(To Kimberly.) The cast also included John Gallagher, Jr. and Ana Gasteyer. I had to hope and pray that it would come back, she recalled, because something about this material felt like it was mine.. The musical . The actor, singer and and body diversity advocate is giving a star-making performance in "Kimberly Akimbo," an unconventional new musical. The cast of the Broadway premiere of the Kimberly Akimbo musical includes the same actors who were in the Off-Broadway presentation. . Regular price $35.00. Seth: A high school geek who's into anagrams and playing the tuba. Full cast album coming soon! What's an anagram for "hit musical"? So thats how I approached Debra. The seasons most moving new musical earns its place among the behemoths of Broadway. Clark and Justin Cooley, who are reprising their roles on Broadway. David Lindsay-Abaire, Jeanine Tesori and Jessica Stone on the Kimberly Akimbo set. Almost yours: 2 weeks, on. Kimberly Akimbo is an odd-duck dramedy with off-center charm and poignant underpinnings. Kimberly Akimbo Unisex Perspective Raglan. Rarely, we learn, do people with Kimberlys disease live past age 16. The play was initially produced at the South Coast Repertory, Costa Mesa, California, from April 13 to May 13, 2001. To me, that says love., Kimberly Akimbo marks Milligans first Broadway outing since her impressive debut in the 2018 Go-Gos musical Head Over Heels, which received positive reviews but struggled to find an audience. Victoria Clark. It warms up the zaniness of the original without overshooting and making it normal. Instead of cowering as if embarrassed by the dimension music can bring to drama, it embraces the ability of song, even in tragicomedy, to extend emotion into bigger realms. Performances will now run on extension through January 15, 2022, instead of the previously announced January 2. He is a bit akimbo too, a teenager who works hard, is a proud nerd, drily comic, anddespite his youthkeen to help Kim achieve her dreams to go on a road trip. The oldest and first dedicated online New York Theater Guide Read news on over 150 Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. . There is nothing in quotation marks about her teenage mannerisms, or embarrassing about seeing her, at 63, wear the spot-on embroidered jumpers and colorful hair clips Sarah Laux has costumed her in. Kimberlys schoolyard love interest Seth (Justin Cooley) speaks fluent Elvish from J.R.R. The upside is that it draws her to the ber-nerd, Seth, played in a terrific New York debut by the 18-year-old Justin Cooley. What's akimbo? It may be an old-style carpe diem message or a mad recipe, as Seth might have it but in this case, leavened by exceptional craft, it makes a totally satisfying meal. In role after role particularly as an anxious mother in The Light in the Piazza, for which she won a Tony Award in 2005 she makes music not an afterthought to character, but the thought itself. Running nearly two-and-a-half hours, the musical feels padded with extraneous material, including lengthy interludes devoted to anagrams and ice skating and a song devoted to a school project about scurvy (dont ask). That the musical in essence does the same for the rest of the characters is one of its most unusual qualities. Tesori stood up, muttering, I have to close that door myself. Which prompted Stone to bend over in laughter. Less convincingly, Lindsay-Abaire ties them into the story as accomplices in Aunt Debras check-forging scheme; they hope to raise enough cash to buy spangly costumes for a show choir competition. Buddy, meanwhile, is a foolish drunk who leaves his daughter, biologically a senior citizen, sitting on a bench in the snow for three hours. Knowing she will not live much. Kim wants to act like a regular teenager and for her parents to behave like responsible adults. Nor, though Stones work with the actors was exceptional, did the physical production (scenic design by David Zinn, lighting design by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew) impress me much. And now, with the addition of songs (music by Jeanine Tesori; lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire) that turn the carpe diem dial to maximum, the director Jessica Stone has turned up the hilarity dial as well, to keep all that emotion in balance. The show's title comes from an anagram Seth creates of Kim's name, which is "cleverly akimbo.". On top of having to face down mortality way too soon, Kim