“Kimberly Akimbo,” a quirky show that combined pathos and comedy to win last year’s Tony Award for best musical, will end its Broadway run in April, nearly 19 months after it began performances.
The show’s final performance will be April 28, at which point it is expected to have played 32 previews and 612 regular performances on Broadway.
Small and zany, “Kimberly Akimbo” was often overshadowed in a contemporary Broadway dominated by established titles, jukebox scores and celebrity performers. But it has outlasted most of the other productions from the 2022-23 season.
Set in a New Jersey suburb in 1999, the musical is about a high school girl with a rare genetic disorder, a criminally dysfunctional family and an anagram-loving friend.
Adapted from a play with the same title, “Kimberly Akimbo” opened in the fall of 2022 and is directed by Jessica Stone. It won five Tony Awards, including the prize for best book, by David Lindsay-Abaire (who also wrote the play); for best score, with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire; for the leading performance by Victoria Clark, a 64-year-old actress who plays the adolescent protagonist; and for a featured performance by Bonnie Milligan, who plays an amoral aunt.
The musical began its life in 2021 with an Off Broadway run at the Atlantic Theater Company. The show has just nine characters, and, unusually, they have been played by the same actors throughout its life; all the actors plan to stay until the closing.
The show, with David Stone (“Wicked”) as its lead producer, was capitalized for $7 million, a modest budget for a Broadway musical today; it has not yet recouped those costs.
The Broadway run is to be followed by a national tour that is scheduled to begin in September at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts.
