State Theatre Company of SA co-pro with MTC. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 11 Jul 2025
What an unlikely concept for a rollicking piece of comical song and dance - the story of a girl with a rare genetic ageing disorder and an horrible family.
Kimberly Akimbo is an American creation with book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire and music by Jeanine Tesori. It was written in 2021 but it is set in New Jersey in 1999. From 2022, it took Broadway by storm and was immediately smothered in awards.
How lucky are we to ride the antipodean crest of this delectable sweet and salty theatrical confection. Even when it feels sad, it feels good. It is one of those shows in which one simply loses track of time and place and one exists entirely in its own finely-wrought reality.
There is not much to criticise unless one considers the stingy length of its season. It gets just two weeks before heading off to Melbourne whence it is a STC/MTC co-pro.
Its sets and costumes are made in SA and its performers and makers are from both worlds with some seriously good new local talents: Allycia Angeles and Alana Iannace, both from the Elder Conservatorium’s magnificent Music Theatre stable, along with fellow alumni, Darcy Wain who is a really dazzling emerging triple threat.
Wain carries the show in many ways, playing Seth, the gooby goodie teen who befriends Kimberley at her new school. The evolution of their relationship is a symphony of awkward tenderness and Wain plays through those emotions as on a Stradivarius. The audience falls in love with him. It’s a tough call for him, really, insofar as he is playing against a blazing star of the Australian musical theatre in Marina Prior, she, in mid-life, fearlessly and artfully playing a troubled 16-year-old with an accelerated aging condition. She establishes credibility with impeccable body work and the cleverly in-betweener nature of her costume from Ailsa Paterson’s designs. All the costumes reflect sensitively the characters within them with Christie Wheelan-Browne winning laughs in the most over-the-top pregnant belly. She delivers a nice comic presence, too, and a nasty one. It is love-hate until she sings, at which point it is love.
Naturally, this being a musical, the voices are a high point and also the harmonies which the chorus of four school chums—Jacob Rozario with cutie-pie Marty Alix and the girls, Angeles and Iannace—execute to a tee.
Nathan O’Keefe, a trusted and familiar player on the Adelaide stage, comes up trumps with an exhaustingly amusing addled dad song, performed in the car to his daughter and her new friend Seth. It brings the house down, as do some of the big numbers, although ironically, the music in the end of the day is unmemorable.
Unlike those performing it.
Here comes a musicals character into which Casey Donovan can really sink those sparkling teeth and that big, ballsy voice. She plays dodgy Aunt Debra, the ultimate nefarious bad influence maverick of the family. Donovan clearly relishes the role and is quite a treat to watch.
Indeed, so are they all. Director Mitchell Butel has elicited a well-defined sense of personality from each of the chorus players as well as the leads.
He’s been a popular STC artistic director/performer, eminent on many levels, and he leaves us on a high.
Of course, Kimberly is doomed from the start, but she is not going out without living life to the full. Thus, are there sad songs and teen angst along the way. There are myriad messages woven into this very complex plot. And also, roller skating, just for the full American cultural gestalt.
Jonathon Oxlade rarely puts a foot wrong in the set design department and here, with a literally moveable feast of locker rooms, library, bedrooms and even snowstorms, he maintains the excellence.
What with Matt Scott’s perceptive lighting and Amy Campbell’s lively choreography, what more could one wish of a really pro show? Sound, of course. And here, returning to the fore as musical director, comes our beloved Kym Purling. Hence, the creamy orchestration.
The whole of Adelaide’s arts world seemed to be packed into Her Majesty's for the opening night of Kimberley Akimbo. And, through the foyers as they streamed out to the winter’s night could be heard most prominently the words “what fun”.
What fun, indeed.
Samela Harris
When: 11to 19 Jul
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
