The Cooke Book: The Music of Sam Cooke starring Darrian Ford. Featuring more than 20 classics from Cooke’s songbook, including gospel to pop. 7:30 p.m. Saturday at The American Theatre, 125 E. Mellen St., Hampton. Tickets start at $25. To buy online, visit hamptonarts.org.

NashFest 757 will feature “Hot Chicken, Hard Drinks, and Music City Sounds!” Noon to 10 p.m. Saturday at Town Point Park, Waterside Drive, Norfolk. Admission is free. For more information, including vendors, visit festevents.org.

“Misery,” presented by the Little Theatre of Virginia Beach. 8 p.m. Friday, Saturday, and 2:30 p.m. Sunday, through Oct. 6. 550 Barberton Drive. Tickets start at $25. Season passes or single ticket discount options available. To buy online, visit ltvb.com.

Parker McCollum brings his “Burn it Down” tour to Portsmouth. Opening are Chayce Beckham, Ashley Cooke. 7:30 p.m. Sept. 19 at Atlantic Union Bank Pavilion, 16 Crawford Circle. Tickets start at $25. For more information or to buy online, visit pavilionconcerts.com.

Chelsey Green and The Green Project, part of the Arts for All Community Concert Series. 7:30 p.m. Sept. 19 at Ferguson Center for the Arts, Peebles Theatre, 1 Avenue of the Arts, Newport News. Tickets start at $10. To buy online, visit fergusoncenter.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

Always operatic in scope and the singing required, it’s a production graced with best-in-class showstoppers: greatest mean comic villain song (“Master of the House”); greatest rousing drinking song (“Drink With Me to Days Gone By”); best poignant mourning song (“Empty Chairs”) and surely the best Act 1 summing-up song ever written (“One Day More”) — all sung with verve and skill.

Despite tour producer Nederlander’s dubious practice of using Norfolk’s first night to give understudies a workout (for instance, putting David Andino in the part of comic villain Thénardier in the Tuesday night performance), Andino held his own, along with the show’s excellent regulars Nick Cartell as Jean Valjean, Preston Truman Boyd as Javert, and Victoria Huston-Elem doing Madame Thénardier, Thénardier’s long-suffering but co-villainous wife.

This restaging abandons the revolving stage of early productions in favor of projections. Not an improvement in many shows, here somber but evocative computer-generated sets do work inspired, in part, by Victor Hugo’s paintings. Other theatrical moves from the original staging (the students’ marching in place, Javert’s leap into the Seine), are retained and even enhanced by the new stagecraft. Designer Matt Kinley’s projections for the Paris sewer scene are a total knockout.

But rest assured, it’s still Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables,” full of sentimentality, moral quandaries and philosophical musings, born of Hugo’s own larger-than-life life (1802-85), itself full of contradictions. Hugo went from conservative royalist to liberal radical. He was a feminist but, in the words of show historian Edward Behr, “also a rake” with “prodigious sexual appetites.” He had a wife, a permanent mistress and innumerable stand-ins for both. He was both a political exile and a member of parliament. Literally millions attended his funeral in Paris. “Les Miz” is centered on the abortive student uprising of 1832 (the show’s famous barricade scenes), though it’s easily confused with much earlier events of the 1789 French Revolution, and particularly the later 1871 Commune uprising (more barricades).

If the French history is confusing, so is the musical’s production history, starting with its 1980 fully French forerunner version by Alain Boublil, Jean-Marc Natel and Claude-Michel Schönberg. The much-modified English version features lyrics by Herbert Kretzmer, with “adaptation” by the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Trevor Nunn, John Caird and Cameron Mackintosh. The Chrysler production is directed by Laurence Connor and James Powell and features a company of 42(!).

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Here’s a quick reminder of what it’s all about: The show includes a pre-title prologue. Jean Valjean (Cartell) has stolen a loaf of bread for his sister’s starving child, earning five years in prison plus 14 more for attempted escape. There he first tangles with Javert (Boyd), who warns and taunts Prisoner 24601 on releasing him. Once out, Valjean sees that his prison-marked identity papers label him as a criminal and impulsively rips them up. He steals silver from a bishop (a minor role admirably executed by Randy Jeter). The bishop forgives him and gives him the silver, declaring, “I have bought your soul for God!”

