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Powered by a rollicking Cyndi Lauper score, Kinky Boots rolled off the assembly line at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre April 4 and — I swear! — started dancing of their own accord before a crowd of hardcases who'd melted to malleable putty by the finale.

There wasn't dancing in the aisle, but the thought was certainly there, and so too was the insistent beat — a hard-driving, hypnotic, audience-winning throb that pulls us in. It's a real Broadway score — only by way of Cyndi Lauper, who hits all the right notes (melodic, catchy, character-driven, ridiculously varied) her first time at bat.

On her first opening night, Lauper — in a typically wild-haired 'do ("a multi-colored explosion," one observer called it) — seemed like little girl lost, a stranger in a strange land, reserving judgment until she got her bearings — if she got her bearings.

It hadn't happened by show's end when she was led on stage with her book writer Harvey Fierstein, her director-choreographer Jerry Mitchell and her indispensible orchestrator Stephen Oremus to receive the audience's jubilant blessing.

The mist seemed to be lifting a little for her at the after-party, which was held a convenient block away in one of those cavernous ballrooms at the Marriott Marquis, bathed in rose-colored lighting with a bowl of roses at every table. (Red is the show's color.)