Carolee Carmello and Miguel Gil Photo by Joan Marcus

Kimberly Akimbo took home the 2023 Tony Award for Best Musical, Best Original Score (music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire), and Best Book for a Musical (Lindsay-Abaire, based on his 2001 same-titled play). The national tour, spending the week at the Orpheum in Minneapolis, launched last September in Denver after a two-day tryout in Utica, New York. Any concerns about the tour becoming stale can be easily cast away. The production is brimming with vitality and the cast delivers a commitment to the characters and story. Eight of the nine cast members have been with the tour from its start, including three-time Tony nominee Carolee Carmello in the title role. On top of that, four of the cast members were standbys or understudies in the original Broadway production.

The musical began life Off-Broadway in 2021 and moved to Broadway in Fall 2022. It was welcomed as an off-kilter tale of characters whose lives are, shall we say, askew. Its unlikely but totally lovable heroine is Kimberly Levaco, a high school student who turns 16 in the course of the show. Kimberly was born with a rare disease that causes her body to age four to five years for every calendar year that passes, meaning, that as a 16-year-old, her body has the features and suffers the maladies of a 72-year-old. She and her parents, Buddy and Pattie, just moved from one suburban town in Bergen County, New Jersey to another, though numerous hints make it evident they didn't merely move from their former home, they fled.

Kimberly is the result of Pattie getting pregnant when she and Buddy were still in high school. Pattie is pregnant again and temporarily disabled, having had carpal tunnel surgery on both her hands in order to have the manual dexterity to take care of the baby. She and Buddy desperately hope this baby will be normal–which they callously mention in front of Kimberly. Buddy works at a gas station and spends most of his free time drinking at a bar. At home, he and Pattie mostly bicker. He makes kindhearted promises to Kimberly, but his inevitable failure to keep them only sinks her morale more deeply. In spite of her affliction and her parents' shortcomings, Kimberly tries to make the best of her lot.

This is more easily said than done. Being the new kid is tough enough for a high school student, without standing out among her peers by looking as old as their grandparents. She is grateful for the attention given to her by Seth, a classmate who has family issues and quirks of his own, including an obsessive (though adorable) passion for anagrams. The two become good friends and gain acceptance from a circle of four show choir kids who hang out together while trying to sort out their romantic inclinations. These four are, themselves, outside the social core of the high school pecking order, just not as far outside as Kimberly and Seth. Among its many virtues, Kimberly Akimbo will easily cure anyone of excessive nostalgia for high school.

Everyone's lives are upended by the arrival of Kimberly's Aunt Debra, a walking disaster with a foul mouth, total lack of personal boundaries, arrest record, and psychopathic attitude toward petty (and not so petty) crime and the thought of working for a living. The plot developments from here would be horrifying if they weren't so funny and conveyed with such ironic nonchalance.

Kimberly Akimbo is a small show, without an ensemble to flesh out song and dance numbers. Being so small of scale, it is natural to fear that its intimacy would be lost in a cavernous touring house like the Orpheum, with a 2,579-seating capacity–especially given that on Broadway, it played the Booth, with an amiable capacity of around 800. Yet the show's vast heart manages to fill the stage, along with David Zinn's ingenious set design, and the show never feels too small for its venue. This is especially the case in ice-skating rink scenes, where the open space feels essential.

Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire's songs are written to dovetail beautifully with their place in the narrative; they feel more like musical storytelling than songs, with a fantastic Act I closer, "This Time," that encapsulates everyone's hopes for Act II. Lindsay-Abaire's book, with just minor changes to his original play and the addition of four supporting characters, is ingenious and hilarious, and, in spite of the far-fetched narrative, contains an interior logic that allows it to all make sense.

Carolee Carmello is marvelous as Kimberly, delivering the feistiness of any normal sixteen-year-old challenging parental authority, only in her case, with so much more reason to do so. She ably shows Kimberly's determination to overcome the fragility of repeatedly hurt feelings. Throughout the show, Carmello shows us the storm of feelings ricocheting within Kimberly's mind. She expresses her yearning for a better life in the touching "Make a Wish." When her schoolmates look forward to getting older, leaving their teenage woes behind, Carmello's Kimberly explodes with terror and anger, acknowledging her own tragically brief timeline. Not to be overlooked, Carmello has one of the most beautiful voices in musical theater today.

