About the Play:
Kimberly Akimbo has become a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, and Female/Male Scenes.
Kimberly Akimbo is a full-length comedy by David
Lindsay-Abaire. "Can we just be normal for a few minutes?,"
the title character Kimberly asks in this dark hysterical comedy
about teenage girl suffering from a freak disease that ages her
abnormally. Contending with a family that gives new meaning to the
word "dysfunctional," Kimberly must find a way to give
meaning to her life and live it to the fullest.
Kimberly Akimbo is a dark comedy with twists and turns
about a very adolescent, eye rolling, deeply sighing teenage girl who
suffers from progeria, a disease that causes its victims to age more
than four times faster than the normal rate. Though she is only 16,
she has the face and body of a woman approaching middle age, and she
must face a sharply truncated lifespan, but that doesn't garner her
attention from her mom, too busy making up her own illnesses to pay
attention to her daughter. Her one wish is for a normal family. With
uncanny skill and quirky wit, David Lindsay-Abaire uses the
disease to explore issues of mortality and denial. When Kimberly and
her family flee suburban Secaucus, New Jersey under dubious
circumstances, she is forced to reevaluate her life while contending
with a selfish, pregnant hypochondriac mother, an immature rarely
sober father, a scam-artist aunt pushing a nefarious scheme, her own
mortality and, most terrifying of all, the possibility of first love
with her socially-challenged classmate. Kimberly Akimbo is
relevant to today's issues regarding accepting people who are
different than us and the challenges neglected children must navigate
to survive in an increasingly preoccupied world, while casting an
often humorous light on the inevitable experiences of teenage angst,
mid-life crisis and our inescapable mortality. One can't fail to be
moved when Kimberly realizes that her time might be ending just as
life is beginning for her peers.
Kimberly Akimbo premiered in 2001 at South Coast Repertory
Theatre in Costa Mesa, California and received the Los Angeles Drama
Critics Circle Award for Playwriting, three Garland Awards and the
2001 Kesselring Prize. Since
then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across
the US, including
its New York City premiere in 2003 at Manhattan Theatre Club's Stage,
and has been mounted by high schools, colleges, and community
theatres.
Cast: 3 female, 2 male
What people say:
"The Comedy of the Year. A
haunting and hilarious new play. Mr. Lindsay-Abaire is an expert at
tweaking, skewing and finally inverting established formulas. His
plays tend to slide right out of predetermined pigeonholes. Kimberly
Akimbo is at once a shrewd satire, a black comedy and a
heartbreaking study of how time wounds everyone." — New
York Times
"David Lindsay-Abaire
has crafted a drama that's not just a departure but a revelation —
an intensely emotional examination of grief, laced with wit,
insightfulness, compassion and searing honesty." — Variety
"A zany, disturbing and
strangely affecting comedy. It's a bit of youthful happiness unlike
any other." — Associated Press
"I was bowled over by the
singular theatricality of David Lindsay-Abaire's
Kimberly Akimbo. The way this harrowing and
hilarious work continuously shifts from satire to black comedy to
realism could never work anywhere else…theatre at its most
original." — NY 1
"A wacky, touching and totally
charming dark comedy that gives a whole new meaning to 'coming of age
story'." — New York Daily News
"A breezy, foulmouthed,
fleet-footed, warmhearted comedy. There have been many dark comedies
about dysfunctional families, but this is one of the funniest."
— Los Angeles Times
About the Playwright:
David Lindsay-Abaire is an American playwright, lyricist,
librettist and screenwriter. He is the author of Rabbit Hole,
winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. His other theatre works
include Good People, Fuddy Meers, and Kimberly Akimbo. He is Co-Chair
of the Juilliard School's Playwriting Program.