The cute new musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, piles on weirdness with a dump truck.
The mounting insanity almost becomes too much. Almost.
First there’s the main character, Kimberly (Victoria Clark), who is 16 but suffers from a rare unnamed condition that makes her age at an accelerated rate. So, she appears to be a woman in her mid-sixties and also deals with the health issues of one. The initial premise is less Act 1 of “Dear Evan Hanson” and more Season 5 of “Grey’s Anatomy.”
Two hours and 30 minutes at the Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th Street.
She moves to Bergen County, New Jersey, with her parents, Buddy (Steven Boyer) and Pattie (Alli Mauzey), who are negligent, cartoonishly cruel morons.
Debbie-downer Pattie injured both her hands while filling desserts at the Sunshine Cupcake Factory and wears two sight-gag casts. Mom is pregnant, films loony confessional videos for her unborn child and prattles on about her unfulfilled dreams of becoming a “Solid Gold” dancer. Buddy, meanwhile, is a foolish drunk who leaves his daughter, biologically a senior citizen, sitting on a bench in the snow for three hours. Both actors are good sports, but not for a single second do we sympathize with their flat characters.
The craziness doesn’t stop in the classroom. Kimberly’s schoolyard love interest Seth (Justin Cooley) speaks fluent Elvish from J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” (the musical is set in 1999, so the movies hadn’t turned Tolkien cool yet) and is a genius with anagram word puzzles. She makes friends with the Gleeky show choir, who all have secret crushes on each other.
The earnest young quartet played by Fernell Hogan, Michael Iskandar, Nina White and Olivia Elease Hardy are an exuberant highlight and happily bring to mind the scrappy cast of “Stranger Things.”
Kookiest of all is Kimberly’s aunt Debra (Bonnie Milligan), a bulldozer who has just gotten out of prison, spends 10 days squatting in the school library and later steals a blue US mailbox. She steers the second act into a “Catch Me If You Can” if that movie was set at a Hackensack Dunkin’ Donuts.
Yes, composer Jeanine Tesori and book-writer David Lindsay-Abaire’s musical at the Booth Theatre is a smidge too wacky for its own good. Lindsay-Abaire’s many eccentric flourishes, at times, can come across as showing off. I often missed the grounded power of the writer’s excellent play, “Good People.”
Nonetheless, this odd duck is undeniably likable. “Kimberly” the musical and the character have a strong underdog appeal and a warmth that keeps the audience firmly on its side. While never rapturous, “Akimbo” is always enjoyable and ultimately touching.
Rarely, we learn, do people with Kimberly’s disease live past age 16. So paired with Tesori’s peppy, jingle-like, adequate score is a heap of sadness. Kimberly writes to the Make-A-Wish Foundation sweetly asking for a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz and a chartered yacht vacation for 50 friends who don’t exist, when all she really wants is for her deadbeat parents to make dinner for once and be nice to her.
Clark, better known for playing grandiose characters who aren’t teenagers in plaid shirts, radiates compassion in the part. What makes Kimberly not cloying, as adults pretending to be kids usually is, is that she is an old soul because of her hard life. The performance is a pleasant blend of optimistic and worldly.
Her best song — the show’s best, actually — is “Anagram” in which she starts to fall for Seth as he rearranges the letters of her name into a new phrase. Cooley and Clark reveal a surprisingly meaningful and lively connection that makes us root for them, even though their future is impossible. Cooley, by the way, is a gifted comedic actor who nails every punchline.
Also funny is Milligan’s Debra, a “Strangers With Candy”-like, foul-mouthed clown who speaks of committing felonies as a cute little hobby, like knitting or pottery.
The hodgepodge of elements is a lot for director Jessica Stone to fuse together, but she succeeds by latching onto a show-choir vibe. Most of the numbers are choreographed by Danny Mefford with quirky unison gestures that make frequent use of the bopping students. The staging shares the same DNA as “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and “Ride the Cyclone.” David Zinn’s house-and-school set, however, does feel a little slight for even the intimate Booth.
“Akimbo” can be a puzzle of a musical, but, like a clever anagram, you smile when it all comes together in the end.