EPISODE 916: THANK YOU, KIMMY, FOR THIS GREAT ADVENTURE
Saying Goodbye to Broadway's Little Show That Could, Kimberly Akimbo
On Sunday Broadway bid goodbye to Kimberly Akimbo, the Jeanine Tesori/David Lindsay-Abaire musical about a 15-year-old Jersey kid trying to navigate family issues, a new high school, her first crush, and the fact that she has a medical condition that causes her to age 4-5 times faster than everyone else.
On the surface, very little about this idea sounded marketable. It’s hard just to get your head around the concept. As I stood in line at TKTS over the weekend, hoping to snag a ticket to the closing weekend, I heard people trying to explain the show to each other, and, as is usually the case, getting it wrong—It’s that Benjamin Button* story. And I watched that same baffled look coming over the others’ faces, part Come again? and part Why are we seeing this?
*Benjamin Button is a 2008 David Fincher film starring Brad Pitt as a guy who is born old and ages backwards, not too fast. Also, it’s kinda creepy.
Kimberly is a story about a kid that’s effectively dying, and her enormously dysfunctional family, but it’s a comedy, and half of the 8-person cast are four other teenagers who have crushes on one another and just want new show choir costumes so they can finally beat their rivals East Orange.
Oh, and the title is not the main character’s full name, but half that and half an anagram which comes up in one of the show’s big songs.
(Wild story about this song: Book and lyrics writer David Lindsay-Abaire loves puzzles; Jeanine Tesori doesn’t understand them at all. As they were thinking about a song here, she asked him to explain how anagrams work. And everything Seth says in the song is literally what Lindsay-Abaire told Tesori.)
So yes, it’s not easy to get your head around.
But this inexplicable little show came to Broadway in November of 2022 after an off-Broadway run the year before. It received fantastic reviews, and ended up winning 5 Tony Awards, including Best Leading Actress, Best Featured Actress, Best Book, Best Score, and Best Musical. It was also nominated for Best Direction, Best Featured Actor, and Best Orchestration. To say it exceeded expectations is an understatement.
For me what’s even more impressive is that it lasted a whole additional year beyond its win. It is not a great time for Broadway shows. At TKTS last weekend, almost every new show on Broadway, including ones that have been very well reviewed, was selling tickets at a steep discount. That’s unheard of.
The fact is, in the last six weeks at least 16 new shows have opened. Illinoise, The Wiz, The Outsiders, Uncle Vanya, Mary Jane, Mother Play, The Notebook, Lempicka, Hell’s Kitchen, Suffs, The Great Gatsby, The Heart of Rock & Roll, The Who’s Tommy, Water for Elephants, Patriots, Enemy of the People. And it seems like they’re basically eating each other’s lunch.
Their sheer numbers aside, it’s also true that the audience numbers are just not where they were pre-pandemic. By all rights a tiny, hard-to-explain show like Kimberly Akimbo should not have been able to hold on for a whole second year. 2022 Best Musical Tony winner A Strange Loop, a gorgeous, emotional show which was similarly small in scale and somewhat hard to explain, opened in April 2022, won the Tony in June, and closed the following January.
David Byrne’s high-profile musical Here Lies Love, which may very well be nominated for Best Musical tomorrow, opened in July of 2023. It closed four months later.
Meanwhile, until yesterday, Kimberly just kept going.
Each time I saw the show, it made me cry. Which makes it sound sad, and it is, kind of. But Kimberly Akimbo is not a Very Special Story about a kid that’s dying (though she is). It’s the story of a child that fights to finally live. The final song “Great Adventure” is about how nothing lasts, and you don’t know when it’ll be taken away, either, so you better enjoy it while you have it. And yet led by a ukelele and infused with fantastic clarinet and sax riffs, it’s celebratory. It feels like a song you’d hear in New Orleans at Mardi Gras, or, even more a propos of Kimberly’s desires, Disneyland.
It’s also a story about facing hard truths. Before she joins her friend Seth Weetis on the road trip she’s always wanted, Kimberly sings to her parents about the thing they’ve never discussed, the truth that has loomed over their whole lives: “I was never the daughter you wanted.”
“There’s always you, there’s always me,” she sings. “And there’s the ghost of the girl I’ll never be.”
In a quietly devastating number, Kimberly invites her parents here and now, before she leaves them, to let go of that ghost. “Just be with me instead. I know I might be dying. But I’m not dead. I’m not dead.”
It’s a deeply upsetting number, but somehow also so cathartic. Who doesn’t live in the shadow of expectations that we have never been able to live up to? To hear Victoria Clark sing it is to realize it’s okay that we can’t. It’s a step toward letting our ghosts go.
There are so many good moments in this show, and so much smart writing. I could go on and on about it. “Hello, Darling”, “Make a Wish,” “How to Wash a Check,” “The Inevitable Turn”…
But really I’m just grateful that this little undescribable wonder exists in the universe, and that I and so many others got to see it on our one and only time around.
Here’s to Kimmy and Seth and all their friends and family, and all of us, on our great adventures.
I’ll be away next weekend, so no Wow next Monday. But I may have something mid-week for subscribers. Keep your eyes peeled!
Have a great week. And here’s the cast doing a Tiny Desk Concert last year (minus Justin Cooley).