Cyndi Lauper Walks Into Creative Team for Broadway-Bound Kinky Boots

Pop star and songwriter Cyndi Lauper will be showing off her true creative colors on Broadway again—and she’ll do it alongside one of the most colorful stage vets, four-time Tony Award winner Harvey Fierstein. The “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” performer is pairing with librettist Fierstein to pen music and lyrics for new musical Kinky Boots, producer Daryl Roth has confirmed. An adaptation of the Brit comedy film of the same title, Kinky Boots has yet to set dates, casting or a theater, though Tony winner Jerry Mitchell is in talks to direct.

A 2005 indie hit, Kinky Boots starred Chiwetel Ejiofor (Children of Men, American Gangster) as a drag queen who teams up with the head of a struggling shoe company to try and save the business by designing a line of fetish shoes. The flick itself is not a musical, though it did include a few appropriately placed cabaret numbers.

A Broadway veteran of the 2006 revival of The Threepenny Opera and the 2000 solo concert Matters of the Heart, Lauper began her career in 1980 when the self-titled album of the band Blue Angel. With the release of her debut solo album, She's So Unusual, in 1984, Lauper hit the big time, selling nine million copies worldwide. She's So Unusual was the first debut album and the first debut album by a solo artist to garner four top five singles, "Girls Just Want To Have Fun," "All Through The Night," "She Bop" and "Time After Time." The album also earned Lauper a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. She went on to release and co-produce True Colors, which garnered another Grammy nomination, as well as A Night To Remember, A Hat Full Of Stars, Sisters Of Avalon, Merry Xmas Have a Nice Life, Shine and At Last. Lauper has been nominated for two Emmy Awards and won for a guest appearance on Mad About You.