m in this pub and up on the second floor there’s a boxing ring.” I said: “You’re kidding me” and he said: “They’re up there beating the shit out of each other!” I said: “That’s it! That’s it! Get off the phone!” Remember in the movie there’s an arm wrestle? I didn’t want to do the arm wrestle, how boring, it’s like a chewing gum blowing contest. So I call this one [Cyndi] up and she comes out of the world of wrestling so she goes: “I got it! I got it! In this corner.” Then she starts writing In This Corner. I’m writing the scene, she already knows because she comes out of the wrestling world, we go up to this one [Jerry] and we go “We’re gonna have David (Rockwell – Set Designer) build us a boxing ring onstage…” and he goes: “Fuck that,” and throws a drag queen on the floor, sticks her leg up and wraps a chord around it: “We’ve got it!” There are some people, who will remain nameless, who spend millions of dollars putting rings on stage, he put a drag queens leg on stage! And that’s the creativity of theatre. You have these three minds feeding off each other, having this wonderful time of creativity. And in reality, nobody seeing the show would ever say: “Jerry came up with this… Harvey came up with this… Cyndi came up with this…” You should never know. If you know who came up with a specific idea we haven’t done our job right. It should be such a blend of minds.

Jerry Mitchell: That’s what makes musicals incredible.

Harvey Fierstein: That’s what makes theatre incredible.

Cyndi Lauper: But it’s everybody you know. It’s also the actors. There was a time when I was looking for men to demo the thing because they said, not everybody, but some people were saying: “You’re a woman, I gotta hear it in a man’s voice.” So then I was looking for a guy to sing it so I could demo it and I did demo it. Nobody was used to that. I demoed it so that you could actually hear what I was thinking because I wanted the rhythms to be very specific and authentic because he [Jerry] is one of the greatest choreographers and he needs to have authentic rhythm. So all that was in my head while he [Harvey] was writing me going: [imitates Harvey’s voice] “Christina! Where are my lyrics?!”

[Laughter]

Cyndi Lauper: I would call him constantly and sing stuff on the phone [Harvey growls]

Matt, is it exhausting making the many transitions between Lola and Simon throughout the show?

Matt Henry: It’s very quick. At the beginning of the show it takes an hour for me to get made up and after Sex Is In The Heel, I get ready to change into Simon and I’ve got four people around me ripping wigs off, taking eyelashes off and applying more make-up then I get shoved back out. Then I have the interval, while everyone else is having cups of tea and biscuits, I’m in the chair again having more make-up applied so by the time I’m finished the make up is out there.

[Laughter]

Cyndi Lauper: But you look terrific!

Matt Henry: [Laughs] But I look amazing!

Jerry Mitchell: The role of Simon/Lola in the show, what you don’t see off stage is just as demanding as what’s going on onstage. He never stops. It’s literally a race.

Killian Donnelly: We learned that when we did the production photos, it was like: “Now we have to wait 15 minutes so that Matt can get into hair and make-up.”

Harvey Fierstein: And you [Killian] change on stage. Jerry and I talked about it. We didn’t want to lose the film sense of it.

Jerry Mitchell: The timing of some of the scenes is built specifically on how long it would take to get the other one back onstage.

Cyndi Lauper: It’s very difficult. I think if I was Matt I would be very jealous of you [Killian] because you don’t have to put all the make-up on.

Killian Donnelly: He has to completely change from man to woman and then more make-up is put on and at the same time I run off the stage and I change a jumper and I run back on.

[Laughter]

Killian Donnelly: I’m sorry.

It’s a popular film with some fantastic actors, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Joel Edgerton, was it daunting for you to follow that?

Killian Donnelly: Yeah the hype that goes with the film was daunting because people love it and care about it and you just want to honour it, but at the same time it’s a story that when it’s told through the stage of musical theatre it adds so much more to it. Especially to Lola’s character, it just feels like that was the missing element that you could never portray on film…

Matt Henry: Yeah, through songs, through movement. Also you get to see more of the back stories and the relationship between Charlie and his father. On stage you can explore more of that than they did in the film.

Amy Lennox: Nicola [Charlie’s fiancé] was more featured in the film and Lauren was a very different character.
Harvey Fierstein: You lost the fact that they all knew each other since childhood, that was not really mentioned in the film. It’s like Jerry said to me one time when he came back from England: “This is a small town, they went to school together, they all know each other.” That’s sort of never mentioned in the film. This [Charlie and Lauren’s relationship] isn’t a flirtation between two people that ever saw each other before, they’ve known each other all their lives. Which is why I took out Nicola cheating on Charlie, I thought, how misogynistic can you get? How unnecessary.

