Victoria Clark portrays a teenager, Kim, and Justin Cooley (right) is her nerdy crush Seth in the new musical Kimberly Akimbo.
Take a slew of New Jersey jokes, opening notes played on a ukulele, onstage ice skating, songs about scurvy and parasitic infection, and a tuba and a mailbox being lugged across the stage, and you’ve got some idea of what the delightful new musical Kimberly Akimbo has to offer. For good measure, there’s a lead performance by redoubtable Tony winner Victoria Clark.
Kim’s spunky but troublemaking aunt Debra is played by Bonnie Milligan (center, with Nina White, left, and Olivia Elease Hardy).
Now having its world premiere at Atlantic Theater Company, Kimberly Akimbo is a musical version of David Lindsay-Abaire’s same-titled 2003 Off-Broadway play. Lindsay-Abaire himself penned the book and lyrics for the new adaptation, with music by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home; Caroline, or Change). They get things rolling with “Skater Planet,” one of the more ingratiating opening numbers featured in a new musical in some time. “All the action’s at the mall, but we’d rather be here skating,” sing four Glee-ish kids at a rink. “It’s Saturday night in Bergen County. There are parties everywhere, but we never get invited.”
Sitting nearby, sucking on a candy necklace and concession-stand drink, is Kimberly Levaco, who’s about to turn 16—and is played by Clark. Kim has problems in addition to the disease that makes her look decades older than she is: At home, she takes care of her immature parents more than they take care of her. Her father, Buddy, is an alcoholic, and mom Pattie is temperamental, self-centered and very pregnant. They seem oblivious to Kim’s needs and concerns, including that she could have a fatal heart attack at any moment. And they have yet to let her in on the reason the family abruptly moved to another town.
While Kim’s condition is never named in the script, it appears Lindsay-Abaire took inspiration from the real but rare disease known as progeria, which got some publicity in the 1990s thanks to a Phil Donahue episode and the best-seller When Bad Things Happen to Good People. That book’s author lost his 14-year-old son to progeria—a condition in which children age very rapidly (starting in infancy), typically have cardiovascular complications, and rarely live past their teens—but Lindsay-Abaire has approached it with levity. Softhearted and life-affirming levity, not the South Park kind.
Buddy (Steven Boyer, right) expresses the typical worries of fathers of teenage girls in the rapid-fire song “Happy for Her,” sung as he drives Kim (Clark) and Seth (Cooley) to school. Photographs by Ahron R. Foster.
What he and Tesori, along with director Jessica Stone and a crackerjack cast, have created is a show full of laughs, humanity and excellent character songs. “Make a Wish” and “Anagram” reveal Kimberly’s yearnings for her life and romance; “Hello, Darling” does the same for Pattie (played by Alli Mauzey), just with more paranoia and cursing. And in “Happy for Her,” a patter song masterfully performed by Steven Boyer, Buddy handles a ride to school the way he does everything else—with good intentions derailed by impetuousness. Kimberly’s rambunctious aunt Debra (Bonnie Milligan) relays her sketchy yet remorseless MO in “Better,” while “Good Kid” is a plaintive self-assessment by Seth (Justin Cooley), the tuba-playing anagram buff who’s Kimberly’s love interest.
Amid this assemblage of ex-cons, hypochondriacs, sexually confused adolescents and show choir divas, Kimberly is the quietest role. So while Clark has been known to walk away with shows, in Kimberly Akimbo she’s nearly upstaged by established scene-stealers like Boyer and Head Over Heels’ Milligan as well as her newbie costars, including Cooley (who’s still a college student) and the other actors who play her classmates. She does convey—in both her line readings and her demeanor—a shy high schooler’s unease and longing to be understood, and the scene toward the end where Kimberly finally rebels is dramatically and musically stirring.
From left:White, Hardy and Fernell Hogan II play New Jersey high schoolers in Kimberly Akimbo.
Everybody in Kimberly Akimbo, not just the title character, desires something out of reach and is trying to gain more control over their circumstances. But this show full of outcasts, strivers and one seriously ill young girl is anything but a downer; it’s carried along by spirited performances and a hopeful, compassionate sensibility. By the end, they’re all singing: “Don’t know if we’ll catch a breeze, or encounter stormy seas. ... Just enjoy the view, because no one gets a second time around.”
The show is well-crafted beyond its tuneful score and quirky personalities. David Zinn’s sets—which alternate between school, skating rink, car and home—have plenty of realistic detail even though they have to be moved after every scene. Costume designer Sarah Laux’s outfits for Clark are the styles of a teen: jumper and tights, jeans with shirt tied around the waist by its sleeves. Notable production elements also include projections by Lucy MacKinnon, which are key to the final scene.
The musical premiere of Kimberly Akimbo runs through Jan. 2 at the Atlantic Theater Company (336 W. 20th St.). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and at 7 p.m. Tuesday and Sunday; matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and the last two Wednesdays in December. Tickets are available by calling (646) 989-7996 or visiting atlantictheater.org.
