Theatre review: Kimberly Akimbo

A multiple Tony-winner gets a comparatively low-key European premiere as David Lindsay-Abaire (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori's (music) Kimberly Akimbo opens at Hampstead Theatre in Michael Longhurst's glossy but intimate production. The title character turns 16 during the course of the story but she's played by 66-year-old Maria Friedman because Kimberly Levaco has a rare, unspecified genetic disorder that makes her age at 4-5 times the normal rate. And 16 is the average life expectancy of someone with her condition, so she has to deal with her own mortality at the same time as social awkwardness and first romances because she doesn't have long left. But rather than rest on what could be a rather maudlin subject, Lindsay-Abaire and Tesori have instead surrounded Kimberly with an anarchic family life that doesn't shy away from some darker moments but is also full of comedy and ridiculous adventures.

So her parents, the alcoholic Buddy (Peter Hannah) and narcissistic Pattie (Niamh Perry) have abruptly moved the family to New Jersey and cut ties with their former life - they're cagey about the details but it seems to involve fleeing Pattie's criminal sister Debra.

But Aunt Debra (Alice Fearn) still manages to track them down, and soon she's got Kimberly and her new school crush Seth (Gilli Jones) caught up in a cheque fraud scheme. Sara Hajizadeh, Ronav Jain, Robin Simões Da Silva and Aviva Tulley complete the cast as the school's showchoir, who provide a chorus, accomplices and a tangle of unrequited teenage longing of their own.

Friedman is an elfin heart to the show, managing to convey the contradiction of someone who's simultaneously grandma and giddy teenager, the underlying sadness of the child who knows her time's nearly up always present but never overwhelming the mischievous enthusiasm. The show also refuses to pick a lane and that's what makes it work - its unapologetic messiness (down to being nominally set in the '90s but not really doing anything with that setting) is its charm.

So we do get those dark moments, particularly when Kimberly's essentially loving but deeply flawed parents make thoughtless comments about their daughter's condition, with Pattie heavily pregnant with a second child that's pretty much openly hoped to be a "better" replacement for the one that's soon to die. For all that their good intentions are doomed though, they are always meant genuinely at the start.

Debra is potentially a harmful influence but she's played much lighter, as a comic Lord of Misrule dragging a bunch of kids into her dodgy schemes so they can fund Dreamgirls outfits for a choir competition (although how exactly the cheque fraud scheme is meant to work when it leaves a paper trail with Seth's name all over it is beyond me.)

The kids themselves are the most unambiguously sweet element of the show - leaving out completely anyone who might make Kimberly's school life miserable we just get the other misfits, including the choir none of whose sexualities align with the person who fancies them, a running gag that gets a great, blunt payoff from Debra. And the show sells its central premise so well there's no sense of ickiness to the casting, making you actively ship Friedman's premature septuagenarian with Jones' geeky heartthrob.

Soutra Gilmour's bulky, three-level design is clearly designed for a hoped-for transfer somewhere bigger and can overwhelm the Hampstead stage at times, but I did like how low- key the rest of Longhurst's production is. Even if it takes a couple of songs for the sound levels to quite let the vocals become clear, I liked the way it avoided the ubiquitous Broadway vocal histrionics. Putting the focus on fun, it doesn't try to hard to be moving, which is ultimately why it is.

Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori is booking until the 7th of November at Hampstead Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.