Cyndi Lauper: What do you mean misogynistic?

Harvey Fierstein: [Whispers to Cyndi] In the car….

[Laughter]

Jerry Mitchell: I grew up in a family business so everyone in the business who worked for my parents were my extended family. And the shoe factory had that same feelong amongst the workers and they have to know each other and it strengthens the story if they know each other because they grew up together. So the adult characters who see Charlie and see him take over from his father, it strengthens their role even when they have nothing to say because onstage they have to be a full person even in scenes where they’re not speaking.

Harvey Fierstein: One of the big changes I made to the story was that in the movie Charlie really does disappoint his father by not going into the shoe business but I changed it and the father lets him off the hook. As Nicola says to him: “Your father sold the factory, walk away.” The father accepted it. The same thing with Lola in the movie you’re sort of left with the idea that Lola’s father tried to turn him into a boxer. No he didn’t. He saw: “I have this son who wears dresses, he better know how to take care of himself.” He taught him to fight out of love, he [Lola] doesn’t know that until the two of them [Lola and Charlie] fight in act 2 and he says everything he was scared his father would ever say to him and he becomes his father. The two of them become the thing that they’re most frightened of and scare the reality into each other where they can finally get beyond it. It’s a beautiful moment that isn’t really in the film at all. And Lauren of course is there watching this change to this person, this non-entity come to life.

Amy Lennox: Which makes it all the more funny when suddenly she gets smacked in the face with: “Oh shit I love him.” Lauren’s wacky. She’s fabulous. She’s very down to earth and very kind of kooky and off the wall and lovely and what’s lovely about their [Charlie and Lauren] relationship is they’ve grown up together and he’s just… Charlie, whatever. And then of course when he takes over the factory she’s just like: “What the…? Really?”

Killian Donnelly: That moment when Lauren turns and goes: “Oh I think I’ve got a crush” it just feeds out to the audience because everyone’s had that.

Amy Lennox: The amount of people who have come to me and said: “I am that person. I’ve been in that situation.” She gives him the kick up the arse. Lauren’s the one who says to him: “Hold on a minute, why don’t you try and find a solution before you start laying everyone off?” So she gives him a kick up the arse and then everything starts rolling. And when she realises that he’s actually doing something amazing and it smacks her in the face. The lighting and everything helps, it’s just so fabulous, it comes from nowhere essentially and then it’s just [sings] da neh neh neh….whoompf! It’s a great song [The History Of Wrong Guys]. I’ve never known a song like it. It’s just so much fun to do every night, it’s magic to do.

Harvey Fierstein: Lauren becomes the person who makes the show happen. Even when they’ve mucked it up, she makes it happen. Lola says: “I can make the world a pretty place but don’t give me responsibility.” None of them wants responsibility. They’re all adults and not one of them wants to grow up.

Cyndi Lauper: I just remember when Jerry said: “She’s in her own mind, like a video.” And I related to that so much.
Amy Lennox: We’ve even got the sort of 80s hair blowing.

When you’re writing/rehearsing a show do you have any idea if it’s good or are you just putting yourselves out there?

Jerry Mitchell: We all love what we do. And we do it because we love it or we’re in love with the story or some aspect of the story and we hope that it will resonate with other people. We did a series of readings in New York before we went into rehearsal for the Broadway production. We were doing our last reading at a place called New 42, a rehearsal studio, and we had invited people from the industry and we were standing in the back of the room. And the actor who was playing Don in New York, I had a pair of size 13 Kinky Boots, they were the only pair that we had, none were made yet, these were a store bought pair that I had. I went up to him two days before the performance and I said: “Could you try on my Kinky Boots? I would love for you to wear them in the finale” and he went: “Sure.” He couldn’t walk in them, literally. But he did. He walked on a little table, basically, and when he walked out into the middle of the room I remember seeing grown men scream, tears rolling down peoples cheeks and we were all crying thinking: “They’re getting it! They understand this story and it has the power to change people’s minds.”

Cyndi Lauper: We also used to watch them cry during Not My Father’s Son a lot.

Jerry Mitchell: That rehearsal room, for me, solidified the possibility of what was there. It was at that moment I realised that this could be a very important musical that has a universal theme that a lot of people can relate to.

