REVIEW: Kimberly Akimbo
Preview: I was in NYC for MLK weekend this year, but due to other plans, I could only really afford -- time-wise and fiscally — to see one show. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any back-alley kidney recipients to fund getting tickets to Merrily We Roll Along at NYTW, so I entered a handful of lotteries. Luckily, I ended up getting some for this season’s critical darling, Kimberly Akimbo, which tells the story of a 16 year-old girl trying to survive a troubled home life, a deadly aging disease akin to progeria that ages you 5 times as fast, and worst of all, high school. I had high hopes for this given its acclaimed run at the Atlantic Theatre Company in 2021; I even had tickets for it then, on the same day as a tattoo appointment. (I did not plan well that day, and thus did not end up seeing it). So I was pretty glad to grab a pair via the lottery, and front row at that! Tack on a score by Jeanine Tesori — half of the composer pair behind Fun Home, one of my all-time favorite shows — and I had every reason to enter this with high expectations.
Acting: The show features a relatively small cast, consisting of Kimberly herself, plus three family members and four friends. As such, one weak link could really derail the ensemnble, but luckily this isn’t that kind of show. Akimbo here really is HER show, everyone else sorts of floats around her during both acts. All this to say that Tony-winner Victoria Clarke bears the most performance burden, of course. I found her performance in Act I to be quite stiff, it being unclear how she was feeling in actuality compared to what the script said — which itself had no direction, I feel, through pretty much all of this act; more on that later. However, much like Act II itself, the performance picks up substantially in the second Act, with Clarke delivering a great emotional cocktail of confusion, frustration, anger, and longing that will not fail to create empathy in even the most stoic non-theatre-enjoying-straight-men-brought-by-their-partners in the audience. On the other hand, a consistent acting presence throughout the show is shown in “antagonist” Aunt Debra, the devilishly bombastic ex-con who shows up to derail Kimberly’s home and school life (for reasons I will not spoil). Consistently loud, goofy, self-absorbed, and overall imposing, Bonnie Milligan skillfully acts as a driven and goal-oriented foil to Kimberly’s aloof uncertainty to her own mortality, which ultimately spring her into action. Separately, Kimberly’s parents and friends at school are more background characters to everything that’s going on, the friends more-so than the parents, who have their moments to shine with the impending arrival of Kimberly’s baby sister. Personally, I would have liked to see more of the dynamic with Kimberly’s friends, but instead we get little vignettes amongst themselves that feels detached. 5/10
Production: I was a bit apprehensive to see that the pre-show set was merely a screen, with a paused still from a 90’s video tape. However, as the show unraveled, I found this to be an issue increasingly less, especially as the idea of recording the moments important you become more of a theme. And even throughout the show, there remains great use of practical effects to transition between the three scenes that the script sprawls over, between Kimberly’s home, school, and the ice rink. When it shines - such as a wonderful ice-skating number where they literally glide around on stage (no wheels! It’s a sight!) - it really makes you appreciate practical effects and how plenty of shows don’t implement them to maximize touring potential (no, I will never stop subtweeting Dear Evan Hansen. What an awful show.) But it isn’t always perfect, and in one case looks a bit sloppy to me on behalf of the dramaturgy: the “Career Goals” poster in the school scenes features things a twitter handle, and a website with no “www”, despite Twitter not existing in 1999 (when this seems to take place) and “www” not being auto-corrected in browsers until around the late 00’s. I know this is SUPER nit-picky, but I love when media leans into the times they take place in, such as Arena Stage’s whizzing, zig-zagging hoot that was their 2022 staging of Catch Me If You Can. But despite this, the show remains something a future director could potentially adapt to other time periods, as the overall message remains the same regardless of time setting. 4/10
Book/Lyrics: I’ll cut to the chase, Jeanine Tesori does it again. With songs that are catchy and melancholic but brilliantly push the story along, I had high hopes for it as I mentioned, and it delivered on that front. It’s by no means my favorite musical score ever, but I will be looking forward to the cast recording when it drops next month. Lyrically, David Lindsay-Albaire (who penned the book, lyrics, and the play this show is based on), it often sounded like what a middle-aged man thought teenagers sounded like. Kimberly herself is pretty neutral, delivering believable, development-oriented lines, but her teenaged friends are where things get cringe. It doesn’t help that these misfires, as much of a smattering as they are, come with a disjointed first-act plot. We’re quickly introduced to our geriatric lead, but the details of her condition and family life are too slowly percolated, and Act I ended without any real conflict. We understand she hasn’t much time to live, that Aunt Debra is up to no good (apparently), and that she has a crush on a boy now — but why should this matter? There wasn’t a plot point I was directly invested in that I was eager for the Act II curtain to start revealing, that wasn’t just the general idea expressed in Kimberly’s “I Want” song. Luckily, things pick up pretty quickly once it does, and the drama we were so led to believe existed starts coming through with wistful character-driven songs, shocking family revelations, and explosive rebuttals. The ending, as heartwarming as it is, left me with a slight sour taste regarding the [SPOILER] “redemption” of Aunt Debra. She manipulates all these kids, including her terminally ill niece, and just gets away with it as a joke? The ending would have really given me a sense of closure had she faced real consequences AND Kimberly got to see her dream go through. 6/10
VisDev: It’s not bad, but the advertising and merch were clearly not a major part of the budget. Limited merch, including only two articles with anything actually said in the show on them, and a bright, teenage color scheme are all it really has going for it. The logo and brand identity aren’t really giving me any indication as to what the show is about, either; people behind me weren’t quite sure what the show was gonna be about until intermission, even after reading through the Playbill. In honesty, it felt more like a community theatre production in terms of marketing and brand presence. 3/10