We jump eight years to 1823, a span during which Valjean has parlayed that silver into owning a factory. The familiar songs begin, “At the End of the Day” suggesting the discontent and meanness of some of Valjean’s workers. One of them, Fantine (the fine Haley Dortch), unbeknownst to Valjean, is being sexually harassed by her foreman and taunted by fellow workers. The hits continue with Fantine’s account of first love, “I Dreamed a Dream.” Unfortunately, that love ended in her lover’s desertion and a child, Cosette, whom she supports. Fantine’s only recourse now is to join the “Lovely Ladies” of the night. Valjean rescues her from violent abuse by a john and takes responsibility for her fate (she’s dying) and that of her child: “Come to Me.”

We then jump locations to Montfermeil, where Cosette is being likewise abused by her purported caretakers, the Thénardiers who (comparatively speaking) dote on their child, Éponine. Talented child actors play the young Éponine (this night, Azalea Wolfe), young Cosette (Ava Buesing), the ill-fated Gavroche (Leo Caravano) and little Gervais (also Caravano). Little Cosette sings her fantasy “escape” song, “Castle on a Cloud.” Her oppressors, the Thénardiers, sing their irresistibly gross and comic theme “Master of the House,” explaining M. Thenardier’s innkeeping philosophy: “Charge ’em for the lice,/ Extra for the mice,/ Two percent for looking in the mirror twice./ Here a little slice,/ There a little cut,/ Three percent for sleeping with the window shut.” His wife, singing the same tune, then exposes her husband: “Cunning little brain/ Regular Voltaire./ Thinks he’s quite a lover/ But there’s not much there.” Lest we miss her diss of her husband’s physical “gifts,” she takes a long, phallic baguette of bread and tears off a much shorter piece to show us. Valjean blessedly rescues little Cosette from this sordid mess.

We jump ahead nine years to 1832 Paris, where we meet students and the poor on the edge of revolt. The volatile conditions are described in the song “Look Down.” Javert sings his philosophy-of-life song, “Stars.”  Valjean and Javert will constantly encounter each other throughout the play, leading to agonizing decisions on Valjean’s part. They always boil down to “save yourself” or “save others.”  Valjean does the right, selfless thing. Javert, for his part, suffers from what we might call “idées fixes,” mindless moral certainties that he doesn’t bother to question.

The Parisian students we meet also debate justice. Led by Enjolras (Devin Archer), they include our young hero Marius (Jake David Smith), who encounters the now-grown Cosette (Delaney Guyer, good except for breaks in accent). They immediately fall in love, with Marius oblivious to the fact that a grown-up Éponine (the also fine Mya Rena Hunter) loves him. We get musical hit after hit: “Red and Black,” “Do You Hear the People Sing?” “In My Life,” and the unwitting love triangle’s “A Heart Full of Love.” Act 1 culminates in that ultimate plot resumé song “One Day More.”

Act 2 continues the love triangle and Valjean’s sometimes secret ministrations to his adopted children Cosette and soon Marius (whom he saves after the barricade slaughter). We have more poignant deaths and the aforementioned great drinking songs, and the now-affluent Thénardiers continue their lowdown ways. Having determined his whole life was misguided, Javert departs, with dramatic stage effects.

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Hey, it’s “Les Miz,” in an excellent production! Don’t miss it. As my very American father used to say, “It’s worth every last sou” you spend on a ticket.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

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If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $40

Details: sevenvenues.com

Mortimer (the critic): “Are these plays fair to me?” …

Jonathan to Dr. Einstein, his cohort in crime, “This must really be an artistic achievement. After all, we’re performing before a very distinguished critic.”

True, that … though, of course, Jonathan (Arthur Lazalde) and Einstein (Steven Minow) could be referring not to Yours Truly but Jonathan’s estranged critic brother Mortimer (Michael Raver), whom they’ve trussed up to torture to death.

Though generally a shy nocturnal species, we theater critics are inordinately fond of plays and films about other theater critics, e.g., “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” “All About Eve,” and, of course, the old chestnut dark comedy kicking off Virginia Stage Company’s 46th season, Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

Perhaps best known for its 1944 film adaptation starring Cary Grant, the show and film feature a third brother, Teddy, played by local descendent of Samuel Clemens and regular VSC cutup, Ryan Clemens. This Teddy Brewster has taken his Christian name too seriously and assumed the identity of Teddy Roosevelt. That’s a nice way of saying he’s bonkers. (Says Mortimer later in the play, “You see, insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops.”)

