The Production: Kimberly Akimbo: A Musical by David Lindsay-Abaire.
The Company: Melbourne Theatre Company
The Space: The Playhouse
Runtime: Two and a half hours with an interval
Stars: 4
Until 30 August
This play is being touted as all sweetness and light and happiness. Don't let the advertising fool you.
But it is very good, and as somebody who doesn't like musicals, this one is great. Seriously good.
And I generally don't like musicals.
New Jersey, 1999: from a sea of teen angst, unrequited crushes and popularity contests bursts Kimberly, a musical heroine like no other. Equal parts teen comedy, heist caper and unlikely love story, her rollercoaster journey shows that the tempo of your own song is yours to set. Born with a genetic rarity that means she ages at four times the rate of everyone else, Kimberly is a teen in mid-life form and living on borrowed time. She can cope with her dropkick dad and narcissistic mum – can’t spell ‘dysfunction’ without ‘fun’, right? But when her criminal aunt Debra shows up with a get-rich-quick scheme too good to be legal, Kimberly decides you’re only young once.
You get it? Yeah? Nah.
What the blurb doesn't give is the emotional impact of Kimberly's plight. Marina Prior, who's in her early 60s, plays the teenage Kimberly - who ages at around times the speed of ordinary kids. At 16, her life is coming to an end, and she knows it. Her parents, Buddy (Nathan O'Keefe) is a bumbling, burgeoning alcoholic, with a good heart - but useless. Her very pregnant mother, Pattie (Christie Whelan-Browne is a narcissist. Kimberly has to navigate this, and her disease, in a new school, which she's had thrust upon her after the family had to move in cagey circumstances.
Things do get better. She befriends Seth (Darcy Wain) the funny, nerdy kid who appears to get Kimberly. The other kids at school - the Glee Club kids also take her under her wing.
It's when her Aunt Debra (Casey Donovan) turns up, a Captain Chaos to the max, that things get interesting. Aunt Debra is the family member you'd wish would stay away. She's fabulous.
This musical is different to others. It looks at family, mortality and fitting in despite the odds.
The performances in this are incredible. Marina Prior is pitch perfect as the sensible, ailing Kimberly. Nathan O'Keefe and Christie Whelan Browne hysterical as her gormless and tortured parents. Casey Donovan steals the show as Aunt Debra. She's a scream. Her musical comedy chops will be around for years. I also loved the geeky Seth and the Glee club kids.
Mitch Butel's direction makes sure that nothing is left to chance. It flows from scene to scene without missing a beat, measuring the undertones of sadness with the humour of the situation at hand. The set, the costumes and the dancing are all phenomenal.
This has a week to run at the Playhouse. It's money well spent. Fun, intelligent, entertaining theatre. What more do you want?
Kudos to the Melbourne Theatre Company for bringing this unknown but widely lauded show to this city.
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