Lola (Kayi Ushe) is a lovely, sassy lady dressed in sequins – trouble is ‘she’ is a ‘he’ who stands 6ft tall in her stocking feet.
Charlie Price (Joel Harper-Jackson) is an ineffectual wimp with a fiancé Lauren (Paula Lane) intent to stepping up the social ladder by wearing the pants in their relationship. Trouble is she wants to wear the shoes too - Christian Louboutin not brown brogues.
Get it? That’s the gist of Kinky Boots, well my version anyway.
Kinky Boots is based on a true story made into a BBC documentary which became a film, which became a hit Broadway musical, which opened at the Bristol Hippodrome this week.
A down-at-the-heel family shoe firm is losing money because it produces outdated footwear.
A chance encounter leads Charlie to learn drag queens can’t get through a nightclub act without some wardrobe malfunction involving their stiletto heels.
Finding a niche produce could save the struggling British shoe factory by switching production from men's dress shoes to custom footwear for drag queens could be the solution.
Lola and Charlie (not to be confused with CBeebies series) are a pair of polar opposites who have more in common than they know – cue song Not My Father’s Son.
The stage version is fabulous – talented cast, realistic set, energetic dance, spot lighting - all first-class theatre.
When you flick through the programme is appears the show has no big names – a couple of actors who have appeared in soaps, film shorts on an obscure tv channel or the odd advert for 118118, no Oscar nominees here.
And yet they were beyond marvellous, they gelled as a company and bought one of my favourite films to life – talented, professional and one of my favourite shows to date (that is in all-time top 10).
It is an all-dancing, all-singing, gritty story about glitzy drag artists and ground down production line workers - a world where fashion faux paux collides with foot-fetish fans.
The show also has marvellous moments of humour:
Take One: Charlie’s prototype boot is burgundy leather with a sensible Cuban heel. Lola wants a thigh high, shiny red patent boot with dagger shaped heel. One look at Charlie’s first offering and she retorts ‘do you want be to look like a Ukrainian folk dancer’? The motto being sex is in the heel.
Take Two: Factory workers dub Charlie ‘Prince Price’ a ‘wanker with words’ when he tries to sack them. Some great cameo roles here including the replacement blonde love interest Nicola (Helen Ternent) and chummy shop steward Don (Demitri Lampra).
Take Three: Lola’s dad who disapproved of his cross-dressing died of lung cancer. Lola says, ‘fags got him in the end’.
Best bits – the voices which gave me goosebumps, acrobatic moves on factory conveyor belt, steel girder roofs, grande finale Milan catwalk – not giving anything away here so sod it go and see it for yourself it is really, really, good.
Kinky Boots continues at the Hippodrome until Saturday, March 9. For more information and tickets, visit: www.beta.atgtickets.com/show/kinky-boots/bristol-hippodrome

Carol Deacon
Photos by Helen Maybanks