Cyndi Lauper felt bad when she won a Tony Award last year for Kinky Boots and Harvey Fierstein did not. Fierstein waved off her concern. "I already have six," he said. "I get tired of dusting them."
The Cyndi and Harvey Show blew through town several weeks ago to promote the Kinky Boots tour coming to the Orpheum Theatre. Interviewed in tandem, the pair displayed the kind of relationship you might find in an old married couple: affection mixed with resignation, stories usurped mid-sentence, zip-it warnings over TMI. Most often, in that last category, coming from Harvey to Cyndi.
"Let's not talk about that," Fierstein said to Lauper when she suggested Robin Williams as an exception to his feelings that heterosexuals shouldn't play homosexual characters. But she continued to talk, or at least try to, as Fierstein spouted mumbo jumbo to cover up her thoughts about Williams. "I'll talk to you on the plane," he whisper-growled to her. "I have a great story to tell you."
Though both in their early 60s, the pair themselves invoked a parent-child analogy about their collaboration. "He took me under his wing and actually called me Christina because of Mommie Dearest, " said Lauper, whose Broadway songwriting debut came three decades after "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" made her a pop star. "He'd call me up and say, 'Christina, where are those lyrics?' It was a little bit of a strange relationship, but it was pretty funny, and I just started calling him 'Mom.'"
Fierstein's Broadway credits are expansive, as a performer (Hairspray, Fiddler on the Roof), a musical librettist (La Cage aux Folles, Newsies), and a playwright (Torch Song Trilogy, Casa Valentina ). Once Fierstein agreed to adapt the 2005 movie Kinky Boots into a musical, which itself took some doing, he then thought of Lauper to write the songs.
"I met her in the backroom of a bar having sex," he joked. "Gay Men's Health Crisis was giving me an award, and when they asked who I wanted to perform, I said Cyndi. There are people out there who are producing music that is going to be popular, and there are people who are saying something and if they don't say it they're going to die. Cyndi's always been one of those people."
Lauper agreed: "You gotta bleed a little."
Before Lauper got on board, director Jerry Mitchell, who worked with Fierstein on Hairspray, first had to convince Fierstein to take the job of adapting the movie. "I liked the movie, and I just didn't see how making it into a musical would make it any better," Fierstein said. "It would just be cashing on what the film had already done, and what's the challenge in that? Then I watched it again, and the easy messaging was there, but then I saw something that isn't expressed in the movie, about these two people who help heal each other."
Those two people are Charlie, who has inherited a failing shoe factory in the English Midlands, and Lola, a drag entertainer who helps the factory find a niche market inspired by his need for heavy-duty high-heel boots. Charlie and Lola come from very different worlds, and become uneasy allies before finding a common ground in shared pain from the past.
"We talk about the factory workers accepting Lola and all that, but that's not really what the show's about," Fierstein said. "The show is about healing yourself, healing the hole that came from disappointing their fathers. These are guys who have real problems with �""
"With daddy issues," Lauper inserted.
"With daddy issues," Fierstein echoed. "One wanted his son to join him in running the shoe factory, which he didn't want to do at all, and the other was a boxer and wanted his son to be a boxer, too, but instead became a transvestite and entertainer."
Lauper was intrigued by the dynamics of sons wanting first to grow up to be just like their fathers before questing to be anything else. "I saw it in my own son," she said. "It's heartbreaking. When I wrote 'Not My Father's Son' for Charlie and Lola to sing, I hoped that after the first act parents would go into the lobby and call their kids and ask how are they doing."
Lauper found unexpected liberation and then new challenges in the musical move from pop to theater. "In the pop world," she said, "there are plenty of rules. But working with Harvey and Jerry, all I got back was, there were no rules, and it was like all the gatekeepers in my life weren't there anymore. I saw an opportunity to write different sounds for each character. What was a stretch for me was how are you going to sneak in exposition into the song's journey. I didn't see it so much as a Broadway musical I was writing as a �""
Fierstein jumped in before Lauper could finish her sentence. "Most composers are very concerned that you hear their sound," he said.
"No, but seriously �"" said Lauper, trying to finish her thought.
"Mommie's talking now," Fierstein said to Lauper as she mimed zipping her lips. "I don't want to put anyone down, but most composers want you to hear their statement. Cyndi never had that. It was always about the character, and that generosity is what makes it work."
And helped her win the Tony Award, the first woman to win as both composer and lyricist. "That was an honor," she said, "but I was worried because I knew that the show had to win the Best Musical award to give it a life." (It won.)
Fierstein said he helped devise a way to distract her during the broadcast. "We kept her busy. We put her on the show doing the 'In memoriam' thing." As the names and faces of the past year's notable deaths appeared on screen, Lauper was on stage singing "True Colors" while playing the dulcimer. She also used the dulcimer when she presented new songs she had written for Kinky Boots.
"Harvey doesn't like the dulcimer," Lauper said.
"I love the dulcimer," Fierstein retorted, "but just not for a rock score. She even brought in a jug band called She Haw."
"Well," Lauper replied, "you did say you wanted a dance song. Didn't you, Mom?"
Kinky Boots will run Dec. 2-28 at the Orpheum Theatre. Tickets are $80-$300. Call (888) 746-1799 or go to shnsf.com.