is dealing with a dad who drinks too much booze; a neurotic, pregnant mom whos harboring a deep family secret; and a con-artist aunt. I kept forgetting she was dead. That may well be the fate of Kimberly Akimbo, the profoundly funny and heartbreaking new nerdical that opened on Thursday at the Booth Theater. Discover a full timeline of the show's history below. Pure enjoyability. We long to get to know Kimberly better, especially since Clark delivers such a beautifully sung, poignant turn as the winsome teenage girl trapped in an elderly womans body. But among many smart adjustments made to the show for Broadway, the four schoolmates (Olivia Elease Hardy, Fernell Hogan, Michael Iskander, Nina White) have been incorporated more clearly and fully as a kind of Geek Chorus. ", Author of The Whale and A Case for the Existence of God plants his Idaho roots in this 2010 play set in a Hobby Lobby break room, Bill Irwin and John Douglas Thompson headline Irish Reps revival of the 1957 tragicomedy, David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori transform a quirky black comedy into a tuneful affirmation of life and difference, The philosophically loquacious playwright switches gears with a gripping personal chronicle, Henry VIIIs wives get the royal treatment in this 80-minute musical celebration of girl power. How They Assembled the Kimberly Akimbo Puzzle, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/26/theater/kimberly-akimbo-broadway.html. [7], A musical adaptation of the play premiered at Atlantic Theater Company in November 2021, with book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire and music by Jeanine Tesori. But I feel messed up just enough to be the writer and be the person that I am. As she grieved the loss, Milligan was able to postpone her virtual tryout for Kimberly Akimbo. By the time she landed the part, however, theaters and other performance venues were shuttered indefinitely to curb the spread of COVID-19. Wed.-Sat. . Project description: "This funny and heartwarming play is about a teenager with a rare condition that causes her body to age faster than it should." Roles Collapse All Roles Actors & Performers. I have a very big family and I know a lot of complicated people who have done some complicated things and who, in their minds, are doing their best, Milligan told HuffPost. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like Scene 4 Cleverly Akimbo. The extreme hypochondria of Kimberlys mother (Alli Mauzey) allows for a can-you-top-this arc as she acquires additional ailments: funny until you clock that with both arms in casts, she cant eat. Corey Regensburg, a recent graduate of the University of the Arts . The Tony Awards Administration Committee met for the first time during the 2022-2023 Broadway season on January 31 to discuss eligibility of 20 productions for the 76th Annual Tony Awards in Was creating the musical a way to create more interiority for her? Some of the most enjoyable moments in Theatre Horizon's very entertaining production of KIMBERLY AKIMBO are those involving the character, Jeff, a somewhat nerdy outcast at school who strikes up an ambivalent relationship with Kimberly during the completion of a class project. [1][2] Its title character is a lonely teenage girl suffering from a disease similar to progeria, that causes her to age four and a half times as fast as normal, thus trapping her inside the frail physical body of an elderly woman. Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes. Some, like Fun Home, Dear Evan Hansen and The Bands Visit, win top Tony Awards; A Strange Loop even won the Pulitzer Prize. Quick View. The show is mostly monologues. The mounting insanity almost becomes too much. Kimberly Akimbo takes place in 1999 in suburban New Jersey, where the title character is a 16-year-old high school student who looks like shes 72 because of a rare condition thats accelerated her aging. The whole dynamics between parents and teenagers that I was sort of making up 20 years ago, now I know it deeply and personally. What makes Kimberly not cloying, as adults pretending to be kids usually is, is that she is an old soul because of her hard life. MONOLOGUE BANK From: The Good Times Are Killing Me by Lynda Barry EDNA: The hills are alive with the sound of music was the first best movie I ever saw and the first best music I ever heard. You can win free tickets from Vivid Seats. Healthy enough to write, damaged