NEW YORK — Some kids get called “old souls,” a reference not just to surprising maturity but the hint of melancholy in their demeanor. They seem to intuit life’s pending pain and losses when they’re supposed to be inhabiting the joyful intensity of youth.
The 16-year-old title character in the fascinating new Broadway musical “Kimberly Akimbo” at the Booth Theatre is precisely one of those teenagers, forced as she is to deal with juvenile parents, a crazy aunt and, oh, a body aging four times as fast as normal kids.
A consequence of a rare genetic disorder, this weird situation means Kimberly of New Jersey has the outward appearance of a 62-year-old woman, which is awkward when you just want to think about junior prom. But in the theater, it’s a truly remarkable opportunity for actress Victoria Clark, a star who always relishes a deep dive into the agony of how the world only spins forward, and usually far too fast for our sanity.
In the musical “Light in the Piazza,” the masterful Clark played a woman overwhelmed by the question of whether to let go of her still-needy daughter. Years later, she’s flipped the page and is now playing a girl who has so little time that clingy angst on the part of her parents feels like selfishness incarnate.
On some levels, “Kimberly Akimbo,” which features a gorgeous score by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics — after his own play — by David Lindsay-Abaire, is the quirky story of a stranger in the strange land of her own body. But now that the original drama, which I saw some 22 years ago, has been musicalized with Tesori’s signature formative excellence and rich emotional layering, the curiousness of the situation has been subsumed by a meditation on what adulthood really means and on how we’re all taken from this earthly life not just at a time and place not of our choosing, but without regard to our deserving it .
The core of what the musical is saying is found in a second act number — likely to bring tears to your eyes — wherein Clark’s ever-kinetic Kimberly realizes in song that the solution to all of the neuroses of her peers lies simply in their growing up. She, however, has been afforded no such balm.
These are fertile and long-established themes for Broadway musicals — at its core, “Hamilton” is really a show about mortality, regret and work-life balance — but it’s striking to see them emerge so powerfully in such a small, seemingly idiosyncratic package (“Kimberly Akimbo” has only nine performers and minimal spectacle).
On the one hand, your are watching nerdy teens familiar from “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” or “The Prom.” On the other, there is a heroine about to die. Then again, so are we all. It’s just a matter of time.
I should add that the dominant sensibility here is comedic. There is a romantic possibility between Kimberly and Justin Cooley’s thoroughly charming and richly voiced Seth, an optimistic kid who lives in present tense and is thus the perfect beau for a girl for whom the future is arriving far too fast. And there is an amusing caper plot involving Kimberly’s maverick Aunt Debra (Bonnie Milligan), who hires the financially strapped show choir to wash checks.
But Lindsay-Abair’s treatment of Kimberly’s parents is far from funny. Rather, it’s a rich portrait of fifty shades of denial and obliviousness, torpedoing the actual usefulness of their strong love for their girl. Alli Mauzey takes a sad voyage into the mom, Patti. And at the performance I saw, understudy Jim Hogan was moving as the dad, Buddy (I previously saw Stephen Boyer, who plays the role regularly, in the original Atlantic production and he dives deep, too).
When I first saw the play all those years ago, I remember Aunt Debra’s caper seeming to suck up too much time, a reaction born not of its lack of laughs from Milligan’s lovable villain, but because Kimberly’s situation is so emotionally intense that you just want to stay right there. I still feel that way, although everything in Jessica Stone’s production has deepened since the Atlantic.
It’s a great truth that acting is not so much about people but people in motion. And that’s what is so enthralling about the luminous work of both Clark and Cooley. As is the case with Tesori’s roiling score, their work here is kinetic. They throw out their hearts on to a cruel wind and hope for at least a little gust in their sails, before the tempest that awaits us all.
Beautiful.
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