The factory line that reassembles film comedies into Broadway musicals has produced its fair share of hits and misses. Thankfully for area theatergoers, Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein’s Tony-winning Kinky Boots, based on the 2005 film directed by Julian Jarrold and written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth, qualifies as the former. Under the guidance of artistic director Jason Loewith, Olney Theatre Center’s effusive new production ebbs and flows with Lauper’s pop-infused score and Fierstein’s sometimes disjointed book, all as the story walks a fraught line between drag’s increasing acceptance and a resurgent conservative backlash.  

The story is set in the early 2000s (ubiquitous flip phones included) and unfolds primarily in Northampton, a working-class town in the English Midlands. There, Charlie (Vincent Kempski) is forced to take over the family’s ailing shoe factory, Price & Sons, after the sudden death of his father (Stephen F. Schmidt)—a tragedy that threatens Charlie’s plans for a new life in London with fiancee Nicola (Candice Shedd-Thompson). It also leaves him with the awkward task of laying off the company’s hardworking staff (Karl Kippola, Kaiyla Gross, Sarah Anne Sillers, Ricardo Blagrove, Calvin McCullough), including charming and forthright Lauren (Alex De Bard), who has eyes for the new boss despite her better judgment. 

Enter drag queen Lola (Solomon Parker III), whose unwitting rendezvous with Charlie presents them both with an opportunity. Lola’s boots (expensively priced but cheaply made) are not fit for purpose. In fixing Lola’s distinctive red thigh-highs, Charlie realizes he has stumbled upon a profitable niche market: drag queens looking for stylish, extravagant, and sturdy footwear—in Lola’s words, kinky boots. With some coaxing, Lola joins a reimagined Price & Sons, though she quickly finds herself tangling with the staff’s homophobia, epitomized by macho Don (Chris Genebach), and Charlie’s reawakened drive to prove himself a worthy heir to his father. 

Like the material, Olney’s rendition of Kinky Boots often seems, for good or for ill, like two shows stitched together: the anxious postindustrial life of a Northampton shoemaker on one hand, backed by Milagros Ponce de León’s finely realized sets; the sequined but steely extravagance of a drag diva, resplendent in Kendra Rai’s costumes and Larry Peterson’s towering wigs, on the other. Lola and her coterie of Angels—the suitably fabulous Malachi Alexander, Quadry Brown, Robbie Duncan, Shane Hall, Connor James Reilly, and David Singleton—are a welcome reprieve from Charlie’s coming-of-age story. Their sparkling cabaret vignettes, however, sometimes appear to operate in a world neither entirely in the play nor entirely engaged with the audience. Despite varying grasps of the dialect, the ensemble finds layers of complexity in their roles, even if Loewith’s direction and Tara Jeanne Vallee’s choreography sometimes leave them adrift in the background. As the leading pair, Kempski and Parker excel in song—Kempski’s voice is pleasingly smooth and Parker belts with the requisite ferocity—though Kempski tends to underplay Charlie’s awkward humor and Parker to shout Lola’s self-assuredness. 

At its best, the production embraces contrast to good effect. The duet “I’m Not My Father’s Son,” in which Charlie and Simon (Lola’s alter ego) achingly work through their fathers’ disappointments, sees Kempski and Parker at their finest. The number pairs nicely with the youthful innocence of their child counterparts (Grayden Goldman and Dustin Sardella split the role of Young Charlie; Zack Cook and Henry Harleston that of Young Simon). The quiet intimacy makes certifiable barnstormers such as “Everybody Say Yeah!” and “Raise You Up” feel that much more triumphant by comparison.

This mounting of Kinky Boots also arrives amid contrasting fortunes for the drag community. Drag has never been so mainstream, thanks in part to hit programs like RuPaul’s Drag Race and initiatives like drag queen story hours, yet performers are continually targets of violent bigots and have yet again been unwittingly shoved to the forefront of a conservative moral panic surrounding gender identity and expression. As Olney’s program implies, drag has always had an element of danger to it, and Kinky Boots has a complicated relationship with that danger. While the show’s feel-good vibes point to progress made over the years, they sometimes blunt the edges of a subversive practice that has long played with the perception of gender in ways that are provocative, titillating, and even enlightening. Loewith and company could have restored a bit of that sharpness by building on the queens’ engagement with the audience, inviting them to shrug off the security of the fourth wall and sample what makes drag so liberating. Nevertheless, Lola’s principled self-acceptance and dexterous challenges to patriarchal mores, all nicely played by Parker, drive home that some stories, and the morals they carry, bear repeating.

It’s a hard line to walk because queer joy deserves just as much attention as queer trauma. The miracle is that such joy not only exists but continues to shine. 

Despite a few kinks in the details, Olney’s Kinky Boots earns the cheers when they come and delivers on the charms of a story that is still, in some parts of the country, much-needed medicine. It certainly helps that the footwear is fittingly fabulous.

Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein’s Kinky Boots, directed by Jason Loewith, runs at Olney Theatre Center until March 26. olneytheatre.org. $42–$95. Information about discount programs, ASL interpreted performances, and audio-described performances is available online.