‘We all have an expiry date’: Kimberly Akimbo, the achingly funny musical about a teen with a 64-year-old body — SkimNews
Get the Culture newsletter
Daily culture — film, music, books, the trends and ideas worth your attention. Free.
- Kimberly Akimbo, adapted by Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire from his play, follows a teen with a rare genetic condition causing her to age four times faster than normal; the original New York production was the biggest winner of the 2023 Tony Awards.
- Maria Friedman, 66, stars as 16-year-old Kimberly in the London production at Hampstead Theatre (running until 7 November); Tesori said Friedman 'has such a bright young energy' that 'she doesn't have to do anything to play 16.'
- Jeanine Tesori traced Kimberly's father-daughter storyline to her own late father — 'a very complicated man: a man of science who really wanted to be a fisherman' — and her chaotic Italian-American upbringing, including a sister who recently stole a picnic table from a park 'in broad daylight.'
- Tesori's catalogue spans Broadway (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Shrek), politically charged musicals (Soft Power, Caroline, or Change), and the chamber piece Fun Home, whose first UK production this summer at Manchester's Royal Exchange was directed by Sarah Frankcom, who called it 'a masterpiece.'
- Tesori pushed back on Andrew Lloyd Webber's recent claim that Broadway is 'in dire danger,' calling its capitalisation 'scary' but adding that she has 'always heard this chorus of Broadway's in trouble, but for different reasons.'
- Tesori typically juggles three to four projects at once and recently travelled to Naples for research, telling the Guardian she won't take on anything she can't commit five concentrated years to: 'If I don't understand it, I can't say yes to it.'
Why it matters: Kimberly Akimbo's Hampstead run until 7 November gives UK audiences their first staging of the 2023 Tony Awards' top winner, with the unusual casting of 66-year-old Friedman as a teenager that Tesori credits to innate energy rather than technique. Tesori also used the rehearsal visit to publicly counter Lloyd Webber's 'dire danger' framing of Broadway, arguing the industry has cycled through similar panics across her career.
Ask SkimNews
