By Harry Haun
05 Apr 2013

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Porter reached the party in exuberant spirits that betrayed not a hint of exhaustion which you would expect to seep in after his Superman showing all evening, "No," he said, "it's empowering. It's empowering to be able to play the role of a lifetime."

Clearly, he was aware of what he had just done. "I thought it was a wonderful night, and it was great to have The Moment. Y'know, it's been a year and some change to get all this together, and I love that we're here and now we can just play the show."

With Porter, appropriately, was co-star Sands, a solid return-the-serve performer who has the thankless chore of pulling the plot along pretty much by himself and gets to rest only when Porter feels a song coming on, which is often. He would be an unsung hero, were his last number ("The Soul of a Man") not so nicely nailed.

"I understand my role in this," Sands said. "In many ways, I'm the set-up guy and I'm the straight man, but the lovely thing is I have great moments, too, but I'm learning the way to assist and how to lop these things in Billy's direction so he can crack them out of the park. I feel good about that because it's a good challenge to be the one who's not flashy, not outrageous, not over-the-top — and still have to engage people's attention. That'll be a challenge I'll have to face for the rest of this run."

He felt the first-nighters were (in a good way) push-overs that didn't require extra sell from the rarin'-to-go performers. "There is this wonderful thing on opening night," he noted. "You have people who are already engaged. You don't have to win them over because they already love you, and so they're listening from the very first moment. Traditionally, typically, that first 15 minutes is crucial with us because the drag queens haven't showed up yet, and people who are there to see Kinky Boots are there, looking around, asking 'Where are the drag queens?' so it's up to us to hook them in the first 15 minutes. The nice thing about tonight was: We had 'em. We didn't have to do anything. But we did it anyway. It was built in."

 Continued...