Jeanine Tesori is thinking about her mother back home in the US. “She’s 95,” says the composer, “and she’s not been well. But she would look in the mirror and be like, ‘I can’t believe I’m old.’ It’s always a surprise, always. There’s an interiority about ageing, especially as women. You stay playful and you stay curious, but the world has other ideas.”
Ageing – and growing up, which is not necessarily the same thing – are a central consideration in the musical that Tesori has been rehearsing. Kimberly Akimbo, which the composer developed with David Lindsay-Abaire from his play, follows a teenage girl with a rare genetic condition that causes her to age at four times the normal rate. Its London debut stars the 66-year-old Maria Friedman as Kimberly. “And she has such a bright young energy,” says Tesori as we chat in a rough-and-ready rehearsal room in London, “that she doesn’t have to do anything to play 16.”
