“Kimberly Akimbo,” a musical comedy a couple of younger lady with a medical situation that causes fast ageing, will switch to Broadway subsequent fall.
The present, based mostly on a play by David Lindsay-Abaire, had an preliminary Off Broadway run that opened late final yr on the Atlantic Theater Firm, the place it ran by the height of the Omicron surge of the coronavirus and was greeted with robust critiques. Jesse Inexperienced, in The New York Instances, referred to as it “humorous and shifting.”
The musical stars Victoria Clark, a 62-year-old actress enjoying a 15-year-old lady who’s managing not solely her affliction — a situation that limits her life expectancy — but in addition life with a daft household.
“It’s a coming-of-age story, however an uncommon one as a result of the clock is ticking from the get-go,” Clark stated in an interview. “She has a restricted period of time left, and what attracts me to her is her joie, and watching how somebody can triumph who you least count on to succeed.”
Clark, who stars alongside an organization of a lot youthful actors, stated enjoying an adolescent had deeply affected her.
“There’s a boldness and a rawness to adolescence, and on the similar time a stability between holding again and going for it that’s so stunning,” stated Clark, who received a Tony Award in 2005 for “The Gentle within the Piazza.” “This character has taught me the fantastic thing about impulse, and the fantastic thing about being current, and never simply accepting one’s destiny. After the present I simply wished to run and discover everybody I cherished and inform them how a lot they meant to me.”
The present options music by Jeanine Tesori, the Tony-winning composer of “Enjoyable House,” and a e-book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire, who received a Pulitzer Prize for his play “Rabbit Gap.” It’s directed by Jessica Stone, a longtime actress making her Broadway directing debut, and choreographed by Danny Mefford (“Pricey Evan Hansen”).
The Broadway forged will characteristic the identical actors because the Off Broadway manufacturing, together with Steven Boyer (“Hand to God”) and Alli Mauzey (“Cry-Child”) because the protagonist’s mother and father, Bonnie Milligan (“Head Over Heels”) as her aunt, and Justin Cooley making his debut as considered one of her classmates.
“Kimberly Akimbo” is scheduled to start previews on Oct. 12 and to open on Nov. 10 at an unspecified Shubert theater. The lead producer is David Stone, who can also be the lead producer of “Depraved”; different producers embody the actress LaChanze and the theater proprietor James L. Nederlander, in addition to Patrick Catullo, Aaron Glick and the Atlantic Theater Firm.
