So, how well will the musical Kimberly Akimbo play in Peoria?
And by “play,” I reference the vaudeville-era idiom questioning whether a product or political candidate will be accepted or popular with the general, mainstream public in an average American place like Peoria. And by “Peoria,” I mean Providence.
Not well, it would seem, considering that the product in question is a musical about a 15-year-old girl (Ann Morrison) with an incurable genetic disease that will likely cause her to die by the time she is 16 or 17.
Kimberly has the thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl, but the features and body of a 60-year-old woman. The trials and tribulations of being a teenager can feel like matters of life and death to said teens, but for the title character in this musical, they literally are. She also has to deal with a Greek chorus of schoolmates trying to reconcile their adolescent angst with the problems she has to deal with. Add to the equation Kimberly’s dysfunctional family – a self-absorbed and clueless mom (Laura Woyasz), an alcoholic and underachieving dad (Jim Hogan), and a chronically criminal aunt (Emily Koch).
In short, terminal illness is a tough sell. Look no further than the musical You Will Get Sick, which lasted two months off-Broadway in 2022 after a world premiere ironically delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The thing is, Kimberly Akimbo was developed at the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, one of American theater’s premiere new-work incubation centers. It helped create the highly successful and award-winning Angels in America, Fun Home, Spring Awakening, The Laramie Project, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, and The Light in the Piazza, among others.
And it is based on a play by David Lindsay-Abaire, who won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. This musical also boasts a score composed by Jeanine Tesori, who won a Tony Award for Fun Home and has been nominated for four more.
Kimberly Akimbo transferred to Broadway in 2022 after an acclaimed run at the Atlantic Theater Company. It beguiled New York critics as well, where it was named Best Musical by the Tony Awards, New York Drama Critics Circle, The Drama Desk Awards, The Lucille Lortel Awards, and The Outer Critics Circle Awards. The show was also the winner of four additional Tony Awards: Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical, Best Score, and Best Book.
So, chances are good it will play well in Peoria, though it never actually has.
The national tour of this show launched in September 2024, where it initially covered 60 cities across North America. The closest the tour came to actual Peoria was Chicago at the CIBC Theatre, where Tribune theater critic Chris Jones wrote: “I greatly enjoyed Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway and this first national tour is in excellent shape.” Jones, who is a self-admitted Tesori fan, found the music in this musical to be exceptional and noted that the score “makes no easy choices,” reflective of the show’s complex emotional landscape.
This is particularly true regarding the lesson the sensitive and upbeat Kimberly wishes to share with others, as expressed in the final musical number “Great Adventure.” There, she sings that we’re all “sailing to a distant shore,” so “just enjoy the view, because no one gets a second time around.”
The musical has also not yet made it to Providence, but it did come through nearby Boston’s Emerson Colonial Theatre a year ago. The Boston Globe’s Don Aucoin reported that Kimberly Akimbo is “funny and heart-piercing by turns, managing to both entertain and move us, and generally achieve an emotional richness that, crucially, stops short of mawkishness.”
In an earlier Motif preview, it was noted that musicals centering around outsiders seemed to be all the rage in this season’s touring productions at the Providence Performing Arts Center. They include The Outsiders (about three orphaned brothers who are members of street gang consisting of have-nots in a neighborhood ruled by a gang of haves), Wicked (about an ostracized women with green skin), and Suffs (featuring women as second-class citizens with no right to vote).
Coming soon to PPAC, Kimberly Akimbo is the poster child for outsider-centric musicals, particularly since a grown woman is playing a child.
Kimberly Akimbo runs from May 5 – 10 at the Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset St, PVD. Contact ppacri.org or 401-421-2787 for tickets, $54 – $96, including fees.Bob Abelman is an award-winning theater critic who also writes for The Boston Globe. Connect with him on Facebook.
