“Kimberly Akimbo,” winner of the 2023 Tony Award for Best Musical, has confirmed that it will play its final performance at the Booth Theatre on April 28, giving theatergoers a four month final warning to check it out.
Notably, the show’s entire original cast (dating back to its Off-Broadway premiere in the fall of 2021) is still with the production and will remain together through the final performance.
The production, which will have had a longer run than the 2022 Tony Award winner for Best Musical (“A Strange Loop”) and most other new musicals from last season (including “Some Like It Hot” and “Shucked”), has nevertheless performed only modestly at the box office throughout its run.
Based on David Lindsay-Abaire’s 2000 dark comedy of the same name, with music by Jeanine Tesori and book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire, “Kimberly Akimbo” depicts a 16-year-old girl (played by Victoria Clark, who won a Tony Award for her performance) who looks like a 64-year-old woman due an extremely rarely medical condition that causes extreme age acceleration.
It is a feel-good show that acknowledges feelings of heartbreak, nausea, and discord. It brings to mind the 2015 musical “Fun Home,” which also has music by Tesori, is based on unlikely source material, explores an unconventional family and pained adolescence, and won the Tony Award for Best Musical.
For Clark, who previously won a Tony in 2005 for “The Light in the Piazza,” it offered a second role of a lifetime.
Her performance as Kimberly is vulnerable, textured, and totally believable under unbelievable circumstances. Alli Mauzey and Steven Boyer (who play Kimberly’s dysfunctional parents), and Bonnie Milligan (who won a Tony for her performance as Kimberly’s outrageous aunt) give expert comic performances, while Justin Cooley (as Kimberly’s friend) is disarmingly sincere.
‘Sunset Boulevard’ returning
An acclaimed experimental London revival of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Sunset Boulevard” directed by Jamie Lloyd (“A Doll’s House,” “Betrayal”) will transfer to Broadway later this year, with Nicole Scherzinger (of the Pussycat Dolls) reprising her performance as the faded silent screen diva Norma Desmond.
In the London production, Tom Francis (who will reprise his performance as screenwriter Joe Gillis on Broadway) performed much of the title song from on a street outside the theater (while being trailed by a video camera), eventually making his way into the theater. One expects that Francis will soon be breaking into song on Eighth Avenue.
This will mark the musical’s second Broadway revival, following a 2017 concert-style production in which Glenn Close returned to the role of Desmond. The original 1994 Broadway production of “Sunset Boulevard” remains notorious over how Patti LuPone, who originated the role of Norma in London, was replaced by Close. (For more details, check out “Patti LuPone: A Memoir.”)
COVID outbreaks hit two shows
Remember two years ago when a resurge in COVID infections due to the Omnicron variant caused numerous Broadway productions to cancel performances during the holidays due to a lack of available cast and crew members? Last week, two new shows, “How to Dance in Ohio” and “Appropriate,” canceled single performances due to illness. (New shows tend to have less understudies and standbys readily available.)
Since last year, Broadway shows have stopped requiring cast and crew members to be tested for COVID on a regular basis.
