Musical ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ embraces the awkward, with jazz hands | Entertainment

Never have I ever seen a musical set in a high school with as much cringe as “Kimberly Akimbo.”

To paraphrase John Denver, Saturday night in Bergen County, New Jersey, is like being nowhere at all. A sextet of awkward teens makes the best of this at the ice rink, where brainy Seth — he speaks Elvish and plays the tuba — works the desk because his “ankles tend to roll.”

New girl Kim is as gawky and earnest as the rest, with one key difference. A rare genetic disease means she’s unlikely to live long past 16. What does the future look like when everyone else is planning for their next chapter and yours is unlikely to start?

“Kimberly Akimbo” won the Best Musical Tony Award in 2023, an arguably weak post-COVID year (among the competition were the corny comedy “Shucked,” the jukebox show “& Juliet” and the newly remade “Some Like It Hot”). Jessica Stone directs the national tour, which opened in fall 2024. It stops in Madison this week, playing Overture Hall through Feb. 15.

Composer Jeanine Tesori (“Fun Home”) and playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (“Good People”) hadn’t teamed up on a musical since “Shrek.” “Kimberly Akimbo” shares some of that show’s lively musicality — these are tunes you’re likely to hum on the way home — and skewed sense of humor.

Ann Morrison, as Kim, clips her sentences and stands stiffly, as though she doesn’t know how to hold herself. Perhaps in part because of her appearance, Kim has been thoroughly parentified by both of her actual parents: Pattie (Laura Woyasz), a pregnant, self-obsessed hypochondriac, and Buddy (Jim Hogan), a fumbling drunk.

Theirs is a chaotic family. Midway through Act I, Kim’s aunt Debra (Emily Koch) climbs through the kitchen window with a jug of solvent and drags a stolen mail collection box into the basement. In Act II, she’s going to teach some show choir kids how to do check fraud.  

As Kim wrestles with how to embrace her future, Morrison shifts her voice, adding a tentative warble when Kim is unsure and deepening into a mature tone when she finally confronts her parents. Her job is an odd one — adults playing kids is always a little weird — but she finds both the vulnerability and the joy in it.

Among the rest of the cast, Marcus Phillips has an intense, manic energy as Seth, Kim’s puzzle-loving new friend. And Koch is a standout as Debra, channeling unjustified, untouchable confidence. Exasperated by the show choir’s unrequited love quartet, Debra does a little “duck, duck, goose” with them: “gay, straight, gay, straight. I just saved you two years of therapy.”  

Kim’s disease may not be entirely real, but the emotional moments in “Kimberly Akimbo” are. “This Time,” a song about people who intend to do better and believe they can change, could be gutting for anyone who’s loved (or been) someone dealing with addiction. “The Inevitable Turn,” about precarious peace at the family dinner table, sounds taken straight from life.

Director Jessica Stone keeps “Kimberly Akimbo” carefully in balance. Show choir moves — Danny Mefford’s choreography is pitch perfect — punctuate scenes. There’s humor amidst the chaos. Children of the ’90s, enjoy the massage chain moment, that cool-looking blocky “S” we all doodled, the one davenport to rule them all, complete with an afghan on the back. (David Zinn did the evocative set design.)

In “Kimberly Akimbo,” adolescence and New Jersey are types of purgatory. Hope makes them bearable. Ice skating helps. And honesty allows Kim to find what’s next.

Lindsay Christians is the food and culture editor at the Cap Times. She earned a master’s degree in theater research from UW-Madison and has been a member of the American Theatre Critics/Journalists Association since 2007. 

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