Ann Morrison, Marcus Phillips, and Jim Hogan Photo by Joan Marcus

While it seems to be true that none of us get a second time around, sometimes great shows do, as is the case with Kimberly Akimbo. The national tour played just last summer at the Orpheum in Minneapolis, but only stayed a week. Great news: the show is back, this time at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, giving St. Paul's prime touring house equal time. If you missed it the first time, you have another chance to catch it, if you act quickly. If you caught it last time, I won't be at all surprised if you go back for a second serving. I did, and found it just as delightfully askew and marvelously staged as before.

Kimberly Akimbo is the 2023 Tony Award Best Musical winner and scored Tony awards for Best Book (David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his 2001 play), Best Score (Lindsay-Abaire did the lyrics, and Jeanine Tesori composed the music), and two of its cast members, Victoria Clark and Bonnie Milligan. It is set in New Jersey's suburban Bergen County, in a landscape as undistinguished and uninspiring as any other suburb from coast to coast, but populates that setting with nine distinctive characters who make the show inordinately interesting and fun.

Kimberly Levaco is a sixteen-year-old with an extremely rare (but real) disease that causes the body to age four-five years for every year actually lived. In Kimberly's case, that means she has the personality and interests of a sixteen-year-old, but the body of someone between 64 and 80. She also is the wisest of all the characters, including her pregnant mother Pattie, her alcoholic father Buddy (both total narcissists), and her Aunt Debra, Pattie's younger sister who shows up uninvited with a criminal record and plans for another risky con-scheme.

The Levacos have recently moved to their Bergen County home from Lodi, New Jersey–though there are strong hints from early on that what they did was more "flee" than merely "move" from Lodi. This makes Kimberly the "new kid," which is tough enough for any high schooler, let alone one who stands out by looking as old as the other kids' grandparents. She is grateful for the attention given to her by Seth, a classmate with family issues and quirks of his own, including an obsessive (though adorable) passion for anagrams. The two become good friends.

Kimberly and Seth fall in with a circle of four show choir kids who hang out together while trying to sort out their romantic inclinations. These four are outside the social core of their high school, just not as far outside as Kimberly and Seth. Among its many virtues, Kimberly Akimbo will cure anyone of excessive nostalgia for the social pecking order of high school. For now, their biggest worry is how to pay for costumes so they can beat West Orange in the show choir competition.

This congregation of terminally ill, dysfunctional, confused, and criminal individuals would seem to make for a grim evening, but they couldn't be better company. Lindsay-Abaire's book, with several changes to his original play and the addition of four supporting characters, is ingenious and hilarious. In spite of the far-fetched narrative, it contains an interior logic that allows it to all make sense. The character-driven songs dovetail beautifully with their place in the narrative and feel more like musical storytelling than songs. The fantastic Act I closer, "This Time," (joyously set in a roller-skating rink), encapsulates everyone's hopes for Act II, including the audience's hopes for the motley crew on stage.

Of the nine cast members, six were in the company when the tour visited last year (four of them have been with the show since the tour launched in September 2024, and of those, three understudied their roles on Broadway), which is to say, this is a tight company who know their characters and has great chemistry together.

Most notable of the newcomers is Ann Morrison, as Kimberly, and she is wonderful. She has a beautiful singing voice that carries a touch of longing in every note, and totally conveys the emotional turmoil of a 16-year-old, tagged to the faltering body of a senior citizen. She wins us completely early on in her letter to the "Make a Wish" Foundation and soon after, opens her generous heart in "Anagram," the most brilliant of Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire's songs for the show. Morrison is best known for her performance of Mary Flynn, one the three leads in the original production of the short-lived, but legendary Stephen Sondheim musical Merrily We Roll Along in 1983. In that show she played a middle-aged woman who ages backward in time, to the cusp of adulthood, while here she is a young person whose body has traveled forward in time. This might be considered a bit of irony, which works in a show that winks with irony from start to finish.

Also new to the cast is Marcus Phillips, as Seth. Phillips's Seth is a winning, earnest, completely likeable character who balances sadness with a touching optimism. Phillips sings well and is especially moving in pondering his next steps after always playing the part of the "Good Kid," he is a hoot fumbling over letter combinations as Morrison sings "Anagrams," and the two are very touching together as they accept their prospects of happiness in "Now."

Emily Koch, who has been with the tour from its start, remains hilarious as Debra. She is 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 teen angst by stating, in song, that they need to make their "shitty lives better." We need to believe that, bizarre as she is, Debra thinks everything she does makes perfect sense, and Koch pulls it off. The show choir kids are played by Sky Alyssa Friedman, Darron Hayes, Gabby Beredo, and Max Santopietero, all giving delightful performances that capture the zeitgeist of teenage-hood, including their besotted, though misguided, romantic attachments and fledgling ambitions.

Laura Woyasz and Jim Hogan are both returnees from Kimberly's last visit. Woyasz again captures both the humor and the pathos as very pregnant Pattie, a total failure at parenting Kimberly but itching for another shot at the gig. She shows potential, however slight, in the lovely "Father Time," a number that shows off Woyasz' great voice. Jim Hogan remains terrific as Kimberly's careless, dim-witted dad, Buddy, who may 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 show interest in his daughter, his total failure to be "Happy for Her" is a tour de-force.

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. Ryan Edward Wise conducts the eight-member orchestra to deliver the score's fresh, vibrant sound. Sarah Laux's costumes are well matched to the everyday lives of the 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 though it may be, provides a full and richly satisfying entertainment package.

Kimberly Akimbo runs through March 1, 2026, at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, 345 Washington Street, Saint Paul MN. For tickets and information, please call 651-224-4222 or visit www.ordway.org. For information on the tour, visit www.kimberlyakimbotour.com.

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

Cast: Gabby Beredo (Delia), Skye Alyssa Friedman (Teresa), Darron Hayes (Martin), Jim Hogan (Buddy), Emily Koch (Debra), Ann Morrison (Kimberly), Marcus Phillips (Seth), Max Santopietro (Aaron), Laura Woyasz (Pattie). Reviewed by Arty Dorman--