Kimberly Akimbo is utterly unique.  This is not actually surprising, given its pedigree. The book writer and Pulitzer Prize–winning dramatist David Lindsay-Abaire adapted the show from his play of the same name, with music by Jeanine Tesori, Tony winner for her score for Fun Home. (The team a lso collaborated on the stage musical version of Shrek.) Lindsay-Abaire specializes in off-kilter tragicomic stories with quirky characters who are often going through crises. Ann Morrison as Kimberly in the National Tour of ‘Kimberly Akimbo.’ Photo by Joan Marcus. In Kimberly Akimbo, the title character is a teenage girl trapped in the body of an old woman because she suffers from a genetic disease that makes her age at four times the usual rate. As if that weren’t enough, her impending birth forced her parents to get married right out of high school, so after not being wanted in the first place, she is not even the little girl they expected. They are expecting another child, but it becomes clear that they never really grew up enough to be parents. On top of all this, they are joined by Kimberly’s ex-con aunt, a conniving and selfish (yet hilarious) woman with no conscience who will do anything to get what she wants. In a lighter addition to the original play, there is a quartet of awkward teenagers, Kim’s classmates, who are locked in a romantic rectangle where each one loves the wrong person. A show-choir quartet determined to beat their arch-rival school, they act as a chorus in most of the songs.  All this, surprisingly, creates an alternately cheerful, comic, and touching musical.  A good example of the tone is Kimberly’s first-act “I Want” song — literally her letter to the Make-a-Wish Foundation letting them know what she wants before she dies. It is funny and tragic and meta all at once. The score also includes a gorgeous lullaby sung by the mother, begging time to slow down: “Father Time slow down the day/Don’t let the dark come and steal it away … Hold back the night/It’s much too soon to be turning out the light.” While now sung to her unborn baby, she used to sing it to Kimmy, and it clearly applies much more poignantly to her. And in a song about her disease given in a science class presentation, Kimmy realizes the difference between herself and her classmates: “Your disease is a bad case of adolescence … Getting older is my affliction/Getting older is your cure … But for me, there is no cure.” These all add up to a thoughtful story about growing up or not, emotionally and physically, and about seizing life while you have it.  The set, lighting, and costumes at the Hippodrome are fairly basic, perhaps because of the limitations of a touring production, but also because they are meant to convey the somewhat dreary, tacky hopelessness of 1999 Nowheresville, New Jersey. There are some imaginative dance numbers on ice skates. Skye Alyssa Friedman (Teresa), Max Santopietro (Aaron), Darron Hayes (Martin), and Gabby Beredo (Delia) in the National Tour of ‘Kimberly Akimbo.’ Photo by Joan Marcus. The excitement, however, comes in the voices. The actors, some of whom were in the five-Tony-winning Broadway production, are all first-rate. Gabby Beredo (Delia), Darron Hayes (Martin), Skye Alyssa Friedman (Teresa), and Max Santopietro (Aaron) are charming and harmonize beautifully as the chorus of awkward, nerdy theater kids. Marcus Phillips strikes just the right notes of tender, nervous enthusiasm as Seth, Kimmy’s slightly-more-than-friend, the good boy who wonders if some good might come from being bad for once. Jim Hogan is so effective as Kim’s man-child father Buddy that he seems on his first entrance more like her delinquent brother. Laura Woyasz, as Kim’s mom Pattie, is self-absorbed and ditzy, but has a voice like an angel. The real standout in the cast the night we saw it was Sarah Lynn Marion, the understudy stepping into the role of Debra. Big, brassy, and bad, she is larger than life in every way and rules every scene she is in with a cheerful, charismatic amorality. And as the title character, on whose seemingly frail shoulders the entire show rests, Ann Morrison is a wonder. She invests the character with humor and matter-of-fact vulnerability, making the task of playing a teenage girl in an aged body look natural. It seems somehow prescient that she once played Mary in the original ill-fated production of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along, in which he cast actual teens to age backward from disillusioned midlife to hopeful youth. Here, Morrison excellently captures both the awkwardness and dreams of adolescence and the physical and emotional maturity forced on her by both her disease and her childish parents. It is an unforced and eye-opening performance.All of these elements add up to make Kimberly Akimbo truly original. In an age of sequels, remakes, juke-box musicals, and film-to-stage adaptations, it is not to be missed. Running Time: Two hours and 25 minutes with one intermission. Kimberly Akimbo plays through May 3, 2026,  at the Hippodrome Theatre’s France-Merrick Performing Arts Center, 12 N. Eutaw Street, Baltimore, MD. Purchase tickets online or call 410-837-7400. Recommended for ages 13+, mostly for crude language. Complete cast and creative credits for the touring company are here. ...read more read less