Kimberly Akimbo's Enduring Ensemble Looks Back on the Ride of a Lifetime

After the first off-Broadway preview of Kimberly Akimbo at the Atlantic Theater on November 6, 2021, Victoria Clark remembers coming home and sobbing in her husband’s arms. “We had canceled our invited dress to have privacy and to stop if need be,” she recalls. “So the emotion of going through the show without stopping in front of an audience for the first time was practically overwhelming.”

She didn’t know at the time that it would be the first of hundreds of performances of David Lindsay-Abaire and Jeanine Tesori’s quirky, audacious, life-affirming musical about the rapidly aging Jersey-bred teen Kimberly Levaco—nor that the nine people who made it through that first preview at the Linda Gross Theater would coalesce into an indissoluble unit that would take the show all the way to its closing performance as the reigning Tony Award-winning Best Musical. But on April 28, Clark, along with Justin Cooley, Bonnie Milligan, Steven Boyer, Alli Mauzey, Olivia Elease Hardy, Fernell Hogan, Michael Iskander and Nina White will—together—close the book on Kimberly Akimbo and move on to their next “great adventure.”

“Justin, Alli, Steve, Bonnie, Nina, Michael, Liv and Fernell—as well as all our covers and understudies—we have gone through so much together,” says Clark, who earned her second Tony Award with the show. “They inspire me, push me, challenge me to be better than I ever thought I could be.”

“I will miss the people more than I can say,” says Milligan, who also won a Tony Award for her performance as the chaotic Aunt Debra—a vehicle for brash comedy and a seismic belt. “We started this process after the shutdown and I had recently lost my father. I found healing in the process and doing this show for the last few years has helped me view life differently.”

Boyer, who plays Kimberly’s oft-inebriated father Buddy, adds, “We’re at that funny place in every production where it ends. And honestly, some people you might never see again,” he says, candidly acknowledging the nomadic realities of show business. “That’s the way it goes. And that’s hard to wrap my mind around.”

And yet, it’s an ensemble that only a musical as specific as Kimberly Akimbo—with a director as actor-driven as Jessica Stone—could have brought together in the first place: Clark, a lyric soprano who had won a Tony for the Adam Guettel-scored Light in the Piazza; Milligan, a belting icon of the cabaret scene; Boyer, the Tony-nominated star of Robert Askins’ raunchy puppet comedy Hand to God; and Mauzey, a former Glinda and star of Cry-Baby joining as Kim's mom, Pattie (at first meeting, Boyer was “intimidated by [Mauzey]’s comedy chops,” while Mauzey was convinced that Boyer didn’t care for her at all, only to find out later that “it was because I resembled one of his ex-girlfriends”).

And then, of course, were the show’s young stars—five performers in their teens and early 20s, four of whom were making their New York stage debuts when Kimberly opened off-Broadway (Hogan, an alum of The Prom, was the only exception). Boyer remembers feeling “shocked by how young they were,” while Milligan reminisces about being excited to meet the “kids,” describing them as “eager and sweet and raring to go.”

Hardy and White—the female half of Kimberly’s tortured teenage love square—were both recent graduates from the University of Michigan. “Meeting Queen Mother Victoria Clark was especially exciting,” Hardy lovingly remembers. “But I was not expecting her to really take it upon herself to welcome us debutees with such warmth and grace and kindness as she has.” White was similarly awestruck: “I was intimidated by Vicki because I spent a lot of time watching YouTube videos of her in college,” she says, betraying her youth. “I could not believe we were in the same room.”

On the boys side of things, Iskander and Hogan were most enamored of Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire—namely their first musical collaboration. “First thing I saw was David and Jeanine’s name, which made me think of Shrek,” says Hogan. “So I knew I wanted to be in whatever this show was.” Iskander admits he came in slightly more skeptical: “I thought to myself, ‘this could either be very good or very bad.’ But I'm going to trust that the people who wrote Shrek The Musical will not fail me!”

And then there was Cooley—an 18-year-old 2021 Jimmy Awards finalist who had just graduated high school when he was asked to not only star opposite Clark in a brand-new Tesori/Lindsay-Abaire project, but to play the lauded actress' love interest: an anagram hobbyist and amateur tuba player named Seth.

“The thought of auditioning in front of Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire was so anxiety inducing,” Cooley recalls. “But also there was this undercurrent of excitement because the script was so unique and intriguing, and I felt I had this kid, Seth, somewhere inside of me.” He sympathetically describes himself during those early days as a “hopeful teenage nebulous blob of a person,” daunted by his more experienced castmates. “That nervous, insecure college freshman feeling—I brought all of that to my first days of Kimberly Akimbo,” he says.

The whole company met for the first time at Skate Camp—a week of ice-skating training that prepared them to glide around the onstage ice rink where Seth works after school and the other teens enjoy their sexually frustrated hangouts. Cooley holds on to a particular memory of his co-star from that first day. “Victoria Clark was lowkey unhinged as she rode her bicycle down, like, 150 blocks just to come in and say hi to us and then leave.” For that, he decrees her “iconic.” Not long after, he and Clark would be crying together as they sang through the duet “Now” for the first time. “It was so disarming and new and inspiring to me,” says Cooley. “I had never gone there as an actor in high school, I was always too in my head. I’ll never forget that moment. I felt so new and excited to be where I was.” Looking back, he says, “I never would’ve guessed I would be spending my days laughing and crying with my 64-year-old lady best friend—but here we are.”

“The full impact of how this show has changed my life probably won’t hit me for several months, or even years,” says Clark. Its parting gift seems to vary from castmate to castmate, befitting a show whose superpower is to meet everyone who encounters it exactly where they are in their own jumbled life journey.

“We’ve performed the show almost 600 times,” says Boyer. “That’s 600 times I had to say goodbye to my daughter and openly weep. I didn’t know how to do that before this production.”

Milligan affirms, “I grew in my grief. I grew as an actress. I grew as a human being.”

With young adulthoods that have been largely defined by this musical, a common theme emerges among the “kids”: “I started Kimberly Akimbo when I was 22, and now I’m 25,” says White. “I’ve done a lot of growing as a human being totally apart from my job. All of that personal change was set to the tune of Kimberly Akimbo.” Hardy adds, “I feel a lot more confident in my acting choices because I was praised and not made to feel like I was stupid for suggesting something.” As for Cooley, who evolved from timid teenager to Tony-nominated actor, “I’ve started to find more shape and confidence in who I am and plan to be, which is maybe the most sentimental thought for me,” he says. “These people have watched me grow up.”

It’s apt that his character’s full name, Seth Brett Weetis, rearranges to make “The Bitter Sweets,” one of the show’s many anagrams and a popular one among the cast. “It is my favorite because it is the feeling I have currently knowing the show is coming to a close,” says Iskander. Cooley, on the other hand, is a particular fan of the one Lindsay-Abaire fashioned out of his real name: “Joyous Client.” Crafted as opening-night gifts for the cast, Hogan cherishes his personal “Fell On Hanger,” while Boyer landed the auspicious “Very Best One.” Milligan sums up her time with the musical she affectionately calls Kimmy with the transformation of “Claim It Game” to “Magical Time,” while Mauzey remains partial to New York Times critic Jesse Green’s pairing of “Sublime Cast” and “Best Musical.”

And what about the actress at the center of it all—the woman who will forever be associated with Kimberly Levaco and her “Cleverly Akimbo” approach to life’s surprises, both good and bad? Out of respect for the sweet boy who animates Kim nightly with his oddball point of view—“a little sly, a little strange, a little bit askew”—Clark declares, “I will leave that to the Seth’s of this world.”