When I first saw David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2000 play, Kimberly Akimbo, I didn’t love it. I described the story of a teenage girl in New Jersey with a progeria-like condition and dysfunctional parents as “two hours of self-absorbed diatribes punctuated by occasional Hallmark moments of tenderness.”
Well, whatever I didn’t like about the straight play, the 2021 musical version, featuring a terrific score by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire, has rendered obsolete. (The show won five 2023 Tony Awards, including best musical, best score, and best book.) Now in a short touring run with Broadway in Chicago at the CIBC Theatre under Jessica Stone’s direction, this Kimberly Akimbo is fresh, funny, wise, and pungent, with a corker of a cast led by Carolee Carmello as Kimberly Levaco.
Kimberly Akimbo
Through 6/22: Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 2 and 7:30 PM, Sun 1 PM, Tue and Thu 7 PM, Wed 1 and 7 PM; also Sun 6/15 6:30 PM; CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe, broadwayinchicago.com/shows/kimberly-akimbo, $35-$125
What helps here is that Lindsay-Abaire’s book opens up the world of the play by incorporating four new characters—high school classmates of Kimberly’s who are going through their own adolescent angst. As a poignant scene in the second act makes clear, they’re waiting for their “real life” after high school to begin. Kimberly, who turns 16 during the show, knows she’s reaching the end of her road. The quartet of teens, in addition to nerdy love interest Seth Weetis (Miguel Gil), give Kimberly a contrasting life away from the rundown home of her alcoholic father, Buddy (Jim Hogan), and her pregnant hypochondriacal mother, Pattie (Laura Woyasz)—both of whom seem to largely be in denial about their daughter’s impending mortality.
By showing us the contrasts in Kimberly’s life, the musical heightens the stakes for her to find some happiness before she runs out of road. The device for finding that map to freedom comes through her ex-con scam artist of an aunt, Debra (Emily Koch), who enlists Kimberly and her school pals into a check-washing scheme (The show is set in 1999, when people still sent checks in the mail.) The kids want money for new show choir costumes. Kimberly wants to take her family on a road trip to Six Flags and all the other places they never got to see together.
At its simplest level, Kimberly Akimbo is about living your dreams now and not waiting for a future that may not exist. Kimberly and Seth (whose mother has died, leaving him with a neglectful dad and a brother in rehab) are the heart of the show. Carmello and Gil both excel as young people who have had to grow up too soon (literally in Kimberly’s case—a joke about going through menopause at 12 is both funny and disturbing). But they’re still kids at heart, with all the raw vulnerability and wistful hopes that come with being teenagers. The show’s title derives from an anagram of Kimberly’s name—”cleverly akimbo”—that games nerd Seth comes up with, and at its best, the musical leans into the off-kilter circumstances of the characters without veering into self-conscious whimsy.
Tesori also won the Tony for her score of 2015’s Fun Home, another tale of family dysfunction seen through the eyes of a young girl. Even with occasional sound problems at the CIBC Theatre opening night, the songs here land with an aching blend of longing and hope. (If you can make it through Seth and Kimberly’s duet, “Now,” without tearing up, you’re stronger than me.)
What felt belabored to me in the play has vanished in the musical version of Kimberly Akimbo, and what remains is a smart and touching meditation on trying to get what you want while you still can, and with the help of people who really care about you.
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