Review: An exuberant ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ charms at San Francisco’s Curran Theatre

A gray-haired lady stands awkwardly at an ice skating rink, her hair dotted with brightly-colored barrettes, nervously chewing on her candy necklace.

Meet “Kimberly Akimbo,” the quirky heroine of David Lindsay-Abaire’s eccentric charmer of a coming-of-age musical in its first national tour. As exhilarating as it is heartbreaking, this is the rare Broadway show that lives up to its hype. Kimberly is the kind of character you may never forget.

This simultaneously funny and profound musical spins around a teenage girl (the lovable Carolee Carmello) suffering from a rare genetic disease that makes her age five times faster than normal. As hilarious as it is effortlessly cathartic, this Tony-winning musical invites you to laugh at the fleeting nature of life, while also making you feel keenly aware of your own mortality.

Not only does the bubbly Kimberly believe in the maxim “carpe diem,” she lives it. At the ripe old age of 16, she knows her time is almost up.

While she’s as sweetly awkward as all the other teenagers in her New Jersey suburb, Kimberly has a deep wryness about her, because she has had to puzzle out the existential nature of life. Fast.

“Kimberly Akimbo” spins around a teenage girl (the lovable Carolee Carmello) suffering from a rare genetic disease that makes her age five times faster than normal. (BroadwaySF)

She’s child enough to ask the Make-a-Wish foundation for a treehouse, but she knows better than to waste energy fighting the ravages of time. Heck, she went through menopause years ago.

Carmello, a three-time Tony nominee, delivers an exquisite performance, equal parts gawky and wise, a tender-hearted girl feeling every slight but also always slightly above the fray. While her schoolmates fantasize about college and careers, she knows her best days are not ahead.

Her dysfunctional parents are not coping with their impending loss well. Buddy (Jim Hogan), her befuddled dad, is frequently drunk and always immature. Her perky mother, Pattie (Dana Steingold), is a hypochondriac who goes ice skating near the end of a pregnancy with both arms in casts. They squabble and kvetch with so much gusto, they forget to make dinner and pick Kimberly up on time. She longs for a normal family life, but it never happens.

Still, it’s her footloose aunt Debra (Emily Koch) who steals the show. A jaunty Elmer Gantry-style con man, she shimmies into a window one night bursting with counterfeit check schemes and a lust for life.

Koch oozes exuberance as the scam artist who lets the marks feel like they’re in on the heist, and they love her for it. A grifter with a heart of faux-gold, she is so successful at conning people because she sees who they are instead of who they pretend to be.

National Touring Company of KIMBERLY AKIMBO (Courtesy Joan Marcus)

Framed by its exuberant score, book and lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire (“Rabbit Hole”) and music by Jeanine Tesori (“Caroline, or Change,” “Fun Home”) the heartbreaking intimacy of the musical, which is based on Lindsay-Abaire’s superb 2000 play, is its superpower. For all their quirks, the main characters here feel rough and real, full of contradiction and complexity.

Kimberly’s idiosyncrasies will tug at your heartstrings, even as you ponder the universality of her fate. When she starts to flirt with Seth (the charismatic Miguel Gil), an adorably nerdy tuba player with a passion for anagrams, you know their courtship is doomed.

As the “Great Adventure” song notes, loss is part of the bargain of existence, so “just enjoy the view, because no one gets a second time around.”

The magic of the musical is that you become so invested in Kimberley’s youthful yearning for life, her first kiss with Seth and her first family road trip, that you almost forget she’s dying. You know, like all of us.