But the truly disarming Brewsters are the elderly aunts Abby (Actors’ Equity import Linda Slade) and Martha (local talent Kathy Strouse). They have a habit of dispatching elderly gentlemen without families who happen to wander into their Gothic Victorian Brooklyn mansion. (They rent out a room to attract such wanderers.) The old dears consider it a charitable act to serve visitors their recipe: elderberry wine enriched with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch of cyanide,” perhaps for body. And that’s precisely what the wine drinker becomes: a dead body.

They then dispose of the corpses in the basement (represented by an upstage door and landing). The only problem is that a fresh corpse, a Mr. Hoskins, is waiting patiently inside the window seat and yet to be disposed of at the play’s start. He’ll soon compete for holding space, courtesy of nephew Jonathan’s ill-tempered shenanigans.

Teddy Brewster (Teddy Roosevelt) generally does his aunts’ burial work, having been told that these are victims of Yellow Fever (a poignant joke for Norfolkians, especially as it coincides with the release of former Virginian-Pilot writer Lon Wagner’s book on the subject.) Teddy believes he’s digging locks for his Panama Canal in the Brewster basement. Actor Clemens has a rather tiresome shtick: repeatedly running upstairs and shouting “Charge!;” blowing a bugle (to the neighbors’ chagrin); and/or disappearing downstairs to “Panama.” Clemens soldiers through with affirmative shouts of “bully!” whenever he’s presidentially pleased.

So let’s review the convention of crazies. The two aunts are friendly homicidal maniacs; Teddy is trapped in his Rooseveltian persona/fantasy; Jonathan has been missing in action from the family for decades, but he, too, is an (unfriendly) homicidal maniac, proud and competitive with his aunts when it comes to his corpse count. (It stands, roughly, at 12 for the aunts and 12 for Jonathan, abetted by Einstein (no relation to Albert).

Einstein sports a (sort of) German accent and a doctor’s bag which he uses to change Jonathan’s appearance before the story begins. Jonathan arrives into the play resembling Boris Karloff. ( Younger playgoers — please consider this unsuitable fare for young children — may need to be informed of who Karloff was, since he played Jonathan on Broadway in 1941 and the play contains multiple references to him.)

In our final tally of the insane Brewsters, it must be emphasized that Mortimer the critic (aside from his dubious profession) is the only sane Brewster. He’s saddled with lengthy double takes of horrified astonishment on learning of his aunts’ depravities. (Even Cary Grant had trouble with these lengthy double takes.) But Mortimer, too, is “crazy in love” with neighbor Elaine Harper (Victoria Alev, another of five Equity leads in the show). There are multiple minor roles filled with VSC local non-Equity stalwarts, such as John Cauthen, (Elaine’s father Rev. Dr. Harper); Ron Newman (Mr. Gibbs, who nearly drinks the elderberry but doesn’t); and Tom O’Reilly (the insane asylum official Mr. Witherspoon). We also have a bevy of Brooklyn cops (Alvan Bolling II, Dan Cimo, Darius Nelson, Scott Rollins) so enamored of the Brewster sisters that they can’t be bothered to check the basement for those silly so-called graves.

Something must have “possessed” Tom Quaintance (VSC’s producing artistic director) when he chose this frantic farce, which, we learn from Mo De Poortere’s dramaturgical notes, was based on an early 1900s case, that of Amy Archer-Gilligan who ran the “Archer Home for Aged People and Chronic Invalids” in Windsor, Connecticut and dispatched her residents with arsenic.

Perhaps Quaintance felt depressed by the election season; perhaps he’d had one too many pumpkin-spice lattes; perhaps he was fantasizing about a Tazewell Avenue season of Howl O’Scream (à la Busch Gardens). At any rate, VSC has a season of ghoulish goodies planned: Next comes “Dracula,” albeit a “feminist take” by Kate Hamill (remember her Jane Austen adaptations at VSC?); “A Sherlock Carol” (can you have Sherlock without murder?) will alternate with the traditional offering of “A Merry Little Christmas Carol.” That’s followed by “Fat Ham,” a loose reworking of “Hamlet” that nicely represents more recent American theater; then there’s a final injection of comic horror in the newer chestnut: “Little Shop of Horrors.”

