New York City 2023: Broadway Shows - Kimberly Akimbo, Bad Cinderella, Shucked, Some Like It Hot, Fat Ham

 

My husband Rich and I love live theatre and especially musicals, so a trip to Manhattan would not be complete without going to at least 2-3 Broadway Shows.  To make up for the COVID years when we could not travel, we decided to splurge on this first post-pandemic visit and watch four of them, one for each night in the city other than the first (in case of flight delays) and last nights.  Because we were traveling in early May when many of the new plays and musicals were just opening up, we did not have the luxury of waiting for reviews.  We picked our shows based on the current buzz and past reputation of the composer or writer, then secured good seats for each one using the website telecharge.com, which offers the best service charge rates. Unfortunately, by the time reviews came out just before our trip, it became clear that we had picked three Tony-nominated winners but one dud!  In a last spur-of-the-moment decision, we decided to re-jig our plans and add a fifth show to our lineup, slotting in a Wednesday matinee which would make that day a “double-feature” in terms of theatre-going.

The musical that we added at the last minute was Kimberly Akimbo, which actually ended up winning the Tony award for best new musical.  We had not selected it initially because its subject matter seemed both daunting and potentially depressing(?).  Kimberly Levaco is a 15-year-old girl with a rare disease that causes her body to age four times faster than normal.  Moving to a new school for reasons revealed later, Kimberly befriends a new group of kids including Seth who is passionate about creating anagrams out of people’s names.  He figures out that the letters of “Kimberly Levaco” can be rearranged to spell “Cleverly Akimbo”, thus explaining the musical’s title.   Akimbo is an interesting adjective for Kimberly since it literally means standing with hands on hips. In slang, the akimbo stance has come to represent fierce defiance, which is how Kimberly deals with to her condition, facing it head-on and not letting it get her down.  With a life expectancy of 16 and her birthday approaching, Kimberly is determined to make the most of her remaining days and live “in the moment” despite the insensitivity and lack of emotional or financial support from her selfish parents.

Kimberly dreams of a family trip to Disneyland.  When told the family can’t afford it, she and her friends succumb to her larcenous aunt Debra’s plan to steal cheques from a postal box and “wash” them.  This leads to the best number in the musical, a jazzy, hilarious number called “How to Wash a Cheque”.   Debra’s instructions to the clueless and clumsy kids include “Tie a fish line, open the mailbox, drop the glue trap, get a bite …”.  Joining Kimberly and Seth in this potential caper are Delia, Martin, Teresa and Aaron who form a sweet teenaged circle of unrequited love for one another—Teresa likes Martin who in turn likes Aaron, but Aaron who likes Delia who only has eyes for Teresa.  Brash and insensitively direct as always, Debra cuts to the chase of the situation by pointing at them and saying “Straight, Gay, Straight, Gay .. Get it??”.

This show would not work without the stellar acting job of 63-year-old actress Victoria Clark who plays Kimberly with long awkward limbs, quirky movements, a sparkle in her eye and a mischievous grin that totally sells the allusion of a teenager with a rare aging disease.  Rather than depressing, the story is told in a touching, sensitive and at times, even humorous manner.  Each of the parents gets a song that shows pathos and gives their characters depth despite their severe character flaws.  In their own ways, they love Kimberly but are scared for her and don’t know how to handle her impending death.  Kimberly Akimbo ends on a positive note with Kimberly and Seth taking off on a “Great Adventure” to help her fulfill her dreams while she still can.  The message is clear and echoes Jonathan Larson’s prophetic theme in Rent--“No Day But Today”.  For Kimberly, it’s “Live for the Now”.

The show that ended up being a dud was Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest offering, an updated take on the age-old fairytale Cinderella.  The musical originally played in London’s West End before coming to Broadway with a revamped script and retitled as Bad Cinderella after one of the songs.  Enjoying past musicals by this prolific composer, we bought our tickets without waiting to hear reviews.  Unlike the late Stephen Sondheim who tried so hard to be innovative and unrepetitive that half his catalog was not commercially successful, Andrew Lloyd Webber usually stays with a tried and true formula, resulting in crowd pleasing but derivative works that often even have a similar sound to them.  So I thought “How bad could it be?”  As it turns out, the reviews were scathing, admonishing us that we were forewarned by the title itself that the show would be “Bad”!  Writers take note.. do not use the word “Bad” in the title of your show unless you are sure you have a winner.  Otherwise you make the job of the critic way too easy!

