Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire
• Rachel Evans

KIMBERLY AKIMBO. Book and Lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire. Music by Jeanine Tesori. Directed by Jessica Stone. Booth Theatre, New York. March 5, 2023.

It is not often that playwrights choose to transform their straight plays into musicals themselves. That task is usually reserved for other adapters; however, there is nothing usual about David Lindsay-Abaire. His offbeat play Kimberly Akimbo is a perfectly satisfying venture, but somehow he knew that there was more to the script than he initially explored in the 2001 South Coast Repertory premiere and the 2003 production of a revised version at Manhattan Theatre Club. It took the musical stylings of a similarly singular artist—the composer Jeanine Tesori—for Lindsay-Abaire to unearth the full manifestation of his vision. After the two collaborated on 2008’s Shrek, The Musical, they brought Kimberly Akimbo (the musical), and its bittersweetness, to Atlantic Theatre Company in 2021 and then to Broadway in 2022.

What makes this partnership so effective is Tesori’s ability to create the musical match to Lindsay-Abaire’s signature use of unexpected characters in strangely dire circumstances. Even in his less outlandish, Pulitzer Prize-winning Rabbit Hole, this playwright regularly reveals the profound truths underlying life’s idiosyncrasies. With Tesori, Lindsay-Abaire’s aural vocabulary is expanded and enhanced with great aplomb.

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Victoria Clark (Kimberly) in Kimberly Akimbo. Photo: Joan Marcus.

The Kimberly of the title (Victoria Clark) is a teenager all too well aware of her mortality, given that she is afflicted with a genetic disease causing her body to age four and a half times faster than her chronological age: when she’s twenty, she’ll look ninety. That is, if she lives that long. The plot centers on the days around her sweet-sixteen birthday, a less than sweet milestone given that sixteen is the average life expectancy for someone with her condition. Add Pattie (Alli Mauzey), the girl’s very [End Page 360] pregnant, very hypochondriac mother and Buddy (Steven Boyer), her boozy dad, and the familial unit is doomed to dysfunctional dynamics.

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Alli Mauzey (Pattie), Victoria Clark (Kimberly), and Steven Boyer (Buddy) in Kimberly Akimbo. Photo: Joan Marcus.

Trying to escape the sting of family secrets, the trio has recently transplanted themselves from Lodi, New Jersey to somewhere in the Garden State’s Bergen County, or as Kim calls it, “forty miles east of hope.” There, Kim skates her way into the puzzle-loving heart of new classmate Seth Brett Weetis (Justin Cooley), the local ice rink’s brainiac employee. Despite the generation gap in their physical appearances, Kim and Seth navigate uncharted adolescent waters, finding solace in their mutual oddness—and anagrams. However, to hear the inner monologues of the teen quartet that swarms around the two, the thoughts of Aaron (Michael Iskander), Martin (Fernell Hogan), Teresa (Nina White), and Delia (at this performance, understudy Skye Alyssa Friedman) are not as dissimilar as they think they are. It is Kim’s ball-bustin’ and cussin’ Aunt Debra (Bonnie Milligan) who lures them all into being her minions for a felony con meant to make their dreams come true: a family road trip for Kim, show choir costumes for the foursome, and a one-way ticket to Waikiki for Debra herself.

The setting is described as “1999. Before kids had cell phones,” but it is the passage of time that plays the most important thematic role, both its speed and its slowness. The greatest afflictions Kim’s school chums face are unrequited crushes and stress over the disease project for Bio, but as Kim painfully observes, time will heal their hurts, while getting older is her mortal enemy, literally. Buddy and Pattie mourn the loss of the good ol’ days, and hold tight to the promise of a new, healthy child. In a moment of nostalgia, Pattie revisits the lullaby she sang to Kim, “Father Time,” yearning to slow quickly passing days. Debra’s catchy “Better” sizzles with her determination to answer opportunity’s knock and open the door to future possibilities. Meanwhile Kim...