By ALAN SMASON
There are a plethora of plays that have become the basis of successful Broadway musicals. A classic example is Lynn Riggs’ Green Grow the Lilacs, which became Oklahoma. Thronton Wilder’s A Yonker’s Tale was rewritten to become The Matchmaker which, in turn, was made into Hello, Dolly! Despite George Bernard Shaw’s intransigence while he was alive that Pygmalion must never become a musical, it was adapted posthumously into Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady.
However, it is a rara avis that an original play without music by an author is transformed into a viable musical by the same author using his own voice. An unusual event of this sort last occurred on the Great White Way when Chazz Palminteri’s original 1989 one-man play A Bronx Tale (later the basis for a movie), was first produced on Broadway in 2007 before being transformed into a major Broadway musical of the same title in 2016.
With David Lindsay-Abaire’s Kimberly Akimbo, now on stage at the Booth Theatre, lightning has struck twice again. His 2000 dark comedy of the same title was produced Off-Broadway at The Manhattan Theatre Club’s Center Stage 1, running from February to April of 2003.
By 2007, Lindsay-Abaire was a Pulitzer Prize winner for Rabbi Hole and he tried his hand as a book writer for High Fidelity with music by Tom Kitt and lyrics by Amanda Green. It failed to catch fire on Broadway that same year. but his follow-up musical, Shrek, paired him as a lyricist with one of Broadway’s most inventive and touching music composers, Jeanine Tesori.
The success of Shrek has now led to Kimberly’s most recent treatment as a musical, having premiered at the Atlantic Theatre Company as an Off-Broadway production in late 2021 and then transferring with all original members to the Booth for a Broadway opening on November 10.
This is an extraordinary work on many levels. The sophistication of Tessori’s score is bold, but also intimate and Lindsay-Abaire’s lyrics add emotional pitch to the characters. Kimberly Levaco, who is played with exceptional skill by Victoria Clark, is a contradiction in motion. She is about to mark her 16th birthday, a time when most teenagers are looking forward to the rest of their lives. But for Kimberly, reaching 16 is an indication she will soon be at the end of her life. This is due to a rare genetic condition that forces her body to age more than four times as rapidly as her peers.
But Kimberly is determined to enjoy her limited life span with joy and purpose, even if her alcoholic father Buddy (Steven Boyer) and pregnant mother Pattie (Alli Mauzey) spin out of control and her classmates keep their distance from her.
The lack of interaction between Kimberly and her classmates is apparent in the opening number “Skater Planet” set at a roller rink frequented by a quartet of teens, who will become her closest friends. For reasons that become known later, Kimberly and her parents have moved to a new town in New Jersey very quickly and she is not only an outsider, but one with a scary medical condition that might be off-putting to her contemporaries.
It turns out they are not unfriendly, only caught up in their own tales of teenage angst as each of them has an unexpressed crush on the other. In two of the four sophomores, the attraction is for a person of the same gender.
Despite these overwhelming difficulties, Kimberly remains hopeful, attempting to contact “Make a Wish” and trying to make friends with her much younger looking contemporaries including Seth (Justin Cooley), who works at the skate rink. After all, emotionally she is just a mixed-up, unsure and out-of-place teenager.
In “Anagram” Kimberly expresses her blossoming feelings for Seth, who selects her to be his science project partner. He insists they must cover her disease, even though she had been planning to cover glaucoma. Like any interested teenager, she gives in to him and the two begin their journey.
In his Broadway debut, Cooley shows his tool chest is as full as many of the seasoned performers in the work. A recent recipient of a number of noted nominations for his work in the Off-Broadway production last year, he soars in his solo “Good Kid” in which he questions whether he should stay on the straight and narrow path.
As essential as Victoria Clark is to the central character, so is Bonnie Milligan as her mother’s sister Debra, the human catalyst that makes things happen in Kimberly Akimbo.
She operates on various sides of the law as it pleases her and she confesses in the school library to some of her past indiscretions and outright criminal behavior in the delicious tell-all “Better.” When life gives you lemons, you gotta go out and steal apples, she explains with the teen quartet providing four-part backup, “cause who the f**k wants lemons?!”
Milligan’s bravado in tackling the role of Debra endears her to the audience. She is as overtly cantankerous as she is devious. She enlists the help of the quartet of Aaron (Michael Iskander), Delia (Olivia Elease Hardy), Teresa (Nina White) and Martin (Fernell Hogan) as her partners in a check washing scheme. Because they are all minors, they can’t be prosecuted as adults to the full extent of the law, she reasons.
They become her crew and she explains the basics of her scheme in “How to Wash a Check,” the hilarious competition that opens Act Two in which she engages the students in her criminal enterprise.
As would be apropos for a thief, Milligan’s outrageous Aunt Debra steals some of the focus from Clark’s amazing performance as Kimberly. But it’s all good. Debra’s absurd explanations to Kimberly and her interaction with the quartet of her contemporaries and Seth help offset the more serious nature of Kimberly’s plight.
As in Shrek, Lindsay-Abaire’s lyrics accentuates Tessori’s musical line. As a musical partner, she breathes more life into each of Lindsay-Abaire’s characters from his original play. One such example is Boyer’s portrayal of Buddy in “Happy for Her,” in which his feelings as an overprotective dad get the better of him, literally speeding him into reckless and unprovoked wrong thinking.
This leads into Act One’s memorable closer “This Time” in which Buddy, having been hit hard by Kimberly’s stinging criticism, unleashes a torrent of feelings, followed in suit by Kimberly, his wife Pattie, his sister-in-law Debra and the quartet of sophomores. Tessori’s music, Lindsay-Abaire’s lyrics and the talented vocals of the cast make this number one not easily forgotten.
“Our Disease” starts out on a humorous note with regards to presentations on scurvy and the parasite Fasciolosis, but when Seth and Kimberly start to talk about her disease, she becomes anxious and overly self-conscious. She lashes out at her classmates, claiming their disease is more about acne, peer pressure, bullying and becoming sexually active. Before exiting the room, she sings:
“Your disease is a tough one, that’s for sure
Getting older is my affliction.
Getting older is your cure.
Getting older is your cure.”
The reasons the Levacos have been on the run and the back story to Pattie’s pregnancy are all revealed in Act Two. Following a health scare, Kimberly and her parents have their moment in “Before I Go,” a touching trio, beautifully tendered by Tessori and Lindsay-Abaire.
Given her medical prognosis, we know there will be no happy ending for Kimberly when the final resolution comes. But, as unlikely as it might seem, we find she is positively buoyant. Victoria Clark gives us a Kimberly who is at peace with her plight and seizing life in a way very few people ever do in their teens or twilight years.
Beautifully directed by Jessica Stone, Kimberly Akimbo features very well executed choreography by Danny Medford with superb musical direction by Chris Fenwick and orchestrations by John Clancy with Macy Schmidt.
Kimberly Akimbo continues at the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St. in New York. Tickets are available in person at the box office or via Telecharge.
Cast
Kimberly: Victoria Clark
Seth: Justin Cooley
Buddy: Steven Boyer
Pattie: Alli Mauzey
Debra: Bonnie Milligan
Delia: Olivia Elease Hardy
Martin: Fernell Hogan
Aaron: Michael Iskander
Teresa: Nina White
Creative
Book & Lyrics: David Lindsay-Abaire
Composer: Jeanine Tesori
Director: Jessica Stone
Choreographer: Danny Mefford
Producer: Stone Productions
Press Agent: Polk & Co