“Kinky Boots” is lacing up for yet another trip to Connecticut. When the national tour of the Broadway hits the Palace Theater in Waterbury Dec. 6 through 11, it will be the show’s third time in the state in the past 18 months.
It’s always welcome. “Kinky Boots” is an upbeat musical about acceptance, tolerance, community spirit, cooperation, love, honor, trust and seriously sexy footwear. The show’s score, by pop star Cyndi Lauper, contains several amped-up, rock-style anthems, including “Everybody Say Yeah” and “Raise You Up/Just Be.”
The Palace is augmenting the “Kinky Boots” run with a lavish pre-show cocktail party benefit for the LGBT organization True Colors Hartford on Thursday, Dec. 8, from 5:30 to 7:15 p.m. The “Strut” soiree is hosted by Hartford playwright Jacques Lamarre, Scott Haney of WFSB and former Hartford Courant writer Maryellen Fillo. Attendees are encouraged to wear “fabulous footwear,” with awards for “on trend,” “cringe-worthy” and “most fabulous.”
One of the members of the currently touring “Kinky Boots” cast is the TV sitcom/talk show/game show veteran Jim J. Bullock. He calls “Kinky Boots” “empowering and positive. There’s such a message there for the world, especially now.”
Based on the 2005 movie of the same name, “Kinky Boots” concerns a young man named Charlie Price who’s been trying to avoid taking part in the family business, a small shoe factory in Northern England. He finally embraces his leather-soled heritage when his father dies and the company is on the verge of closing. Charlie allies himself with a London drag queen named Lola, for whom he creates a new line of sturdy, provocative thigh-high boots.
Bullock plays George, the foreman of the shoe factory. He gets a few fun solo moments in the show, reacting to some of the homophobic responses of his co-workers when Lola visits.
Bullock joined the “Kinky Boots” tour in October of 2015. He wasn’t with the show when it played Hartford’s Bushnell in June of that year, but he was when it came to the Shubert in New Haven five months ago. At the Shubert, Bullock reconnected with “Kinky Boots” book writer Harvey Fierstein. The famed writer/performer was checking up on the tour, and when visiting the cast after the show, shouted in his raspy voice, “Where’s Jim J. Bullock? I didn’t even know you were doing my show!”
“I met Harvey 10,000 years ago,” Bullock says, “at an HBO Christmas party in 1989. Of course I’d seen the play and movie of ‘Torch Song Trilogy.’ I ran into him a few times when I was doing ‘Hairspray.'” Bullock played Wilbur Turnblad in that show on Broadway and on tour, and some years later appeared as Edna Turnblad in a West Coast production. (Fierstein originated the role of Edna on Broadway and will return to it for the TV broadcast of “Hairspray Live!” Wednesday, Dec. 7.)
Bullock was ubiquitous on TV in the late 1980s. He was Monroe Ficus on the sitcom “Too Close for Comfort” (later known as “The Ted Knight Show”) for six seasons, then played Neal Tanner for five episodes of “ALF.” He was a regular panelist, and even an occasional guest host, on “Hollywood Squares” from 1986 to 1989. On the bigger screen, Bullock is warmly remembered as Prince Valium in Mel Brook’s 1987 “Star Wars” spoof “Spaceballs.”
In those days, Bullock was known as “Jm J. Bullock” or “JM J. Bullock.” Asked when he relocated the “i” in his first name, he drawls “Honey, I had a vowel movement back in 1990. In the ’70s, I was thinking it would grab people’s attention. In the late ’80s, a manager suggested I put the ‘i’ back.”
In the mid-’90s, Jim J. Bullock voiced the title character in the adult cartoon series “Queer Duck,” created by Connecticut-rooted comedy writer Mike Reiss. A parody of gay club culture, “Queer Duck” began on the Icebox online animation network, then aired on the Showtime cable network alongside episodes of “Queer as Folk.” It spawned a feature-length film, “Queer Duck: The Movie” in 2006. In terms of his own place in the gay community, Bullock says “I never thought of myself as an activist. I’m just open. I also never hid my HIV status.”
When “Kinky Boots” beckoned, Bullock says, “I wasn’t looking for a star vehicle. I was looking for a job in a great show. I was just happy to work.”
Bullock remembers his audition as “this giant lovefest. I knew a lot of people in the room who loved me. I just did my thing and left.” He saw both the show and the original movie it was based on just before auditioning, but says he was so caught up in studying his part that “I didn’t really see the show until I got hurt when we were in Osaka, Japan. I’m so glad I hurt myself! I finally got to see it from the audience and was blown away!”
“KINKY BOOTS” — book by Harvey Fierstein, music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper — is at the Palace Theater, 100 East Main St., Waterbury, Dec. 6 to 11. Performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m. and Sunday at 1 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $64.50-$94.50. Tickets for the Dec. 8 “Strut” pre-show benefit are $125, 203-346-2000, palacetheaterct.org.
