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With the Tony Award nominations coming in early May, I would like to discuss two deserving candidates. You never know what those Tony voters are going to do—almost thirty years later, I’m still reeling over the way they picked local favorite Terrence McNally and his Love! Valor! Compassion! over Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, one of the greatest plays written in English—but I suspect that they will want to acknowledge both of the shows I’m highlighting today. Honestly, I love good theater in every form. I’ll gladly drive a couple of hours to see Taylor Mack’s zany Hir at Woolly Mammoth. I’ll ride the train to the darker reaches of London to watch The Yorkshire Play, one of the so-called Shakespearean apocrypha. I’ll happily buy a ticket to see the Chatham, Massachusetts, community troupe mount No Sex Please, We’re British. I’ll fight the D.C. traffic and parking hassles to see Caryl Churchill’s Far Away at Studio Theatre. And I’ll live-stream Between Riverside and Crazy and Shakespeare’s The Tempest if I can’t make it to the theater. But sometimes what I really crave is the thespian equivalent of a hot-fudge sundae, and when that craving comes, the only way to satisfy it is with a Broadway musical.
So a month ago I saw Kimberly Akimbo, a musical adaptation of David Lindsay-Abaire’s play of the same name. As Broadway musicals go, it’s a small chamber piece with a total of nine performers in the cast. Lindsay-Abaire provided the book and lyrics, and Jeanine Tesori wrote the music. If you know Lindsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers, then you know he has a quirky but compassionate sensibility. One of the characters in Fuddy Meers has a speech impediment, and when she tries to describe the “funny mirrors” that warp and distort one’s appearance at carnivals, she calls them “fuddy meers.” That kind of warping and distortion is evident here, but so is Lindsay-Abaire’s delicate willingness to confront heartbreak, just as he does in Rabbit Hole. In Kimberly Akimbo, the eponymous heroine is a 15-year-old girl with a rare disease causing her to age four to five times faster than normal. She’s played by Victoria Clark, who, when I saw the show, was 63 years old. Kimberly reaches her 16th birthday in the course of the action, and she is aware that most people with her illness do not live much longer than sixteen years. Yet somehow what sounds like a sad, grotesque downer manages to be affirmative, joyful, and very funny. In addition to Victoria Clark, I want to single out Justin Cooley, who plays Kimberly’s exuberant, loving boyfriend, and Bonnie Milligan, playing her Aunt Debra, who is an outrageous criminal and simultaneously the one member of Kimberly’s family who understands what her niece is suffering. But now that I’ve gone this far, I can’t stop with the kudos. Steven Boyer and Alli Mauzey as Kimberly’s bumbling parents find just the right tone, and Olivia Elease Hardy, Fernell Hogan, Nina White, and Michael Iskander play Kimberly’s high school friends flawlessly. It’s not a big show, but it lands with a big splash, and I’m grateful to Jessica Stone for finding the way to direct and stage it so deftly.
Casey Nicholaw likewise brilliantly directed the show I saw the next day, a new musical adaptation of Billy Wilder’s movie Some Like It Hot. Here’s an example of what we can only find on Broadway: a great big gigantic musical extravaganza with a cast of 25 (at least), gorgeous sets and lighting, hundreds of costumes, clever songs (music by Marc Shaiman, lyrics by Scott Whitman and Shaiman), a propulsive plot (book by Matthew Lopez and Amber Ruffin), endearing characters (led by Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee in the Tony Curtis/Jack Lemmon roles from the movie), and enough tap-dancing to satisfy every aspiring Billy Elliot and Reno Sweeney in the crowd. Nicholaw even stages chase scenes with tap dancing, and why not? By that point everything onstage is whirling, and the audience is on board for whatever new delight this exuberant production delivers next. In fact, I enjoyed watching the scene changes, which were seamless and surprising, as much as I enjoyed the scenes themselves. And with big voices like those of NaTasha Yvette Williams (Sweet Sue) and Adrianna Hicks (Sugar, the role originally played by Marilyn Monroe) and the comic perfection of Kevin del Aguila (Osgood, played by Joe E. Brown in the movie), the whole experience presents the perfect antidote to the winter blahs. Also, I might add, to the spring, summer, and fall blahs. I lingered in the theater after the bows to hear the orchestra finish playing off the cast and to cling for just a little longer to the scene of such satisfying entertainment.