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Kimberly Akimbo a Musical With the Sense of Humor of an Adult Animated Series

 Carolee Carmello, Miguel Gil and Jim Hogan National Tour of KIMBERLY AKIMBO, photo by Joan Marcus

The tone of Kimberly Akimbo reminded me instantly of an adult animated series like Bob’s Burgers or F is for Family. Things that happen are so egregious as if this could either have gone the tragic route or the comedic. The show wisely chooses comedic, which allows it to also have some moments of meaning and sweetness. This is the story of Kimberly Levaco who is about to turn sixteen years old and has a disease that makes her age prematurely, at about four to five times the normal rate. People with her disease on average do not live past sixteen. As if that wasn’t hard enough, as the show opens she clearly has trouble making any friends with the kids her age and her father arrives drunk to pick her up from the skating rink three and a half hours later. It’s winter and she has had to wait outside for him. His excuse is that some guy in the bar bet he couldn’t fit an entire Mango in his mouth, which he can so he won a gameboy off the guy. In his eyes, this justifies his tardiness. It’s like Kimberlys entire family was imported from Matilda, though to be fair given slightly more scruples. But you can see how this could be a dour show. Which it isn’t, it’s funny, but not in a super dark way, in that Family Guy kinda way.

The songs are fun, mostly skewing to the humorous end of the spectrum but with slivers of sweetness and emotions here and there. It’s also a brilliant way to provide a great starring role in a show sure to be popular with young people for an older actor. Carolee Carmello who is playing Kimberly in the tour does a great job of playing a young girl at heart trapped in a body that is aging on her. I’m glad they cast the role as they did, there are enough roles for the young up and coming talents. It’s nice to see one designed for someone who has experience and talent and might otherwise be overlooked for leads. The supporting characters are well concieved, it’s a very small cast, and everyone feels vital. My favorite of them is Miguel Gil who plays Seth, a boy who befriends and sort of boyfriends Kimberly. He has a voice that feels perfect for the young awkward teenage boy and one of my favorite songs in the show, “Good Kid” is an excellent fit for Gil’s talents. The other favorite is Kimberly’s Aunt Debra played by Emily Koch who ropes Kimberly and her friends into a scheme to wash the checks from envelopes she pulls from a Federal mailbox she has stolen.

It’s a testament to the creators David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori that the show works, which it does like gangbusters. It doesn’t seem like a show about a sixteen year old girl who has been treated so unfairly by life and is basically prepared to die at any moment, could be this enjoyable. But it is. Perhaps it’s that underlying sense of dread that makes us laugh all the harder when something so wrong like Debra roping in kids for her check washing crime so they can afford to buy new costumes for their show choir competition. Director Jessica Stone gets the tricky tone just right. It’s small for a Broadway musical, but that really works for it. We have exactly the characters we need to tell the story. The set is really rather complex in the way it transforms to multiple location fully and convincingly, best of all with speed and efficiency. If it sounds too dark for you, I think you’ll be surprised and how funny and entertaining it is.

Kimberly Akimbo runs through Sunday July 13th at Hennepin Arts Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Minneapolis. For more information and to purchase tickets go to https://hennepinarts.org/events/kimberly-akimbo-2025

Necessity requires that going forward in order to produce a weekly YouTube show and podcast that reviews will become shorter. There are only so many hours in a day, but I have no intention of abandoning the blog version. Faithful readers, you have year after year grown The Stages of MN audience. While I hope you will become viewers or listeners as well, there will always be things here that cannot be found there. This will be the place for longer reviews, though slightly shorter than before, as well as Reviews of more shows than can be covered on the YouTube and Podcast versions. Essentially there will be some overlap, but each format will have unique content.

