{"id":2277856,"date":"2026-02-11T20:25:25","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T20:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2277856"},"modified":"2026-02-11T20:25:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T20:25:25","slug":"musical-kimberly-akimbo-embraces-the-awkward-with-jazz-hands-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/musical-kimberly-akimbo-embraces-the-awkward-with-jazz-hands-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Musical ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ embraces the awkward, with jazz hands | Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Never have I ever seen a musical set in a high school with as much cringe as \u201cKimberly Akimbo.\u201d<\/p>\n

To paraphrase John Denver<\/a>, 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 \u2014 he speaks Elvish and plays the tuba \u2014 works the desk because his \u201cankles tend to roll.\u201d<\/p>\n

New girl Kim is as gawky and earnest as the rest, with one key difference. A rare genetic disease means she\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n

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The national touring cast of the musical “Kimberly Akimbo” stops in Madison Feb. 10-15.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cKimberly Akimbo\u201d won the Best Musical Tony Award in 2023, an arguably weak post-COVID year (among the competition were the corny comedy \u201cShucked,\u201d the jukebox show \u201c& Juliet\u201d and the newly remade \u201cSome Like It Hot\u201d). Jessica Stone directs the national tour, which opened in fall 2024. It stops in Madison this week, playing Overture Hall through Feb. 15.<\/p>\n

Composer Jeanine Tesori (\u201cFun Home\u201d) and playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (\u201cGood People\u201d) hadn\u2019t teamed up on a musical since \u201cShrek.\u201d \u201cKimberly Akimbo\u201d shares some of that show\u2019s lively musicality \u2014 these are tunes you\u2019re likely to hum on the way home \u2014 and skewed sense of humor.<\/p>\n

Ann Morrison, as Kim, clips her sentences and stands stiffly, as though she doesn\u2019t know how to hold herself. Perhaps in part because of her appearance, Kim has been thoroughly parentified<\/a> by both of her actual parents: Pattie (Laura Woyasz), a pregnant, self-obsessed hypochondriac, and Buddy (Jim Hogan), a fumbling drunk.<\/p>\n

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Kimberly (Ann Morrison), Seth (Marcus Phillips) and Kimberly’s dad Buddy (Jim Hogan) go for a precarious drive in “Kimberly Akimbo.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Theirs is a chaotic family. Midway through Act I, Kim\u2019s 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\u2019s going to teach some show choir kids how to do check fraud. \u00a0<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 adults playing kids is always a little weird \u2014 but she finds both the vulnerability and the joy in it.<\/p>\n

Among the rest of the cast, Marcus Phillips has an intense, manic energy as Seth, Kim\u2019s puzzle-loving new friend. And Koch is a standout as Debra, channeling unjustified, untouchable confidence. Exasperated by the show choir\u2019s unrequited love quartet, Debra does a little \u201cduck, duck, goose\u201d with them: \u201cgay, straight, gay, straight. I just saved you two years of therapy.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

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Kim (Ann Morrison) and Seth (Marcus Phillips) explore a friendship in “Kimberly Akimbo.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n JOAN MARCUS<\/span>
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Kim\u2019s disease may not be entirely real, but the emotional moments in \u201cKimberly Akimbo\u201d are. \u201cThis Time,\u201d a song about people who intend to do better and believe they can change, could be gutting for anyone who\u2019s loved (or been) someone dealing with addiction. \u201cThe Inevitable Turn,\u201d about precarious peace at the family dinner table, sounds taken straight from life.<\/p>\n

Director Jessica Stone keeps \u201cKimberly Akimbo\u201d carefully in balance. Show choir moves \u2014 Danny Mefford\u2019s choreography is pitch perfect \u2014 punctuate scenes. There\u2019s humor amidst the chaos. Children of the \u201990s, enjoy the massage chain moment, that cool-looking blocky \u201cS<\/a>\u201d we all doodled, the one davenport to rule them all, complete with an afghan on the back. (David Zinn did the evocative set design.)<\/p>\n

In \u201cKimberly Akimbo,\u201d adolescence and New Jersey are types of purgatory. Hope makes them bearable. Ice skating helps. And honesty allows Kim to find what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Lindsay Christians<\/a>\u00a0is 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.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Email story ideas and tips to Lindsay at\u00a0lchristians@captimes.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please consider supporting Lindsay\u2019s work by becoming a\u00a0Cap Times member<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0sponsor<\/a>. Sustaining local journalism in Madison depends on readers like you.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source captimes.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Never have I ever seen a musical set in a high school with as much cringe as \u201cKimberly Akimbo.\u201d 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 \u2014 he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2277857,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[348091],"class_list":["post-2277856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-arts-and-theatre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Musical-Kimberly-Akimbo-embraces-the-awkward-with-jazz-hands.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2277856"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2277858,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2277856\/revisions\/2277858"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2277857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2277856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2277856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2277856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}