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.

Theatre review: Then, Now & Next

With the new Elephant venue already feeling well-established, it feels like ages since I went back to the Borough building that's been Southwark Playhouse's home for the last decade (I can only take so many Macbeths, OK?) But not all the new musicals have been shipped to the new venue, and The Large premieres Then, Now & Next, a first venture into writing for current Phantom Jon Robyns, and fellow musical theatre actor Christopher J Orton (book, music and lyrics.) It is, needless to say, a lockdown project, the two actors having decided to make a more serious attempt at an idea they'd toyed with when they were in Spamalot together. The result is a low-key chamber musical about Alex (Alice Fearn) and the most serious relationships of her twenties and thirties. We meet her with Peter (Peter Hannah,) with whom she has a young son.