Johannes Radebe is coming out fighting in 'Kinky Boots'

Johannes Radebe’s career has taken him from cruise ships to the Strictly dance floor, and now he is facing his toughest but most glamorous challenge yet — sashaying into the West End as drag queen Lola in Kinky Boots.

Summary

• Johannes Radebe is starring as Lola in Kinky Boots in the West End following a UK and Ireland tour
• Radebe came to fame as a professional dancer on Strictly Come Dancing
• Radebe stars alongside Matt Cardle as Charlie Price

Anyone who knows Johannes Radebe from Strictly Come Dancing sees that the role of the defiant, flamboyant drag queen Lola in the hit musical Kinky Boots would fit him like a glove. But the tougher side of the character — Lola's younger years as a boxer, bullied by an emotionally distant father — sees Radebe drawing on the strength that took him from South Africa to the West End.

Radebe first discovered musical theatre while working in the entertainment team on a cruise ship. He was 21 and had left Zamdela, a township in the Free State in post-Apartheid South Africa, to pursue fresh opportunities after toiling away for years in the country’s Latin and ballroom scene.

“I was competing with people who had access to everything,” he reflects. “I would get to a point where I was thinking, ‘Maybe this isn’t working.’” With the encouragement of a friend, as well as some elderly women he was teaching, he decided to pull himself out of the rut and audition for a cruise. At the end, the choreographer told him to get a passport and be ready to leave home in a month’s time.

Before he knew it, Radebe was in rehearsals and flying to Italy to begin his next chapter, performing in musicals like Mamma Mia! and Priscilla Queen of the Desert on ships for the next seven years. “It was where I even heard for the first time there was something called musical theatre,” he says. Radebe’s fellow dancers helped to join the dots, telling him about Broadway and the West End, where he is now finally making his debut in Nikolai Foster’s revival of the Tony and Olivier Award-winning musical Kinky Boots following a year-long UK and Ireland tour. The show has a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper, whose hit “Time After Time” would play on Radebe’s radio every Sunday at 12pm when he was growing up.

Radebe dials in for our interview from a dressing room at Leicester Curve, where the show plays a limited encore run before heading to the London Coliseum in the West End, and it is his Cynthia Erivo-esque, freshly lacquered red nails that give away his casting as fierce drag queen Lola (given name, Simon). The musical, last seen in the West End in 2019, is based on the true story of a failing shoe factory that is saved when owner Charlie Price teams up with Lola to create a line of heeled shoes for drag queens.

Radebe’s character goes on a journey in the musical: from an early scene that shows the pressures of growing up with a demanding father, who wants the young Simon to succeed as a boxer, through to fully embracing his identity as a drag artist and performer. Reflecting on these two sides to his character, Radebe says: “To be on the dance floor, it requires the same strength, the same resilience [as a boxer]. For any sport or artform, you have to take that step into that champion mentality. You have to go beyond yourself with anything that you do, especially if it’s in an arena. I think that’s where the similarity is. What a dancer does and a boxer does is all about preparation and showing up — and that takes courage.”

Radebe says he would never have had the confidence to take on this role “three, four, five years ago”. It is a surprising admission for the dancer, who captured the nation’s hearts after joining the Strictly team in 2018 and made headlines for forming the first same-sex dance partnership with John Whaite in 2021.

But, truthfully, this musical has been on Radebe’s radar for a long time. A friend first introduced it to him after Radebe searched in vain online to find a musical that included a “Black, flamboyant individual”. He put Kinky Boots out of his mind, thinking, “How many of us are waiting in line gunning for that [role]?”, and continued working on the ships. However, he grew tired of performing on cruise ships because he wished to compete again and have his dancing seen by more people. His next goal was to become a national ballroom champion, as he knew it would open doors – and it certainly did. Radebe was snapped up by the theatrical ballroom dance production Burn the Floor, and toured the world. Strictly Come Dancing South Africa followed, before he joined “the mothership”: the UK version of Strictly, which he has been attached to for the past eight years.