For folks who like a season with thematic unity, here we have one! Boys and girls, start your engines. Or as Teddy Brewster might say, “Charge!”

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu

IF YOU GO

Where: The Wells Theatre, 108 E. Tazewell St., Norfolk

When: Through Sept. 22

Tickets: Start at $15

Details: 757-627-1234, vastage.org

She was 19 in March 2022 when she auditioned for “Les Misérables” and flew to New York City to sing for casting directors without any intention of trying out for a lead. 

“But I was told that I ‘looked like Fantine’ that day, whatever that means,” Dortch said, in an interview.” They asked me if I knew ‘I Dreamed a Dream.’ “

Yes, she said. She knew “I Dreamed a Dream” — one of the most recognizable theater songs of all time, sung by one of the genre’s most coveted characters — and knew it well. She sang, nailed it, started rehearsals that August. She was on the road by October.  

Dortch, the 22-year-old former musical theater major, plays Fantine in the national Broadway tour of “Les Misérables,” which opens Tuesday at Chrysler Hall in Norfolk and runs through Sunday.

Based on Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel, the show tells the fictional story of Jean Valjean, a convict on the run after breaking parole. In his new life, as a factory owner and mayor, he agrees to be the guardian of a young girl after her mother, Fantine, dies. Fantine — portrayed by Anne Hathaway in the 2012 film adaptation — is a young woman who has been forced into prostitution after backstabbers get her fired from her job at the factory.

“She’s resilient, very persistent, and she loves her child more than anything,” Dortch said.

“And she has the best song in the show — but,” she added, “I might be biased.”

Fantine sings “I Dreamed a Dream” in the first act. Even after two years and more than 650 performances, Dortch sings it as heart-wrenchingly as possible every time she’s on stage.

“It’s so true that each show is someone’s first experience with theater or somebody’s first experience with ‘Les Miz,’ and I can remember those exact first moments for myself,” she said, about formative experiences watching theater, “and how much they inspired me and meant for me, and especially as a person of color too — what that can mean for young artists of color who are coming to see the shows.”

Colin Warren-Hicks, 919-818-8138, colin.warrenhicks@virginiamedia.com

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If you go

When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday; 8 p.m. Friday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk

Tickets: Start at $40

Details: sevenvenues.com

A correction was made on Sept. 11, 2024: Because of a reporting error, an earlier version of this article misstated that Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables” was set during the French Revolution. The novel was set in the early 1800s, after the French Revolution.

The best part of my three-week trip to Ecuador wasn’t the friendly people, delicious food, incredible diversity of wildlife or even the perfect weather in July when it’s brutally hot in Hampton Roads. The best part was learning how one person can make a difference. After taking an adult education course, Angel Paz recognized an Andean cock-of-the-rock on his farm. He set up a blind and invited birders to visit, but the story doesn’t end there. With time, he also found a thought-to-be extinct bird, the giant antpitta. In 2005, Paz and his family established a refuge dedicated to birdwatching and forest conservation.

Visit refugiopazdelasaves.com.

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Share your adventure Tell us about one favorite part — a restaurant, a hike, a monument, a hotel room — of one of your trips. Day trips, too. Submit a high resolution horizontal photo and a description of not more than 125 words to whatatrip@pilotonline.com. Include the city where you live.

If you recognize that  A) the list is composed mostly of the dramatis personae from “Hamlet” and that B) Voldemort sneaked in from a Harry Potter book, you are A) an English major or B) required to attend a raucous evening of Shakespeare spoofing at Little Theatre of Norfolk’s “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] [Again].”

The show summarizes vast numbers of real and fake Shakespeare titles and lines in the shortest time possible. The Complete Works by the founders of the Reduced Shakespeare Co. (RSC — get it? Its initials are the same as the Royal Shakespeare Company) offers more freedom for pure improv on contemporary and local topics (LTN goes a bit far with said freedom), but first let’s give the cheeky original authors’ names. They are Adam Long, Daniel Singer and Jess Winfield and, yes, there are multiple revisions to the original 1987 show. The authors are so vain and savvy that they name the characters after themselves: Adam, Daniel and Jess.