As with many contemporary adaptations of past works, the trend these days is to inject either gay characters or female empowerment into old stories as a way to modernize them. In its own clumsy way, Bad Cinderella tries to do both.  Instead of the helpless damsel of the traditional tale, this Cinderella is spunky, defiant and considered “bad” (as opposed to badass?) by the townspeople for her non-confirming appearance and rebellious actions including defacing the memorial statue of Prince Charming, the missing-in-action heir to the throne. Cinderella’s romantic interest is instead her childhood best friend Prince Sebastian, who is Charming’s low-key younger brother who has become the heir-apparent.  Other than this new spin, the rest of the story falls in line with the wicked stepmother and two selfish stepsisters vying for Sebastian’s attention, the ball where he must choose a bride, the fairy godmother and the slipper until a twist ending (mild spoiler) sees the return of Charming.

To be fair, there were a few catchy tunes that I liked including the titular song in Bad Cinderella although the music that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote for it reminded me of melodies from Song and Dance and Evita.  I firmly believe that he plagiarizes from his old work when writing new ones.  My issues lay mostly in the storyline which did little to improve upon the original classic, as well as the cheesy spoken dialogue and song lyrics, and most of all the over-the-top acting that led to much emoting and shrieking by the main characters, and cringe-inducing primping and over-sexualized posturing by both the female and male background dancers.  The costumes selected for the Broadway version did not help with the female villagers in low cut dresses, short shorts, and plunging necklines to accentuate their pushed-up bosoms, while the male villagers/guardsmen were inexplicably bare-chested in many scenes.  Worst of all, Cinderella herself was anachronistically dressed like a grunge-punk version of Neo from the Matrix with her long coat, tight pants and high boots.  Actually no, worst of all was when Prince Charming finally showed up with his bare chest exposed and flexed until his chest muscles popped.  On top of all of this, there was no chemistry between Cinderella and Sebastian, so it was difficult to root for them.  Overall, this was not a good show and I think the changes made between the UK and the USA versions were not for the better.  However this was not the worse show that I’ve ever watched, and I found the music more appealing than the musical New York, New York which was nominated for a Tony but closed after only a few months just like Bad Cinderella.

While we liked Kimberly Akimbo and admired its lofty theme, the show that we had the most fun watching was Shucked, a musical comedy about corn.  The isolated residents of the tiny fictional village of “Cob County” face a crisis when the corn crop which sustains their livelihood starts to fail.  Farmgirl Maizy decides to head to the “big city” of Tampa for the first time to find help, much to the dismay of her fiancé Beau who thinks they can fix things on their own.  In Tampa, Maizy encounters a sleezy podiatrist (corn doctor, pun intended) who pretends he can heal the corn crop in order to get access to precious minerals that he mistakenly believes are found in the village.  This is an ultra-charming, laugh-out-loud tour-de-force with groan-inducing dad jokes zipping around a mile a minute as well as a few pearls of wisdom that you almost miss due to the uproarious laughter.   Some of my favourite lines include “If life were fair, mosquitos would suck fat instead of blood”, “You don’t realize how many people you hate until you try to name a child”, and “Family is telling somebody to go to hell, then worrying that they get there safely”. 

The theatre term “11 O’Clock Number” refers to a big show-stopping number that occurs late in the second act of a two-act musical, where a major character has an important realization.  Some iconic songs that meet this definition include “Rose’s Turn” from Gypsy or “Being Alive” from Company.  In Shucked, the extremely talented non-binary actor Alex Newell brought down the house and prompted a standing ovation with the character Lulu’s song “Independent Woman”.  The only thing is that the song was sung about 2/3 of the way through Act 1, making it an unusual “9:15” number?   Shuck also had a very uniquely choreographed “dance” number involving a corn-cob Chorus Line.  Shucked is such joy that you leave the theatre on a high that lasts for days.

Rich and I agreed that the favourite of the five shows we watched on this trip was the jazzy musical Some Like It Hot, adapted from the iconic 1959 film of the same name starring Jack Lemon, Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe.  But before talking about the musical, I want to gush about the beauty of the Shubert Theatre.  Built in 1913 in the Italian Renaissance style, the 1502 seat theatre is decorated with elaborate plasterwork and theatrically themed murals on the ceiling surrounded by floral designs.  A plaque declared A Chorus Line the “Longest Running Show in Broadway History” which it was at the time with 6137 performances between 1975-1990.  The record has since been eclipsed by six other shows including the current record holder The Phantom of the Opera which ran on Broadway for over 14,000 performances before finally closing in 2023.