enough to want to write. But I also wanted to explore mortality and what it means to truly live in the moment. Seize the day! Kimberly Akimbo. Tesori is a composer who won a 2015 Tony Award for the musical Fun Home, a family drama based on Alison Bechdel's memoir. Regular price $20.00. Still, as this allows them to provide backup for Milligans barn-burning numbers, I wont complain. No one gets a second time around, they sing in the finale (though Kimberly Akimbo fortunately did). That Tesori can write any kind of music is old news. How odd and enlightening that, now 17 years older, Clark is playing a version of that child herself. Far from it: Though an underground river of sorrow gives Kimberly Akimbo its keenness, the surface is shiny comedy. Carolyn Hayes Harmer, Encore Michigan. Meet the artists HERE. His writing has appeared in such publications as the New York Daily News, Playbill, Backstage, and various national and international newspapers. She steers the second act into a Catch Me If You Can if that movie was set at a Hackensack Dunkin Donuts. It's still funny. Kimberly Akimbo opened December 8, 2021 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through December 26. What has it gotten me?) In another, a duet with Kimberly, he cranks out possible anagrams of her name in real time. On paper, Aunt Debra is a criminal. Kimberly Akimbo runs through October 20. The production starred Rosemary Prinz as Kimberly. You are also agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. February 25, 2022. Kimberly Akimbo Unisex Point of View Hoodie. Boyer and Mauzey seem ill at ease with their unlikeable characters, and Milligan tears into the aunts vulgarity with such hilarious comic gusto she regularly brings down the house. The Seagull: Not Your Great-Great-Great-Grandmothers Chekhov, The Seagull/Woodstock, NY: The Chekhov Updating You Didnt Need, Letters From Max, a ritual: A Playwright and Poet Open Their Hearts, Letters From Max, a ritual: Intimate Teacher-Student Work, The Sign in Sidney Brusteins Window: Lorraine Hansberrys Largely Forgotten Play Shows Signs of Life, A Bright New Boise:Hunters First Play in off-Broadway Premiere, Endgame: A Fine-Tuned Production of Becketts Favorite Play, Kimberly Akimbo: The Sweet Musical Treat We Need Right Now, Leopoldstadt: Stoppard Examines His Roots, in Extraordinary Fashion. He died about five weeks after her arrival. Her best song the shows best, actually is Anagram in which she starts to fall for Seth as he rearranges the letters of her name into a new phrase. If they rarely last as long as, say, Six or Moulin Rouge seem likely to, these shows prove their immense value in the time theyve got. Sarah Ruhls newest work proves a deeply moving meditation on life and the afterlife, Sarah Ruth's epistolary homage to late poet Max Ritvo, Kate Whoriskey directs, Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan star in Anne Kauffman's revival of this long-neglected work by the author of "A Raisin in the Sun. LINDSAY-ABAIRE The first time in, I was really accessing my teenage years and stuff about my parents and my family, but really homing in on the Seth character who is very close to me in very many ways. And that enables so much in terms of imagination and promise. Victoria Clark, center, as Kimberly with Alli Mauzey, foreground left, and Steven Boyer, foreground right, who play her parents. Body diversity isnt something that weve always talked about, but I think [Broadway producers] are realizing the importance of audiences seeing themselves on the stage in a pleasant light as opposed to someone who is seen as unattractive. Winner of the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Playwright, David Lindsay-Abaire's Kimberly-Akimbo focuses, with uncanny depth and quirky wit, on a sixteen-year-old girl suffering from a disease that causes her body to age nearly five times faster than it should. The toilets wouldnt stop flushing. I said to Jeanine, he said, trying to keep a straight face as another toilet flushed, I wish we could write a musical the way that I write a play, where theres not a team of other people involved.. Through it all, even though people with her condition have an average life expectancy of 16 years, Kimberly learns to be young and unafraid after years of taking on adult responsibilities. One of the most effective moments features her dressed up as a grandmother (again, dont ask), making clear in visual terms the