This offers special (but thoroughly legit) challenges when Hannah Brown plays Daniel; Giuliana Mortimer plays Jess; and Lori Thurman plays Adam. Yes, they are all women underneath those codpieces, but padding resolves that issue, and let’s hear no more about it. Brown is the linchpin of this production — funny, bossy and essential. Mortimer and Thurman hold their own, however, playing women playing men (as men played female roles in the Elizabethan day) for maximum silliness. We never forget that any of our actors are women, even and especially when Brown renders snippets of Polonius’ famous “to thine own self be true” speech in a silly, slipping beard.

Costumes (by Meg Murray) and props are everything in designed-to-be-silly shows, and director Patrick C. Taylor must have given props manager Lori Dunn access to a credit card. She gives us remarkably ridiculous items such as a sword gun, an oversized thumb (“Do you bite your thumb at me, sir?” in “Romeo and Juliet”), a rubber Yorick’s skull, and a feeble (intentionally so) moon, raised and lowered sort of on cue for several scenes. Did I mention the glittery codpieces? Does everyone realize a cod (in this case) is not a fish, but instead a “baloney pony,” according to this script? I can say no more uncensored. So how do Little Theatre artists summarize Shakespeare’s 37 (or 38 or 39 — there’s controversy) plays and 154 sonnets in about 90 minutes?

They use the time-honored method of “embedded spoofing strategies.” (I just made up that term.)

English teachers and pompous literary critics (watch out there) are being teased big time. But, at the same time, famous interpretations by, say, Freud, are rendered more or less correctly. Here are some samples: “Hamlet is playing out sublimated childhood neuroses, displacing repressed Oedipal desires into sexualized anger toward Ophelia.” Well, yes. That is what Freud implied in his writings on Shakespeare.

Our locals also added a lot of shtick (a bit too much) about TV’s recent hit “Bridgerton.” Other TV-inspired embedded spoofing strategies include something modeled on “The Great British Bake Off,” perfect for explaining the gory plot of “Titus Andronicus,” which makes “Sweeney Todd” (next show up at LTN) look like a Disney children’s special. (The mentions of “Sweeney Todd” during this show become a tad excessive.)

There’s the embedded spoofing strategy on technology — good for mentions of cellphones, including the priceless “T-Mobile Kinsmen” (in place of “Two Noble Kinsmen”). There’s a sports spoof used to summarize all of Shakespeare’s history plays as a super-fast football game played in the theater’s center aisle with a soft crown being passed and fought over instead of a football. “Julius Caesar” is done as “Mean Girls;” the Scottish Play is done with burred speech, kilts and golf clubs. (Yes, there’s a real “Complete Works” on my knee for reference.) There’s an ongoing spoof on diversity, equity and inclusion — DEI — with frequent mentions of patriarchy, racism and injustice (especially good for our three females playing males-who-sometimes-played-females). That helps in covering comedies and tragedies.

Although the local references need tightening (speed being of the essence), what’s being done at LTN is just what the authors intended with sharp satire coming from a place of love and not pure anger. The more you know Shakespeare, the more you’ll laugh at his older, dragon-less version of “Game of Thrones” (a local script addition). Shakespeare haters need not apply. Just remember to join in or duck when everybody else laughs.

Bring it on home, Will: “Though this be madness, yet there’s method in it.” (Hamlet.)

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 25

Where: Little Theatre of Norfolk, 801 Claremont Ave.

Tickets: $18, advance; $20 at the door

Details: 757-627-8551, ltnonline.org

Lucky Daye — New Orleans-born singer-songwriter and “American Idol” Season 4 contestant — brings his “Algorithm” tour to Norfolk. 8 p.m. Friday at The NorVa, 317 Monticello Ave. Tickets start at $38. To buy online, visit thenorva.com.

Peninsula Community Theatre presents “Something Rotten!” 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sunday through Aug. 17 at 10251 Warwick Blvd., Newport News. Tickets start at $22. To buy online, visit pctlive.org.

Enjoy an evening of country music as Hank Williams Jr. makes a tour stop in Virginia Beach. Opening the show will be Whiskey Myers, Sadie Bass. 7 p.m. Saturday at Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater, 3550 Cellar Door Way. Tickets start at $54. To buy online, visit livenation.com.

2nd Sundays Williamsburg’s Art and Music Festival. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, located within seven blocks near 401 N. Boundary St. Free. For more information, including Sunday’s entertainment lineup, GPS location and series dates, visit 2ndsundayswilliamsburg.com.