Miguel Gil is terrific as Seth (a role Gil understudied on Broadway), a teenager easily cast aside as the "weird kid" by peers. Gil conveys Seth's self-awareness regarding his status and his survivor-smart mechanisms for sidestepping those indignities. His enthusiasm for making an "Anagram" for the name Kimberly Levaco wins over Kimberly's closely guarded heart, winning over the audience at the same time. I am not sure I have ever seen a more loveable male ingenue character, and Gil plays "innocent" with the aplomb of an experienced master, adding depth when pondering his journey through life as the "Good Kid." In the closing scene, Carmello and Gil together conjure the joy in living every day to the fullest, facing life as a "Great Adventure."

Laura Woyasz captures the humor as well as the pathos as Pattie, a totally inept–if not abusive–parent itching for another shot at the gig, showing potential however slight, in the lovely "Father Time" that gives us a sample of Woyasz' great voice. Jim Hogan (who was standby for the role on Broadway) is terrific as Buddy, Kimberly's careless, dim-witted father, who could be well-meaning, but lacks the self-control to put anyone else's needs ahead of his own impulses. When he sees, for the first time, a boy showing interest in his daughter, his total failure to be "Happy for Her" is a tour de-force.

Emily Koch is hilarious as Aunt Debra, utterly droll as she serves up one appalling sentiment or scheme after another. She shows fabulous moxie corralling the six high schoolers into her nefarious plot ("How to Wash a Check"), having already tapped into their teenaged angst by suggesting that they could stand to make their "shitty lives better." The show choir kids are played by Grace Capeless, Sky Alyssa Friedman, Darron Hayes, and Pierce Wheeler, all giving wonderful performances that capture the zeitgeist of teenage-hood, including their besotted, though misguided, romantic attachments and fledgling ambitions.

There is not a great deal of dancing in Kimberly Akimbo, but what there is, is devised with wit by choreographer Danny Mefford and includes making good use of the skating rink setting. Leigh Delano conducts the eight-member orchestra to deliver the score with a fresh, vibrant sound. Sarah Laux's costumes are well matched to the every day lives of these nine characters, Jeanette Oi-Su Yew's lighting design works effectively, and Kai Harada contributes some uniquely appropriate sound bits, including the sound of a U.S. regulation mailbox being dragged down a flight of basement stairs (don't ask!).

The whole package, from top to bottom, is delivered with consistent flair by director Jessica Stone, drawing out Kimberly Akimbo's riotous laugh-out-loud humor and its poignancy in equal measure, so that the musical, small as it is, feels like a full and richly satisfying entertainment package.

Kimberly Akimbo runs through July 13, 2025, at the Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis MN. For tickets and information, please call 612-339-7007 or visit hennepintheatretrust.org. For information on the tour, visit kimberlyakimbothemusical.com/.

Book and Lyrics: David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his play; Music: Jeanine Tesori; Director: Jessica Stone; Choreographer: Danny Mefford; Music Supervisor: Chris Fenwick; Scenic Design: David Zinn; Costume Design: Sarah Laux; Lighting Design: Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew; Sound Design: Kai Harada; Video Design: Kai Harada; Hair, Wig and Makeup Design: J. Jared Janas; Orchestrations: John Clancy; Additional Orchestrations: Macy Schmidt; Music Coordinator: Antoine Silverman; Music Director/ Conductor: Leigh Delano; Casting: The Telsey Office, Craig Burns, CSA; Production Stage Manager: Shawn Pennington

Cast: Grace Capeless (Delia), Carolee Carmello (Kimberly), Skye Alyssa Friedman (Teresa), Miguel Gil (Seth), Darron Hayes (Martin), Jim Hogan (Buddy), Emily Koch (Debra), Pierce Wheeler (Aaron), Laura Woyasz (Pattie).