Broadway musical 'Kimberly Akimbo' creates upside-down world
Entertainment
Broadway musical ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ creates upside-down world
NEW YORK (AP) — The seed for one of the best musicals on Broadway this season sprang from an off-hand comment.
Playwright David Lindsay-Abaire asked a friend about his newborn niece and was told she was like a wise old woman trapped in a baby’s body.
“I thought, that’s peculiar. So the literal person that I am, I went to a very literal place,” says Lindsay-Abaire. “I started imagining adults as children.”
That imagining soon became an off-Broadway play in 2003 — “Kimberly Akimbo,” about a teen who ages four times faster than the average human. It has now become a musical with songs by Jeanine Tesori that has been hailed by critics for being both wondrously off-kilter and heartfelt.
“We wanted to create an upside-down world,” says Lindsay-Abaire, a Pulitzer Prize-winner who reworked his book and added lyrics. “This is a 16-year-old girl that looks like an old woman. Her parents behave like children and she’s the wisest person in her family.”
“Kimberly Akimbo” stars four-time Tony nominee Victoria Clark as Kimberly, navigating a dysfunctional family and a stuttering high school romance with the knowledge that a rare genetic disorder gives her a life expectancy of 16.
If that sounds like a bummer, it’s somehow not. Lindsay-Abaire and Tesori, the Tony-winner behind “Fun Home,” have audiences laughing at the universal awkwardness of being a teen and the loopy things parents do. It’s more a musical about seizing the day than facing mortality.