Two nights of rocking with Jamaican reggae singer Beres Hammond at The NorVa. 7:30 p.m. Aug. 13 and 14 at 317 Monticello Ave., Norfolk. For ticket information or to buy online, visit thenorva.com.

Summer Music Series featuring Jasmine Copeland performing a mix of covers and originals. 6 to 8 p.m. Aug. 15 outdoors at Suffolk Center for Cultural Arts, 110 Finney Ave. For more information on the free series, through Aug. 29, visit suffolkcenter.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

Patty Jenkins, patty.jenkins@pilotonline.com

Fun Fridays on the Square, featuring children’s games, activities and more. 10:30 a.m. Friday at City Square Plaza, 412 N. Boundary St., Williamsburg. Free. For more information, visit wrl.org.

Thank Goodness It’s Ocean View featuring The Tiki Bar Band, community barbecue and more. 6 to 9:30 p.m. Friday at Ocean View Beach Park, Norfolk. For more info, visit oceanviewbeachpark.org.

Groovin’ by the Bay, a summer concert series, featuring J & the Band. 4 to 8 p.m. Sunday at Mill Point Park, 100 Eaton St., Hampton. Free. For more information including the series lineup, visit visithampton.com.

Train and REO Speedwagon bring their “Summer Road Trip” tour to Virginia Beach. Opening the show will be Yacht Rock Revue. 6:25 p.m. Aug. 7 at Veterans United Home Loans Amphitheater, 3550 Cellar Door Way. Tickets start at $48.65. To buy online, visit livenation.com.

“The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again].” 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays Aug. 9 through Aug. 25 at Little Theatre of Norfolk, 801 Claremont Ave. Tickets: $18, advance; $20 at the door. For more info, visit ltnonline.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

Correction: A correction was made on Aug. 1, 2024. Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this story misstated the date for the Train and REO Speedwagon concert. The event is on Aug. 7.

Such is the emcee’s favored greeting at the London drag club temporarily transplanted to the Little Theatre of Virginia Beach through Aug. 11.

It’s where the elite (and effete) meet and greet — not to proselytize audiences but to humanize us. You may already recognize this as the high-stepping musical version of “Kinky Boots” (book by Harvey Fierstein; music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper).

Based on the 2005 film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as drag queen Lola and chameleonic Joel Edgerton as the young factory owner Charlie Price, “Kinky Boots” tells the mostly true story of a Northampton, England shoe factory just a thinning sole’s breadth from closure. Charlie (played in VB by fresh-faced charmer Zack Kattwinkel) develops a purely economic fetish for kinky boots, hoping to market them to drag queens and other fearless fellows who can finally stand on stilettos reinforced with steel to bear their manly weight. (See and hear songs such as “Sex is in the Heel.”) The British setting calls for accents (uh-oh), executed only sporadically by this cast.

It’s a formulaic musical in composition and structure, including corny rhymes and forgettable tunes by Lauper, who nevertheless won a 2013 Tony for Best Original Score. This LTVB production is additionally hampered by Kattwinkel’s tendency to stray off-key. But the trite tunes and off notes matter little when the lessons are taught so sweetly and joyfully. It’s a satisfied and well-instructed audience that gleefully exits the theater at evening’s end. It helps that the last number is a showstopper set at a fashion shoe show in Milan overrun by a hoard of remarkably costumed drag queens. Costuming credits go to Pamela Jacobson-Bowhers, Connor Payne and production director Kobie Smith.

How is this degree of final audience satisfaction possible?

Step aboard the arc/ark of this life-affirming, irresistible plot steeped in the remarkable similarities between dedicated longtime factory coworkers and those dedicated volunteers who produce and act in community theaters wherever they may flourish.

The first act of soleful/soulful plotting genius was to delve briefly into the childhoods of our two protagonists: young Charlie, the ill-equipped shoe factory owner and drag queen Lola aka. Simon (here wonderfully played by lean and lanky Norfolk State University-trained Lance Hawkins). Note: Three other actors involved in the show hail from James Madison University. Younger versions of our main male characters appear briefly onstage to establish that Charlie was blessed with a father (Brian Sheridan) who adored him. At the same time, Simon (soon to be Lola) had a father horrified by his son’s early proclivities towards gender-bending. (Young Simon likes to wear women’s shoes and dance around.) Charlie’s father dies unexpectedly, leaving Charlie a factory sinking in debt. Lola’s father disowns him, but we’re later shown hope for a reconciliation.

