Kimberly Akimbo, one of the unlikeliest, most exhilarating and unfailingly moving musicals to hit New York in years, opens on Broadway tonight having lost none of its immense charm since its Off Broadway debut lsat year swept just about every critics award there was to be swept.
Opening tonight at the Booth Theatre with its original Off Broadway cast intact, the miraculous Victoria Clark leading the very fine ensemble, Kimberly Akimbo remains a stunner, a sly, quirky, eccentric work of stage art transformed into a crowd pleaser by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s captivating book and lyrics, Jeanine Tesori’s delightful music that, like Kimberly Akimbo itself, works its way into your heart with a jauntiness that both hides and ultimately amplifies its serious ambitions.
Add to all that a winning group of singing actors, from young newcomers to stage veterans, that work together with an ease and chemistry that’s apparent from the start and only grows in power toward an emotional and thoroughly satisfying end.
Directed by Jessica Stone and choreographed by Danny Mefford, Kimberly Akimbo tells the story of young Kimberly Levaco, a 16-year-old high school student who, due to a rare genetic aging disorder, looks less like her classmates and more like their grandmothers.
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