illness that will end her life prematurely. And these characters, they reminded me of people I grew up with, they reminded me of people in my family and not always people who are center stage, especially in a musical. David Lindsay-Abaire, Jeanine Tesori and Jessica Stone on the Kimberly Akimbo set.CreditVictor Llorente for The New York Times. Audiences from 4 to 104 will be moved by Kim's story of finding one's people and making the most of life while one has it. Both actors are good sports, but not for a single second do we sympathize with their flat characters. Everything you need to know about 'Kimberly Akimbo' on Broadway, Do not sell or share my personal information (for California residents only), 2003: The play debuts off Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in February, also with Burke. Don't miss a beat. How to Buy Tickets for Kimberly Akimbo. Its just messed up enough. If you can have a gaggle of teenagers skipping out of the show, and then this grumpy old man with tears in his eyes thats victory, said Lindsay-Abaire, right. Kimberly: An outcast 16-year-old grappling with an aging disease that makes her look like shes in her 70s. All the jokes work that way. Thats the dream.. Kimberly Akimbo opened December 8, 2021 at the Linda Gross Theater and runs through December 26. Kimberly Akimbo is at the Booth Theatre. Before you step back into the '90s with Kimberly and the gang, learn more about the show's cast, history, and production information. Prepare to Fall in Love! She didnt have anybody looking out for her, so she looks out for herself, and thats how she talks herself into not feeling bad about scamming people because, well, who looked out for her? Tesoris other well-known musicals include Caroline, or Change, Violet, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. 2003 Off-Broadway premiere (play): Burke, who starred in the 2001 premiere, reprises her role as Kimberly in the play's Off-Broadway debut at Manhattan Theatre Club. In its quieter moments, Kimberly Akimbo displays a poignancy and tenderness that will seep into your heart. Buddy strongly refuses and drives away. If you can have a gaggle of teenagers skipping out of the show, and then this grumpy old man with tears in his eyes thats victory. Nothing should stop the How of the play KIMBERLY AKIMBO ACT ONE Scene 1 A bs of eld wind, unde of winter wind hurling, maybe Lights come upon a bench ouside. Music by Jeanine Tesori. And so I wanted to write an amazing part for a great actor. Yet watching the show again, I focused as much on Lindsay-Abaires lyrics, which retain the natural shape of expert dialogue quirky, characterful and sometimes even leggy without distorting the song forms or turning everything into operetta. Victoria Clark is one of our great singing actors. And in the basement, Aunt Debra (Bonnie Milligan), a grifter with big attitude and little conscience, is concocting a check-forging scheme. By Charles Isherwood. But the musical also has charm to spare, thanks largely to Victoria Clarks affecting performance in the title role and the touching central relationship at the storys core. TESORI I feel it in my body when something sings, I cant put it into words. Kimberly Akimbo - Monologue (Pattie) A monologue from the play by David Lindsay-Abaire PATTIE (mid-thirties) Pattie is convinced she's going to die soon, and is here breaking the news to her sister, Debra, and her teenaged daughter, Kimberly, who has a disease that causes premature aging. I did my grandmother's and she got Arabian Beard., I'm fine., Where have you been? Jeanine Tesori composed the music for the Kimberly Akimbo musical. Because Im so invested in the parent side of the story, and in the mortality side of the story, and in the how-do-you-choose-to-live-your-remaining-days-on-this-planet side of the story, I forget about the delight, the tremendous luxury of hope and time, that teens have. Adolescent years are always a challenge, and that goes double, actually quadruple, for 16-year-old Kimberly in the hit musical Kimberly Akimbo. Its good enough, in fact, that you wish it had been just a little bit better. Whats apparent in Kimberly Akimbo is that she can also write inerrantly for any kind of show. Thats upbeat Kimberly, as usual trying to make the best of lifes bad situation. Father Buddy (Steven Boyer) struggles to control his drink and his temper; moony mother Pattie . 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