Carolee Carmello Photo by Joan Marcus

Did I mention that this is a comedy? Lest there are any doubts, let me be clear: It is, and it's hilarious.

Written by David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his own play, and featuring music by Jeanine Tesori (Fun Home), this musical tells the story of Kimberly, who lives with a disease similar to progeria that causes her body to show symptoms of aging at a vastly accelerated rate: four years for every one. At sixteen, then, she has the body of a woman in her sixties, but the mind of a teenager. (Progeria is quite real, though it goes unnamed in the show due to the playwright's taking some liberties with the symptoms.)

Carolee Carmelo plays the title role in the touring production, now at CIBC Theatre, and she finds ways to connect on every emotional level. Knowing that she is not at all what her parents wanted or expected, Kimberly lives her life on tenterhooks: she yearns to be a kid but has to face both impending death–very few with this disease live past her current age–and her parents' disappointment, which they don't do a great job of hiding. Carmelo hits this complicated set of simultaneous emotions out of the park. One minute she is in school finding herself the object of a quirky boy's attention without knowing what to do with that; the next she is at home navigating the choppy seas of her father's alcoholic depression and her mother's abdication of reality, knowing that her diagnosis was the inciting incident that destroyed both of their dreams and doomed her.

That's a lot for a sixteen-year-old to carry. To her credit, Kimberly tries hard to do so and not to blame her parents for their reactions to an outrageous fate. She gets along well with her classmates–four of whom are a kind of Greek chorus here, aided by the fact that they are all in show choir–and she gets good grades despite having every reason just to give up. And when that quirky boy–Miguel Gil as Seth, an oboe player who knows everything about "The Lord of the Rings" and spends a lot of his time creating anagrams when he isn't working in the local skating rink (one of the settings here)–shows an interest, she discovers love for the first time in her life.

Her family is not exactly a model for living: Jim Hogan makes a multi-level human being out of what could have been mere caricature as her father, Buddy. He always has a beer in his hand and is routinely very late for pretty much everything. Her mother, played by Laura Woyasz, may be pregnant but acts as if she is the child here. And her Aunt Debra (Emily Koch) is a literal criminal who never has met a scam she could turn down. Her current one involves a convoluted scheme to cash fraudulent checks that begins with the absurd scene of her stealing a postal box and carrying it into the basement of her sister's house. The rest of her plot, which involves Kimberly and her friends, is laid out in a song called "How to Wash a Check." Of course it is; this is a musical, after all.

In fact, it is a musical full of very strong songs sung by various combinations of these strong-voiced actors. I was particularly moved by "Good Kid," Seth's lament to his own life spent doing the things society considers good while missing a lot of life's joys, and Buddy's "Happy For Her," as well as "Our Disease," sung by the classmates while making presentations about a chosen disease. (Yes, Kimberly takes a very unlikely risk for a shy teen by singing about her own life.)

The staging comes straight from Broadway, with Jessica Stone reprising her role as director and Danny Mefford once again handling the choreography, most of which involves the "chorus," played by Grace Capeless, Skye Alyssa Friedman, Darron Hayes, and Pierce Wheeler, who steal the show every chance they get (even before they get costumes bedecked with blue sequins from designer Sarah Laux).

Kimberly Akimbo could have been a downer, but Lindsay-Abaire mines the plot for every bit of joy and love and humor he can find. A sixteen-year-old girl may be dying, but not before life brings her a "Great Adventure" that makes her (and the audience) smile with happiness.

Kimberly Akimbo runs through June 22, 2025, at CIBC Theatre, 18. W. Monroe Chicago IL. For tickets and information, please visit www.broadwayinchicago.com/shows/kimberly-akimbo/. For information on the tour, visit https://kimberlyakimbothemusical.com.