Charlie is also blessed with women in his life: first his rising realtor girlfriend Nicola (suitably high-toned Grace Altman) and then worker Lauren (winsome and loyal Olivia Florian). Nicola proves more interested in place (London) than person (Charlie, constrained to be in Northampton). Lauren’s real talents eventually get her promoted to management. Other male factory figures prove crucial, especially peacemaking shop foreman George (Sandy Lawrence) and trouble-making Don (well acted by James Bryan). Don movingly changes from homophobe to loyal Lola supporter, partly due to Lola’s boxing skills but more due to Don’s ability to develop humanistic ones). Hawkins’ Lola, surely the longest, lankiest Lola yet to tread the boards, is 6-foot-3 in his bare feet, but 6-foot-9 once he dons stilettos and wig. And boy, can Hawkins wear a glittery red costume!

One of Lola’s “Angels” (here meaning backup dancers) also deserves special acclaim. Besides playing a backup queen of the highest order, Payne contributes hair and makeup design serving, in his term, as “Dragaturg” [sic], an apt neologism based on the fancy theatrical title of dramaturg. A dramaturg is a sort of in-house literary expert for a theater. “Dragaturg” may well be Payne’s linguistic invention since Google doesn’t yet recognize it.

There are a lot of shoe/sole/soul-based remarks in the show, e.g., Charlie’s tender line to his newfound love Lauren: “I was a loose shoe but you need two to make a pair.” But is it, again, the general sense of kindness promoted by the show that impresses? Towards the finale, the musical’s creators Fierstein and Lauper come up with something they liken (a bit unwisely) to a 12-step code of conduct. They claim to “do it in six,” but their numbering trails off towards the end. Though they’re common sense, their dicta bear repeating (from the sheet music score): “Pursue the truth, Learn something new, Accept yourself and you’ll accept others too—Let love shine, Let pride be your guide, You change the world when you change your mind. Just be who you wanna be. Never let ’em tell you who you ought to be. Just be with dignity. Celebrate your life triumphantly. You’ll see it’s beautiful.”

The code’s not tight, but it’s surely right.

So, “Ladies, gentlemen, and those who have yet to make up your minds,” it turns out you can indefinitely postpone any such decision. Just be human.

Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu.

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If you go

When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays through Aug. 11

Where: Little Theatre of Virginia Beach, 550 Barberton Drive

Tickets: Start at $22

Details: 757-428-9233, ltvb.com

“Kinky Boots,” featuring music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper, is based on the book by Harvey Fierstein about a shoe factory that gets a boost from an unlikely partner. 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays, Friday through Aug. 11 at Little Theatre of Virginia Beach, 550 Barberton Drive. For ticket price and availability, visit ltvb.com.

The 23rd annual Latino Music Festival returns to Norfolk. 2 to 11 p.m. Saturday at Town Point Park, Waterside Drive. Free. For the main stage entertainment lineup, visit festevents.org.

Wave Fest featuring Sexxy Red, Mariah the Scientist, others. 5 p.m. Sunday at Atlantic Union Bank Pavilion, 16 Crawford Circle, Portsmouth. Tickets start at $81. To buy online, visit ticketmaster.com. For a complete festival lineup, visit pavilionconcerts.com.

Virginia Symphony Orchestra Concert in the Park presents “Where Wishes Come True: A Night of Enchanted Melodies.” Park will open at 6 p.m. Sunday for pre-concert picnics. Concert starts at 8:30 at Town Point Park, Waterside Drive, Norfolk. Free. For more info, visit festevents.org.

Double the Candlelight concert fun July 24 at the Z. “The Best of Hans Zimmer,” 6:30 p.m., and “A Tribute to Taylor Swift,” 8:45 p.m., at Zeiders American Dream Theater, 4509 Commerce St., Virginia Beach. Tickets for each one-hour performance start at $36. To buy online, visit feverup.com.

Six-time Grammy Award winner Dionne Warwick will bring some of her 100 chart-toppers to Virginia Beach. 7:30 p.m. July 25 at Sandler Center for the Performing Arts, 201 Market St. Tickets start at $49.50. To buy online, visit sandlercenter.org.

Events may change. Check before attending.

Patty Jenkins, patty.jenkins@pilotonline.com