Harvey Fierstein: And unfortunately both of us lost our Mums during this process. It was the one show that my Mum never got to see, it was the one show that his [Jerry] Mum never got to see. And so the two of us would be at the back for Not My Father’s Son and we didn’t even know if anybody else was crying, we were crying.

Killian Donnelly: It’s like that still because people will come to stage door, especially for musical theatre there will be the wives who drag their husbands but with this show it’s the first time that I’ve ever noticed, I got my hand shook the other day at stage door by the husband and he goes: “My wife dragged me here because she heard how great it was. Thank you.” He thanked me for the show. Usually they say: “Well done” and you go: “Thank you very much.” He thanked me and he was Don, he was the spit of Don but he was: “Thanks so much” because the message is just be who you want to be. You can change the world if you change your mind. If you play to 1400 people, if you change his mind, it’s amazing how that really affects and that’s what you’re going for.

Amy Lennox: You can feel that in the audience. I don’t think I’ll ever do a show again where I feel this tsunami of energy. It’s insane.

The conveyor belt scene is amazing. How do you make sure that the cast stay safe whilst they’re doing that scene?

Jerry Mitchell: When Harvey presented me with the first draft, we had all of these conveyor belts and then I went to Trickers and there were no conveyor belts and I thought: “What am I going to do?” Then I remembered the OK Go video where they’re on four treadmills on the floor and I wondered, if I could put the treadmills in the air, 4ft off the floor, could I create a conveyor belt that we could then dance on. They built me an 8ft conveyor belt with no handlebars, brought it into the rehearsal studio and I fell off of it four times. So I sent it back to the shop and asked them to build bars and I said: “Let’s make them movable bars so we’ll be able to mess around with them.” The thing went all different speeds so I sent it back again and said: “Give me two speeds, slow and fast.” By now I was getting the hang of it so it was about a six month development period. Once I got one built and like it, they made four more and then I called some dancers into the room and started creating the number. I literally went beat by beat and picked sections, like the fives I created first which is when they’re all facing different ways and they’re doing forward rolls and sliding and flipping. Then I did the section with the two of them called ‘Fred and Ginger’ and then I did some transition sections and then I just started piecing it altogether with Stephen Oremus the Musical Director and came up with the number. Once the number was created, I knew it would be safe. Each machine has three buttons on it that are actually operated by the actors, so they’re doing it every night and they actually know what to do if one breaks down, how they continue the number.

Harvey Fierstein: He made them safety t-shirts.

Jerry Mitchell: I actually did.

Matt, you obviously have to wear the heels a lot but the rest of the cast have to wear them at points too. How was it for you to get used to them?

Matt Henry: The hardest heels for me are the Sex Is In The Heel heels. They’re the highest ones they’re six inches.

Jerry Mitchell: They’re real stilettos!

Matt Henry: And it’s full on dancing in them. It took seven weeks to really go from Bambi to Black Beauty!

[Laughter]

Matt Henry: I’m still getting strong, still learning but it’s amazing to know. Now I’m on a level with women!

Jerry Mitchell: But you had worn some heels prior to this.

Matt Henry: Yes

Jerry Mitchell: Had you [Killian] ever warn heels before?

Killian Donnelly: No, no I hadn’t. [Turns to Matt] If you were Bambi then I was drunk Bambi!

[Laughter]

Killian Donnelly: He [Jerry] had given me heels in a job I was doing, three weeks before we started rehearsals. So I’d be in a dressing room and just slide on these heels, walking around, knock at the door, take them off. And he was always: “Chest out. Bum out. Balls of the feet” and when I got to rehearsals I remember all of [Lola’s] Angels were there watching. So I just start walking and I relaxed into it and the Angels said: “You’re like a duck to water.” Waddling away…

[Laughter]

Jerry Mitchell: The interesting thing about theatre, technically speaking, a lot of shows have scenery that comes and goes from the wings on what’s called tracks, so a track brings a piece of scenery on. When we designed the show I designed it to have no tracks in the down part of the stage because of the heels. Particularly for the factory workers, I knew a lot of them wouldn’t have experience dancing in high heels and I didn’t want them to get their feet caught in the tracks. So we specifically designed the deck with only two tracks. That’s rare for a West End musical, usually there’s tons of tracks but I designed it so that we would be safe [knocks on wood].

Written by Melanie Crossey in association with Acting Hour

Kinky Boots is on at the Adelphi Theatre now and is booking until February 2016