Radebe first mentioned Kinky Boots to the producers of his solo tour Freedom Unleashed, which ran at the Peacock Theatre in London in 2023. Little did he know they would go away, buy the rights to the show, and team up with Leicester Curve to stage a revival. When they asked him to audition, how did he react? “I remember saying to them, ‘I’m not doing it. Thank you.’ My agent rushed back in and said, “Isn’t this what you wanted?’”

“I panicked,” he continues. “You’re talking about Billy Porter [who originated the role of Lola on Broadway], you’re talking about Matt Henry [originated Lola in the West End], you’re talking about vocal beasts, you’re talking about a world with Black men who have been training for years.”

Imposter syndrome had crept in, and Radebe was adamant that he didn’t want to be another example of celebrity casting because of his profile on Strictly.

It was his dance partner from the 2023 series, Annabel Croft, who gave him the number for a singing teacher. Suddenly Radebe, who had been the teacher for several years, became the pupil. “I sat down with this woman and she said to me, ‘Open your mouth and sing.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a lot of fear of opening my mouth because for years I’ve been told that I sound like a sheep.’” The stumbling block, he realised, was less about his voice (a lovely, rich sound with expressive vibrato) and more about his confidence.

Eventually he was ready to audition for director Nikolai Foster (Leicester Curve artistic director), and he recalls standing around the piano and performing “Not My Father’s Son”, a ballad that recounts Charlie and Lola’s struggle to meet their fathers’ expectations. “It was an emotional afternoon,” he says. “Nikolai was asking me, ‘How do you feel? What does that mean to you?’”

The song brings him back to his relationship with his own father, who died from tuberculosis when Radebe was a teenager, after a battle with alcoholism. “Every time I sing that song, it’s healing. I feel like I am confessing exactly how I felt to him,” he says.

When Radebe’s father passed away, he felt the weight of caring for his family rested on his shoulders. “I’m the matriarch of my family,” he says, a quality he shares with his character Lola. Yet, he adds, he also “felt a responsibility to become a man. The show itself explores the relationship between sons and their fathers — the struggles, the disappointments, the expectations. I realised that I put that on myself. Because of the society that I lived in, I struggled with feeling like I belonged. Playing this role has allowed me to fully realise myself.”

He continues: “The thing about Lola is that she knows who she is. She’s comfortable in her own skin. She recognises that society will be what society is [...] The fact that the character can walk into the world that unapologetically is what I love about playing her every single night.”

Ever since the show’s premiere on Broadway in 2013, it is clear what the musical has done for representation, spreading a message of kindness and acceptance. Radebe says that Foster’s production “has brought the storytelling forward”, not only with colour-blind casting, but the cast has also been encouraged to keep their own accents. And, don’t worry — there will still be plenty of glitter.

Radebe has enjoyed the discipline of touring with the show for the past year. “I love going to the theatre three hours before call so that I can put on my make-up,” adding that during the run: “I’m a nun — I don’t drink alcohol. Normally I would pop a bottle of champagne right about now and have a glass!”

He has also loved meeting audiences all over the UK, and says he only has to go out on the street in Leicester for someone to come up and invite him round for coffee. A month ago, his ties to the UK became even stronger when he was awarded British citizenship. How did it feel to make things official? “Darling, a lot of people say to me I need to win the glitterball [Strictly’s trophy]. This is my glitterball. There is no place like this country when it comes to the arts. I’ve been welcomed so beautifully.”

Reflecting on his career to date, from his early days in the Latin and ballroom scene, through to the cruise ships and Strictly, Radebe believes every moment was building to this one. He even hopes one day to bring Kinky Boots to South Africa “to liberate minds”.

A final burning question: just how hard is it to walk in Lola’s infamous kinky boots? “I have been doing this since I was a young man in my mother’s bedroom with her heels,” he quips, with a cheeky glint in his eyes. “[Wearing the boots] is the least of my problems! I absolutely love that I can be six inches off the ground.”

Book Kinky Boots tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Johannes at Repton Boxing Club. (Photo by Matt Crockett). Inset: at Repton Boxing Club; in Kinky Boots. (All photos Matt Crockett)

This article first appeared in the April 2026 issue of London Theatre Magazine.