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Glory Skates its Way into the Hearts of the Audience at Theatre in the Round

Brynn Kelly, Gabrielle Johnson, Josie Ramler, and Kelly Solberg Photo by Tom Taintor

Theatre in the Round glides into 2025 with a season appropriate production that centers around of all things, Hockey! The feel good play of the year, it plays like a really good sports movie, with a lot of humor and moments that deal with real world issues as well. Inspired by the true story of Canada’s Preston Rivulettes, it tells the story of a Canadian women’s hockey team in the 1930’s. Opening in 1933 during the great depression and ending just after the declaration of War between Germany and Poland in 1939. Aside from thrilling to the rise of a team you come to vocally root for, the play also delves into societal issues like equality and anti-semitism among others. Those moments play powerfully but do not darken the overall feel of the show, which is inspirational. It feels like the perfect balance of getting swept up in cheering your team, hopefully to victory, personal drama, and wonderfully executed humor. A cast that felt like a team rather than a group of actors. Everyone in the play and every aspect of it from the game choreography to the set design works to create something unlike anything I’ve seen on stage before. I mean have you seen hockey games played in a theater, in the round before? I sure hadn’t, and I’m so glad I did.

The team consists of four characters, 2 pairs of sisters. Hilda and Nellie Ranscombe played by Brynn Kelly and Gabrielle Johnson, and Marm and Helen Schmuck played by Kelly Solberg and Josie Ramler. Kelly plays Hilda, who is the driving force behind the creation of the team and its star player with a drive and single minded focus that sells the audience on the team essentially being willed into existence by her alone. Johnson as her sister is terrified of the puck, but as Goalie she manages most of the time not to throw up over it. Her storyline is the polar opposite of her sisters in terms of subtlety, whereas Kelly sells her character to us with vocal passion and energy, Johnson’s role calls for her to underplay her passion and barely more than hint at a love that dare not speak its name. Ramler’s Helen is less single minded and deals with being torn between the team and other desires like being a mother. She has a great scene where she takes offense at the game announcer when he makes a comment about her femininity, the way she proves she’s a woman is a laugh out loud moment. Hilda pushes for women in hockey because it’s all she wants to do, for Helen it is more about Equality and not having her gender define what she can and cannot do whether it be playing hockey or marrying outside her jewish faith. Solberg as her sister Marm identifies more strongly with her faith and in one of the plays most dramatic moments confronts the anti-semitism she feels. It’s this moment that explains her rough playing in a game as a deeply felt injury crying out to be seen and felt. Solberg plays the moment so raw and brutally that it lands like a body check to the boards.

The show is so much about these teammates that it’s tempting not to mention the two men in the cast, and if they were any less perfect in their roles I’d probably leave it there. But Daniel Stock as their reluctant coach perfectly modulates that journey from not caring to deeply caring about this team. It’s humorous when he doesn’t want to be there and then emotionally satisfying when he does begin to actually care and want them to succeed. Glory is very much A League of Their Own on ice and Stock has the Tom Hanks role, but he does his own thing with it and it’s so integrated into the whole that it’s hard not to feel as though the team isn’t complete without him. The final performer is Ron Lamprecht who is perfect as the Announcer for all of the hockey games. Lamprecht sounds exactly like an announcer and it adds a sense of reality to the games as well as helping us to fill in the action on the rink. That action is choreographed by Antonia Perez and it mixes simulated hockey play with dance in a way that shouldn’t work, but really does. It doesn’t feel like the performers have all of the moves down 100% but that kind of adds to the charm a little bit. Perez’s highlights are the more obvious dance moves and the fights that breakout. I loved the simplicity of the set design by Keven Lock and his assistant Essel Beidler, the painted on ice rink complete with blade marks in the ice was a great touch. Director Sean Dooley has found a way to make a theater in the round staging of ice hockey games work, it’s something I couldn’t quite imagine before I went. He has some nice touches for the in the round staging, including some front row patrons in section B who are the unfortunate witnesses to Nellie’s losing battle with her nerves early in her hockey career. Another nice touch is that the show opens with the women changing after their final Softball game of the season. They strip out of their uniforms to their modest undergarments and then into street clothes. This has the effect of acknowledging their gender up front, that they are women, they have all the soft parts and then we see them as successful hockey players. It isn’t salaciously done, it’s there to illustrate Helen’s point, that they can be women and athletes, and neither diminishes the other.

I’m not a hockey fan, never played it outside of with friends at the park so that isn’t a requirement in any way to enjoy the show. But it is a great hook for hockey fans who maybe are not theatergoers usually. If I loved it, and I did, hockey fans will get as much if not more out of it I’m sure. So if you got Hockey fans in your life make sure to take them to see Glory during its run, they will thank you. Glory runs through February 9th at theatre in the Round. For more information and to purchase tickets go to https://www.theatreintheround.org/glory/

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