When critics pan shows, we’re often regarded as being spiteful, jaded, or simply out-of-touch. In my experience, though, we’re all too in touch: in touch with how many shows are desultory, uninspired, and cynical. Once in a blue moon (or, if we’re lucky, once a season), a show comes along that demonstrates how high the bar can be, and reminds us all why we hold it there. Such a show is Kinky Boots, the musical that triumphed on Broadway and is now making its Minneapolis debut in a touring production playing at the Orpheum Theatre.

The 2013 musical, a winner of six Tony Awards including Best Musical, was written by Harvey Fierstein (book) and Cyndi Lauper (music), vindicating the many fans—including me—who had long regarded Lauper as a talent with vastly more potential than she’d demonstrated in the 30 years of largely mediocre material since her transcendent 1983 debut album. Among the 14 songs in Kinky Boots, there’s not one clunker: under the stage direction of Jerry Mitchell, they work as both music and theater. If there’s an unmistakably ’80s flavor to Stephen Oremus’s orchestrations, it only shows how staid the genre has become that they feel fresh and contemporary. If I’ve ever heard so much as a hint of electronic dance beats in a Broadway musical before, I don’t remember when.

Based on the 2005 film that was itself inspired by a true story, Kinky Boots chronicles the rise of Charlie Price (Steven Booth), the son of a Northampton shoe manufacturer. When his father (Nick Sullivan) dies, Charlie inherits a failing factory that his fiancée (Grace Stockdale) encourages him to sell for conversion into condos. A chance meeting with drag queen Lola (Kyle Taylor Parker), however, inspires Charlie to pursue the “niche market” of men who wear women’s shoes. To help design the footwear, Lola and her revue move to Northampton, where Lola fights discrimination as Charlie and his workers struggle to manufacture a line of shoes that will turn the company around.

Though there are desperately serious issues at play, Kinky Boots largely remains light on its feet—so to speak—with Lola tossing one zinger after another at the factory workers, only one of whom (Joe Coots) really seems to take exception to her. Fierstein and Lauper wisely keep the culture-clash schtick to a relative minimum, instead focusing on the characters—particularly Lola and Charlie, who both struggled for their fathers’ acceptance. As Charlie and his fiancée grow increasingly distant, there’s also a budding romance between the Charlie and one of his workers: a flirtation that’s tremendously endearing, thanks in large part to the fine, fun work of actress Lindsay Nicole Chambers.

Kinky Boots rides heavily on its Lola, and Parker rises to the occasion with a charming, high-energy performance that never slackens, whether he’s strutting forth in the eponymous footwear or showcasing his versatile voice on ballads like the tender “Not My Father’s Son.” Booth makes a game Charlie, and Coots wisely underplays the grumpy guy who ends up facing Lola in a glamorous boxing match.

Though it’s well-staged, that boxing match is a strange stunt that the show could do without, and it comes in a second-act lull during which the show temporarily loses its way, tumbling into a poorly-developed conflict between Charlie and Lola. By that point, though, Kinky Boots has earned such tremendous goodwill that it quickly recovers for a finale that has everyone in boots, sparkling for the world to see.

Kinky Boots reminds us that one of the reasons Broadway musicals are struggling to remain relevant is how hidebound their clichés are—characters are often reduced to stereotypes, as though writers and directors are afraid they’ll lose their audiences’ attention if they introduce even a shade of complexity. Fierstein and Lauper, on the other hand, allow Lola to be both a woman and a man, a confident character who also experiences confusion about how to find her way in a world that doesn’t seem like it was made for her. The eponymous boots become symbolic of acceptance: the show argues that men who wear women’s shoes ought to have kinky boots that fit their feet, and respect from mainstream society even when there’s not a bachelorette party involved.

Believe the hype: the joyful Kinky Boots is a marvel, enormously entertaining and genuinely moving. You’ll leave the theater with a renewed faith in humanity, and in Broadway.

– Jay Gabler