Review: How ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Finds Its Heart in the Everyday

Following its celebrated 2025 Minneapolis engagement, the Tony Award-winning “Kimberly Akimbo” has returned to St. Paul’s Ordway. This time, the production is led by Broadway legend Ann Morrison. For those raised on the brassy, hummable hooks of Golden Age musicals, “Kimberly Akimbo” offers a different and more intimate invitation. This is a character-driven musical in the truest sense. You won’t find traditional, play-on-repeat show tunes here. Instead, the score by Jeanine Tesori is a lesson in conversational melody. The tunes follow speech-level phrasing, ebbing and flowing with the characters’ internal realizations rather than imposing a pop structure. You might not whistle the melody on your way to the parking lot, but you leave wearing the character’s emotional texture. The songs do not stop the story, they deepen it.

Photo by Joan Marcus

At its heart, the musical follows Kimberly Lavaco, a bright Jersey teen who happens to look like a woman in her 70s due to a rare genetic condition. Navigating a chaotic family, a first crush, and her own mortality, Kimberly’s journey is a fragile, hilarious, and a reminder to seize the day, no matter how many you have left.

With over five decades on the stage, Morrison leads this production with wisdom from a life lived under the lights. She acts through the songs with a profound sensitivity. She navigates Kimberly’s unique physical and emotional landscape with a soaring, crystalline voice that captures every ounce of the character’s wit and heartbreaking resilience. In this iteration, the story feels shared between Kimberly and her first love. Marcus Phillips as Seth delivers an awkward word nerd who finds true love in a girl who just happens to be trapped in the body of an elderly woman. The two of them share their hearts and talents with a chemistry that feels entirely authentic. Phillips delivers the delightfully nerdy “Anagram” with a gentle, staccato energy that captures the exact moment a teenage friendship sparks into something more profound. As he rearranges the letters of Kimberly’s name to find the “cleverly akimbo” hidden within, his performance mirrors the show’s larger heart, finding meaning and beauty in the fragments of a messy, out-of-order life.

Photo by Joan Marcus

Kimberly’s family life is rounded out by her parents, Pattie (Laura Woyasz) and Buddy (Jim Hogan), and her aunt, Debra (Emily Koch). They all feel settled into their roles as loving, breathing, flawed, and funny humans. Koch’s Debra knows exactly where her laughs are but delivers them with a brash charm and less setup than many comedians. Her comic timing is on full display in her first song, “Better,” where she delivers a character-driven belt for the punchline. This vocal agility mirrors the mental agility of a great stand-up comic, making the song feel spontaneous and alive rather than a rehearsed routine. Kimberly’s classmates onstage remind us of the value of friendship.  Their offstage lesson is in the grit required to build a career by touring the country. These four young actors are sure to have full careers ahead of them. What was most remarkable was the energy and connection shared between the cast and the audience.

While the laughs are predictable on opening night, there were audible sighs of heavy hearts when Kimberly felt life’s disappointments. As a collective, we were on this journey together. If you typically find traditional musicals too staged, these modern stories offer a refreshing pivot toward emotional realism. They trade flashy dance breaks for a conversational intimacy that feels more like a great indie film set to music.