It’s not uncommon for theatre productions to cast teenage characters a good bit older, body-swerving labour laws limiting the amount of time a young performer is on stage, and rightly so. At least the audience’s distance, unless you forked out for exxy tickets, allows hand-waving fuzz. When Ben Platt was cast in the Tony Award-winning Broadway run of Dear Evan Hansen, he could just about pass for 20. Not so much when he also played the high schooler in the big screen adaptation while closer to 30.
So if you go in cold to MTC’s latest Tony-festooned Broadway import, Kimberly Akimbo, you might find yourself blinking for a moment at 60-something soprano and musical theatre matriarch Marina Prior doing so. But there’s an in-show explanation. Her titular character, Kimberly Levaco, is an old soul in a 16-year-old’s body, one that’s rapidly aging at four times the normal rate because of a rare genetic condition.
Jaunty opening number ‘Skater Planet’, set at the local ice rink, establishes her outsider status. “It’s Saturday night and I’m the new girl, so I get to start from scratch… Sure, tonight I’m getting looks, but tomorrow they might see me.”
The theys are a quartet of Bergen County, New Jersey, teenagers who look the part: Delia (Allycia Angeles), who secretly fancies Teresa (Alana Iannace), who quietly digs Martin (Marty Alix), who’s pining for Aaron (Jacob Rozario), who in turn only has eyes for Delia.
An adorkably awkward gang, they aren’t in touch with their feelings or the cool kids at school. Instead, they throw their pent-up energies into planning a Dreamgirls school choral tribute – we’ll generously overlook the glaring error that Beyonce’s role in the 2006 film is mentioned despite the show being set in 1999 – to finally one-up their Evita-favouring rivals over at West Orange.
If they don’t notice Kimberly, then tuba-playing rink employee Seth (Darcy Wain) sure does. A kind soul who’s even lower down the popularity competition scales at school, he feels for the new girl when she’s left waiting on a parking lot bench for hours for her loose unit father, Buddy (Nathan O’Keefe). Buddy shows up not-so-fresh from the pub, a turn of events so predictable that Kimberly brings a flask of coffee.
Back home, Kimberly’s mum, Pattie (the magnificent Christie Whelan Browne), is just as otherwise engaged, lounging on the sofa heavily pregnant and with both arms in casts thanks to carpal tunnel surgery. About as subtle as a sledgehammer, Pattie cracks it at Buddy and can’t help herself from hoping aloud her new bub will be “normal,” much to her daughter’s despondency.
Sitting alone in her room, all too keenly aware of her rapidly approaching mortality, Kimberly pens a letter to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, dreaming of a Disney road trip or even just a tree house, though there’s no tree in their yard.
The arrival of scene-stealer extraordinaire Casey Donovan as Kimberly’s reprobate aunt Debra, who Pattie has tried and failed to be estranged from, injects a bundle of anarchic energy into an otherwise treacly sweet show. Recently released from jail, she’s an incurable con artist always looking for her next get-rich-quick-at-any-cost scheme. This time, that’s stealing an entire mailbox to fleece it of pay cheques she can fraudulently claim. Not one to take no for an answer, Debra press gangs all six teenagers into her service, a selfish act that nevertheless brings Seth, who loves an anagram, and Kimberly closer together as they’re tasked with playing a nanna and grandson to cash them in.
Adapted by Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer David Lindsay-Abaire from his straight play of the same name, his book and lyrics are ebulliently effusive. Nevertheless, the show also deals with the everyday stresses of teenage angst, self-doubt, emerging sexuality and the very real fact that life is short. For Kimberly, especially so.
Director Mitchell Butel embraces both this melancholy heart and the show’s boundlessly silly energy, which feels like a radical act of kindness in these increasingly dark days. Playing out against the backdrop of Jonathon Oxlade’s pastel-coloured, Duplo-like set with a hint of retrofuturism that’s lit with a candy floss hue by lighting designer Matt Scott, it’s a hyper-real world of big feels amplified by Ailsa Paterson’s delightfully '90s costumes.
If that date stamp doesn’t play quite as much of a role as it perhaps could, barring the notable lack of mobile phones, it’s a minor quibble in an abundantly joyous affair. Amy Campbell choreographs peppy fun dance numbers, with local music director Kym Purling corralling New Yorker Jeanine Tesori’s upbeat toe-tappers.
Prior soars at Kimberly Akimbo’s vulnerable emotional core. As gifted an actor as Australian stages have ever seen, she easily disappears into the unsure physicality of a teenager up against the very worst but stoically getting on with it, despite the hopeless, if loving in their warped way, adults around her.
On that front, Whelan-Browne brings unexpected pathos to poor form Pattie, melting hearts via home video diaries recorded for her unborn bub, even if Kimberly feels like she’s already been forgotten. A brief brush with the very live debate about ableism-induced fears during pregnancy is only lightly touched on, but lends weight regardless. Donovan delivers every manic beat with just the right amount of mugging as Debra’s suburban scammer, not too wild to sort the other teenagers out on who really digs who in the show’s funniest aside.
All delightful, Kimberly Akimbo’s actually young ensemble seals the deal. You’ll likely get as hopelessly stuck on the show’s charms as Teresa’s face does to a glue trap used for fishing out those stolen cheques. Priceless.
Kimberly Akimbo is showing at Arts Centre Melbourne until August 30. For more information and to book tickets, head to the website.
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