Review: ‘Kimberly Akimbo' arrives in Chicago, a moving musical about a teenager facing mortality
At the Tony Awards this year, a delightfully quirky little musical called 'Maybe Happy Ending' beat out big competitors and walked off with the big prize. Although it's about family dynamics rather than robotic romance, 'Kimberly Akimbo,' a similarly small and unusual show that won best musical in 2023, paved its way. Nearly three years after its Broadway bow, the touring version of director Jessica Stone's original production of that Jeanine Tesori tuner has finally reached downtown Chicago.
Carolee Carmello, who has graced this city's stage several times with outstanding success in Stephen Sondheim musicals and elsewhere, is on the road in the title role originally played by Victoria Clark. And the rest of the nine-person cast includes at least two long-standing romantic couples, which might explain why much of the cast seems to be so close up there.
'Kimberly Akimbo,' the musical, is based on a play of the same name by David Lindsay-Abaire, which I first reviewed at A Red Orchid Theatre back in 2005, with Roslyn Alexander playing the lead. As Broadway fans will know, the show is about a teenager with progeria, a rare medical condition that causes the human body to age at over four times its normal rate. When she is 16, as she is in this show, Kimberly's appearance suggests a woman in her 60s. And, as logic would suggest, life also blossoms and expires for Kimberly at a far accelerated rate.
Most of us, of course, don't know our likelihood of dying early so the play, and thus the musical, with book and lyrics by its original author, allows us to see life through the eyes of someone who knows more than most of its unavoidable brevity and the importance of living in the present, rather than the past or the future.
In the musical, Kimberly's schoolmates (played by Grace Capeless, Skye Alyssa Friedman, Darron Hayes and Pierce Wheeler) become a little Greek chorus of show-choir nerds, trying to reconcile their adolescent angst with the problems faced by the young woman aging before their eyes. Kimberly has yet more to deal with, too. Her family is composed of narcissists: a mostly clueless mom, Pattie (Laura Woyasz), an alcoholic dad, Buddy (Jim Hogan) and a whack-a-doodle aunt, Debra (Emily Koch), who interjects a criminal caper plot into the days around Kimberly's Sweet 16 birthday.
I greatly enjoyed 'Kimberly Akimbo' on Broadway and this first national tour is in excellent shape. It's never especially helpful to most people to compare performances, but if you were to twist my arm, I'd say that whereas Clark focused intently on achieving the inner life and spirit of a teenager in her portrayal, Carmello leans more into the character's sense of her own mortality. Both takes strike me as legitimate, although they are quite different. Carmello's Kimberly is a little sadder and more careworn, although she certainly also makes the final carpe diem number work quite beautifully and, as her perhaps boyfriend, Seth, Miguel Gil is a true, thoroughly guileless delight.
I'm a big Tesori fan. Lyric Opera audiences heard her extraordinarily potent music quite recently in the opera 'Blue,' with the stirring Tazewell Thompson libretto. Although she clearly remembers what it is like to be young and have fun, Tesori's 'Kimberly Akimbo' score makes no easy choices; it focus intently on the show's complex emotional landscape as Kimberly strives to teach those far older than herself, and wishes for that one great adventure we'd all like to have before we go.
Review: 'Kimberly Akimbo' (3.5 stars)
When: Through June 22
Where: CIBC Theatre, 18 W. Monroe St.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $35-$125 at www.broadwayinchicago.com
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