Following relatively closely to its source material, the musical Some Like it Hot begins with musicians Joe and Jerry, who witness a mob hit and need to go into hiding.  They do so by dressing up as women to join an all female band who are traveling across the country by train.  Joe falls in love with Sugar, the lead singer of the band, but cannot express his feelings while dressed as “Josephine”.  Meanwhile Jerry, aka Daphne, is wooed by eccentric millionaire Osgood Fielding III.  In the movie, Joe and Sugar’s pairing provides the romance while Jerry and Osgood are played for laughs.  The musical version modernizes the story by having Daphne come out as a transgendered character who finally feels whole and right for the first time in her female persona.  The show ups the ante by casting non-binary actor J.Harrison Ghee in the role.

Some Like It Hot brings us back to the golden age of musicals where it is enough to enjoy singing and dancing and to just have fun watching a show without having a serious message bludgeoned into your head.  Everything about this show was sumptuously wonderful, from the beautiful Art Deco set design to the gorgeous costumes of the era, to stellar singing, dancing and acting by all the main performers.  The final “chase” scene between the gangsters and our protagonists involves a lengthy farce-like tap dance number where the characters repeatedly go in and out of hotel doors and weave around one another as the doors themselves spin in and out of place.  The choreography of this sequence has to be seen to be believed.

Our final show, Fat Ham, was a dramedy based on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  But instead of a Danish prince, we have a fat, black, gay young man named Juicy who lives in somewhere in America, probably North Carolina (the playwright's home town).  Fat Ham initially follows the storyline of Hamlet, although the setting is at a backyard barbeque to celebrate the wedding of Juicy’s mother Tedra to his uncle Rev, a mean bully who denigrates Juicy for his sexuality and “soft” emotional nature.  Juicy’s father Pap was a violent man in jail for murder where he himself was stabbed and murdered.  Pap comes back as a ghost to inform Juicy that Rev had him killed and wants his son to seek vengeance.  Adding a bit of humour to the play, at one point the ghost of Pap appears by popping up out of the barbeque.  That Pap and Rev are two sides of the same coin in terms of masculine toxicity and brutality is accentuated by having the same actor play both roles.  Both characters act as a foil for Juicy who is gentle, rational and intellectual.

The other main characters in Hamlet are represented in Fat Ham.  Juicy’s cousin Tio represents the Horatio character and is the first to see Pap’s ghost.  Siblings Ophelia and Laertes and their father Polonius appear in the form of family friends Opal, Larry and mother (not father!) Rabby.  Opal, who is rebellious and independent, and Larry, a marine with PTSD and a secret crush on Juicy, are both closeted gays who hide their natures from their church-going mother.  Larry also acts as a foil for Juicy since he outwardly portrays himself as a tough, masculine military man but his façade falls when he lets his guard down and kisses Juicy.

Juicy quotes directly from Hamlet throughout the play, sometimes out of context and sometimes verbatim in asides to the audience.  When Rev waxes poetically about his marvelous barbeque rub, Juicy hilariously interjects with “Ah there’s the rub”.  When Tedra wants to talk to Juicy about his deceased father, Juicy throws in the line “The King, my queen, is dead” to which she responds, “You watch too much PBS!”.  Later Juicy turns to the audience and quotes Hamlet’s “What a piece of work is man” speech to highlight the craziness in the family dynamics around him.  And like Hamlet, Juicy tries to trap Rev into admitting his guilt by watching it be acted out, but in this case, in a round of charades as opposed to a play.  Here he quotes “guilty creatures sitting at a play have .. proclaimed their malefactions.”

We reach the end of the play, when if following Hamlet, all hell would break loose, and everyone dies.  In Fat Ham, this is represented symbolically in a moment of frenzy where the entire stage is lit in blood red hues and Juicy states that this is when the killing happens ..isn’t it?  When asked why, he replies “Cause this is a tragedy. We tragic”, alluding to the cycle of “generational violence and trauma” that plagues black men from poor families. Instead, taking a page from Tio’s drug-infused dream about choosing “pleasure over harm”, Juicy chooses a different path of acceptance and joy, breaking the cycle.  Opal and Larry embrace their identities and come out to their mother while Rev accidentally gets his just desserts.  Larry’s emergence is big, bold, joyous and unexpected, resulting in a fitting finale.  James Ijames won the Pulitzer prize for drama for Fat Ham and there was a post show talk about his writing journey and what it meant for the actors to participate in this play..

It is interesting to note that every one of the five Broadway shows that we watched had some sort of connection to the LGBTQ community, whether it was having one or more gay characters in the show, or having a role that was played by a non-CIS actor in real life.  Three of the shows (Kimberly, Cinderella, Shucked) involve some declaration of female power and independence. Every one of the shows included at least one person of colour, not just in the background but as one of the main characters. At least on stage, it seems like parts of America are getting more “woke” and inclusive.