Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Jerry Mitchell laces up ‘Boots’ in his return to Las Vegas

Peepshow's 3rd Anniversary at Planet Hollywood

Erik Kabik/ErikKabik.com

Peepshow” celebrates its third anniversary with creator, director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell, lead stars Josh Strickland, Cheaza and Holly Madison and the cast and crew at Planet Hollywood on Monday, April 16, 2012.

‘Kinky Boots’

The Tony Award-winning “Kinky Boots” is at The Smith Center for the Performing Arts from Sept. 4-14, 2014, in downtown Las Vegas. Launch slideshow »

Peepshow's 3rd Anniversary at Planet Hollywood

Launch slideshow »

Jerry Mitchell sits in a theater chair near the soundboard and studies the set for “Kinky Boots” at Reynolds Hall in the Smith Center. The show is in rehearsals for its Thursday opening, the night when it launches its U.S. tour, and Mitchell’s eyes narrow suddenly at the activity onstage.

“What’s with all the flashlights?” he asks, referring to a group of stagehands milling at the middle of the set. “I don’t like a lot of guys with flashlights. It makes me nervous.”

Turns out the staff is merely looking over a new, larger stair step that has just been built for the touring version of the show. Nothing to be alarmed about, really, and Mitchell is confident that his Tony Award-winning show will be in good repair when it opens in Las Vegas.

“Kinky Boots” runs from Thursday night through Sept. 14 at Reynolds Hall. The musical follows the story of a British shoe-factory worker named Charlie who joins an alliance with a drag queen named Lola to save the struggling plant from closing. Their solution is to make custom footwear — kinky boots — for drag queens rather than the work boots the plant usually manufactures.

The show won the 2013 Tony Award for Best Musical, Best Choreography (marking Mitchell’s second Tony Award in a 25-year career, the first being for “La Cage Aux Follies” in 2005) and also for Best Score, making composer Cyndi Lauper the first woman to ever win that honor in the Tonys’ 67-year history.

The show has myriad ties to Las Vegas, especially those developed by Mitchell. He was the director of “Peepshow” at Planet Hollywood, which closed in September 2013 after a four-year run in that hotel’s showroom. He was choreographer for “Hairspray” at the Luxor, which played for four months in 2006.

Six years earlier, her worked on “EFX Alive” during Rick Springfield’s run as lead performer in the show that predated “Ka” at MGM Grand. Smith Center President Myron Martin was co-producer of “Hairspray” during its all-too-brief run at Luxor.

Oddly, Mitchell also had a dalliance with “Jubilee,” quite long ago, and he spoke of that show, “Kinky Boots” (naturally) and other subjects during a half-hour conversation last week. The highlights from the ever-animated Mitchell:

He is aware that the word “kinky” might require some explaining across the country: “We have a title that means something that doesn’t phase New Yorkers but is the brand of our show, and we do not want to mislead people about the story,” he says. “It’s not actually a ‘kinky’ show but is basically a story of all these factory workers. The message of the show, in a way, is you can change the world when you change your mind and accept the people around you who are different than you are. It’s a big message in a show like this.”

The development of the creative team for “Kinky Boots” coincided with the opening of “Peepshow” in 2009: “We were in tech rehearsals for ‘Peepshow,’ and Harvey (Fierstein) and I were just beginning the process of developing ‘Kinky Boots,’ “ Mitchell recalls. “Harvey had just written the first draft, and we were searching for the composing team. The process took us three years — we were working on it that long.”

Long ago, Mitchell was in talks to help upgrade “Jubilee” and was rumored to be joining the production after Frank Gatson Jr. was let go this year: “People were emailing me and sending me messages in Twitter asking if I was going to redo ‘Jubilee.’ I went, ‘Nobody’s called me!’ ” Mitchell says, laughing. “But if they called me, and the price is right, I would kill to do that show. I am such a huge Donn Arden fan. I mean, come on.”

“I was going to redo it about 15 years ago. I met with Fluff (LeCoque), and we were trying to update it scenically and get it moving. … I was going to replace the Samson & Delilah number and the Titanic number with two new numbers that kind of embraced the Donn Arden-‘Jubilee’ idea of the big Vegas number. I was going to redo the ‘yellow’ (costumed) number and do Sammy Davis singing ‘Candy Man,’ having a parade of those costumes (singing) ‘Who can take the sunshine, sprinkle it with dew …” I have always liked the idea of an updated version of ‘Jubilee,’ and I have a huge amount of respect for that show. I love it.”

He is working on ‘On Your Feet!,’ the new musical based on the life of Gloria and Emilio Estefan and co-produced by longtime Siegfried & Roy manager Bernie Yuman: “We start rehearsals in April and spend five weeks at the Oriental Theater in Chicago beginning in June,” Mitchell says. “We open in New York, at Marquis Theater, in October (2015).”

He would be interested in returning to Las Vegas, but not for a drawn-down version of “Peepshow.”: “There was talk about moving it at one point, scaling it down again, but where I am now in my life and career, I don’t want to go downscale. I want to go upscale,” Mitchell says. “I mean, I would like someone to say, ‘Here’s $27 million, why don’t you put a show together? What I could do with $27 million — you know what I mean?

“It would be crazy … but I would love to do a new show in Vegas. There is room for the big Vegas production if you have a casino behind you that says, ‘This is what we’re going to be, we’re going to be different and do something no one else is doing.’ And if I could to that, I would come back in a minute.”

Follow John Katsilometes on Twitter at Twitter.com/JohnnyKats. Also, follow “Kats With the Dish” at Twitter.com/KatsWiththeDish.

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