Kimberly Akimbo is one of those magical musicals that makes you wonder, “how did they pull that off?” An intimate, smart, deeply human musical that arrived on Broadway without a big star or a recognizable title, it nevertheless became the talk of the town by winning over audiences and critics alike and by making them rethink what a Broadway musical can be.

Jeanine Tesori

And while the story of Kimberly Akimbo may seem atypical for a Broadway musical, its combination of heart and humor has earned it five Tony Awards, including 2023’s award for Best Musical, with a score by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home) and book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole).

The story concerns a New Jersey teenager who is about to turn 16 but who looks 70-something. Kimberly Levaco has a rare genetic condition that causes her to age rapidly.

The show is both laugh-out-loud funny and heart wrenchingly sad, a wise collision of humor and suffering with mortality at its core.

“That’s where David’s house is built,” Tesori said in a joint interview, “at the corner of Humor Street and Heartbreak Avenue.”

“It’s why Jeanine and I connect so much and collaborate,” Lindsay-Abaire said. “We have a similar sensibility. We both grew up in a very specific way, working-class, our family experienced a lot of pain and suffering. The way we mostly coped with that is through humor. And so it’s not something we try to do, it’s where we live.

“Our show is about living life to the fullest in whatever time you have left.” he said. “It’s funny, it’s life-affirming, but it’s also about a teenage girl facing her own mortality and facing her first experience of first love and she has a deeply dysfunctional family, but everybody’s trying to be better. It says life is as funny as it is sad and at least for us, maybe most people, that’s the way they experience life. It’s complicated.”

David Lindsay-Abaire

Their shared worldview allows them to dig into the sad-funny themes with a punch. When asked how their personalities work together, Tesori just laughs. And laughs.

When she finally stops laughing, she says, “I think David is the most hilarious person I’ve ever met. He’s not about jokes, he’s about finding things very funny, and that life is heartbreaking and hilarious and his plays are a deep reflection of that…it’s like if Christopher Durang and Thornton Wilder had a baby…”

“I wish they did have a baby.”

“They did, and it’s you.”

They banter breezily. “Obviously, Jeanine and I share a sensibility and a very twisted sense of humor,” he said. “We are so similar in our tastes and also very different in the way we approach the craft of it sometimes. I am much more a control freak than Jeanine is, and I structure; Jeanine is very free-wheeling. She pokes at things and breaks things apart in a way that makes me uncomfortable.”

Only occasionally will she go too far, he said, and he’ll have to pull her back.

The play is about growing up and growing old, not necessarily in that order. But it’s more profound than that.

l to r Nina White Michael Iskander Fernell Hogan and Olivia Hardy in the Original Broadway Company of Kimberly Akimbo, photo by Joan Marcus.

“I really think it’s about the time of your life,” Tesori said, “I mean that both ways. People can have the time of their life even when your life is timed. I mean she knows—and don’t we all know—that life ends. I don’t think it’s fun to talk about and it can be seen as something that’s morbid, or it can be seen as an opportunity to look at the time that you have.”

It’s about living in the moment.

Tesori references Thornton Wilder once again, paraphrasing a line from Our Town: “does anybody really know about life while they’re living it? “I think that’s why the play is so great,” Tesori said, “like, this play’s going to remind you to go outside and live differently.”

Lindsay-Abaire recalls the time during previews when an older man was exiting the theater, looking angry. Lindsay-Abaire braced for negative feedback as he approached. “The man asked, ‘are you with the production?’ He said, ‘I just want you to know that tomorrow I’m going to live more fully because of this!’ He had tears in his eyes, he just walked out the door. I thought, ‘Good lord, that’s the nicest gift you could give to a writer.’ So, it worked for him that night. If people walk away with that, then we’ve done our job.”

The company in the Original Broadway Company of Kimberly Akimbo, photo by Joan Marcus.

Besides living at the intersection of tears and laughter, Kimberly Akimbo lives in the world of smart, small-scale tragicomedy while much of Broadway is given over to huge spectacles tied to superheroes or superstars. Is it a continual struggle?

“If you look at the history of Broadway,” Tesori said, “it came from operetta and vaudeville. It’s always going to be a dance between those things. One says ‘come here and leave life,’ one says ‘come here and look at life’.”

“There will always be those mega-hits based on movies audiences know the names of,” Lindsay-Abaire said, “and people will plunk down some money to see that and that’s fantastic. The good news is, there’s also room for Kimberly Akimbo to go into a little room and win the Tony Award. There are nine people in our show and we won Best Musical!”

So, what’s next for this team, the multi-Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and lyricist, and the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history?

That’s under wraps for now. The good news is, “we’re working on something.”

DETAILS
KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Sep 22-Oct 5, 2024 • Buell Theatre
Tickets