Wayne Brady to Step Into the Heels of ‘Lola’ in “Kinky Boots”
Contact: Rick Miramontez / Molly Barnett / Chelsea Nachman
rick@oandmco.com / molly@oandmco.com / chelsea@oandmco.com
212-695-7400
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE
EVERYBODY SAID “YEAH!”
EMMY AWARD-WINNER
WAYNE BRADY
WILL STEP INTO THE HEELS OF ‘LOLA’ IN
“K I N K Y B O O T S”
ON BROADWAY
THIS FALL
TONY AWARD-WINNING ORIGINAL STAR
BILLY PORTER
TO PLAY HIS FINAL PERFORMANCE
NOVEMBER 20, 2015
New York, NY (August 13, 2015) – Producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig announced today that Emmy Award-winner and Grammy Award nominee Wayne Brady will take over the coveted role of ‘Lola’ in the Tony Award®-winning musical Kinky Boots at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre (302 West 45th Street) on November 21, 2015. Brady will succeed Broadway’s original (and current) award-winning ‘Lola,’ Billy Porter. Porter has played over 800 performances in the role and won both a Tony Award and a Grammy Award for his work in the production. His final historic performance in Kinky Boots will be November 20, 2015.
Kinky Boots will mark Brady’s return to Broadway after more than a decade. After making his Broadway debut in 2004 as ‘Billy Flynn’ in Chicago, Brady also played ‘Collins’ in the 2010 Neil Patrick Harris-directed Rent at the Hollywood Bowl and last year starred in Pasadena Playhouse’s trailblazing production of Kiss Me Kate. In 2003, he won both a Primetime Emmy Award for “Whose Line Is It Anyway” and a Daytime Emmy Award as host of his own talk show, “The Wayne Brady Show.” He currently hosts the CBS game show “Let’s Make a Deal,” which has earned him six Daytime Emmy Award nominations.
“Wayne Brady is a wonderful triple threat. I first had the pleasure of working with Wayne on a Disney film and have been a fan ever since,” Kinky Boots director Jerry Mitchell said. “Like Lola, he has the sass, the voice and the heart and we cannot wait to see him strut his stuff when he joins the Kinky Boots family!”
“I’m thrilled to join the Kinky Boots family and unleash my inner Lola,” Brady said. “It’s the role of a lifetime! Billy and his prodigious talent have left some pretty big red boots for me to fill. Starring in a Broadway show of this caliber has been my dream since I started performing at age 16. I’m ready to jump in with both feet!”
Now in its third smash year, Kinky Boots is also currently touring in the country on its First National Tour, and recently opened a production in Toronto in June. The show opens in the West End on September 15, 2015 at London’s Adelphi Theatre, and has also announced an Australian production set to open in October 2016.
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Kinky Boots tells the uplifting and heartwarming tale of Charlie Price, a young man reluctantly taking over his family’s struggling business. Charlie meets and finds inspiration in Lola and together, the unlikely pair finds that they have more in common than they ever dreamed possible… and discovers that when you change your mind about someone, you can change your whole world. The winner of six 2013 Tony® Awards, including Best Musical, Kinky Boots features a Tony® Award-winning score by Cyndi Lauper, a book by Tony® Award-winner Harvey Fierstein, and direction and choreography by Tony® Award-winner Jerry Mitchell. The Grammy Award-winning Original Broadway Cast Recording of Kinky Boots is available on Sony Masterworks Broadway.
The current Broadway cast of Kinky Boots includes Tony® Award-winner Billy Porter, Andy Kelso, Haven Burton, Daniel Stewart Sherman, Cortney Wolfson, Marcus Neville, Nick Rashad Burroughs, Paul Canaan, Sean Patrick Doyle, Kevin Smith Kirkwood, Kyle Post, Joey Taranto, Adinah Alexander, Douglas Baldeo, Eugene Barry-Hill, Stephen Berger, Alfred DalPino, Anna Eilinsfeld, Mia Gentile, Gaelen Gilliland, Natalie Joy Johnson, Jake Katzman, Eric Leviton, Ellyn Marie Marsh, John Jeffrey Martin, Graham Montgomery, Jake Odmark, Nathan Peck, Robert Pendilla, Jennifer Perry, Stephen Tewksbury, Jeremy T. Villas, and Timothy Ware.
The design team for Kinky Boots includes Tony® Award nominee David Rockwell (Scenic Design), Tony® Award-winner Gregg Barnes (Costume Design), Tony Award-winner Kenneth Posner (Lighting Design), Tony® Award-winner John Shivers (Sound Design), Josh Marquette (Hair Design), Randy Houston Mercer (Make-up Design), Telsey + Company, Justin Huff, CSA (Casting), Brian Usifer (Musical Direction), with Musical Supervision, Arrangements and Orchestrations by Tony and Grammy Award-winner Stephen Oremus.
Tickets for Kinky Boots ($55 – $167) are now on sale through May 2016 and are available for purchase in person at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre box office (Monday – Saturday, 10am – 8pm; Sunday, 12pm – 6 pm), online at www.telecharge.com, or by calling Telecharge at 800-432-7250 or 212-239-6200. For information on group sales, contact Group Sales Box Office/Broadway.com at groups@broadway.com or 1-800-BROADWAY, ext 2.
The summer performance schedule for Kinky Boots is as follows: Monday at 8pm, Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday at 2pm and 8pm, Thursday at 8pm, Friday at 8pm, and Saturday at 2pm and 8pm (see KinkyBootsTheMusical.com for variations). Beginning September 1, the schedule is as follows: Tuesday at 7pm, Wednesday at 2pm and 8pm, Thursday at 8pm, Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday at 3pm. There is a general ticket lottery each day; lottery entries will be accepted online (lottery.kinkybootsthemusical.com) beginning at the curtain time of the previous performance up to 3.5 hours prior to curtain of the desired performance, and names will be chosen at random, for a limited number of $37 tickets. See KinkyBootsTheMusical.com for details and restrictions.
Kinky Boots is produced on Broadway by Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig, James L. Nederlander, Terry Allen Kramer, Independent Presenters Network, CJ E&M, Jayne Baron Sherman, Just for Laughs Theatricals/Judith Ann Abrams, Yasuhiro Kawana, Jane Bergere, Allan S. Gordon & Adam S. Gordon, Ken Davenport, Hunter Arnold, Lucy and Phil Suarez, Bryan Bantry, Ron Fierstein and Dorsey Regal, Jim Kierstead/Gregory Rae, BB Group/Christina Papagjika, Michael DeSantis/Patrick Baugh, Brian Smith/Tom and Connie Walsh, Warren Trepp, and Jujamcyn Theaters.
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