THESE BOOTS WERE MADE FOR BROADWAY

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If there is a God of Memorable Voices (and who is to say there isn't?), she should have put Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein onstage together long ago. She finally had the good sense at least to enlist Lauper to write the music and lyrics and Fierstein to do the book for Kinky Boots, a musical opening this month on Broadway about what happens when a son inherits his dad's troubled shoe factory and meets a drag queen named Lola looking for the next big thing in stilettos. Inspiration came from the 2005 British film Kinky Boots, which, aside from the performance of Chiwetel Ejiofor as Lola, sank faster than a crate of Jimmy Choos in the Thames. What attracted Fierstein to the story is how these men, the son (played by Stark Sands) and Lola (Billy Porter), both feel they have failed their fathers. "We all walk around with these wounds, and you have to heal them if you are going to move on," Fierstein says. Ron Fierstein, a music producer and Harvey's brother, suggested Lauper, who said yes even before reading the script. Why? "Harvey! I've always admired him. He is a great storyteller who makes you laugh." The gig also allowed Lauper to "feel five years old again," when she would play her mom's South Pacific LP in her living room and act out all the parts. (Her favorite: Bloody Mary.) For Lauper, Kinky Boots approaches the Gandhian in its message about acceptance of others: "You want to change the world? Change your mind." Just don't change those voices.

JIM KELLY