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Boston Globe
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
In ‘Kimberly Akimbo,' a teen with some unusual angst
After an extended run on Broadway, where it won five Tony Awards including best musical, 'Kimberly Akimbo' skates into Boston at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, presented by Broadway in Boston, May 6-18, on its national tour. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Inspired by Lindsay-Abaire's own absurdist play from 2001, the mordant musical-comedy follows the story of a sensitive and upbeat yet beleaguered teenager, Kimberly Levaco, who's growing up in suburban New Jersey. Kimberly is not your average 16-year-old misfit who feels like she doesn't belong. Her predicament is unusual. Because of her rapid-aging condition, similar to Advertisement 'She's dealing with her mortality, and I certainly can relate to that part of her experience,' Carmello says, a three-time Tony nominee. 'If I'm lucky enough to have a couple more decades, what do I want to do with whatever time is left? And that's exactly the question she's facing. Twenty days or 20 years, it's a finite amount.' Exacerbating Kimberly's situation are her parents Buddy (Jim Hogan) and Pattie (Laura Woyasz), a pair of dysfunctional and self-absorbed hot messes suffering from a collective case of arrested development. Buddy drinks too much, and Pattie is a hypochondriac. They love Kim deeply, but they struggle to do right by her. Then there's the hilarious hurricane of chaos, Aunt Debra (Emily Koch), a snarky bull in a china shop who blasts back into the family's lives on the run from the law. (L to R) Laura Woyasz, Emily Koch, Carolee Carmello and Jim Hogan. Patrick Gray, At school, Kimberly befriends a kind-hearted, nerdy new kid named Seth Weedus (Miguel Gil), who's obsessed with anagrams and speaks in Elvish. They make an instant connection. Then there's a quartet of classmates, who are show choir-obsessed, sexually confused outcasts with cross-wire crushes on each other. 'She's exactly like them and also they're who she will never actually be,' Lindsay-Abaire says in a Zoom interview from his home in Brooklyn, 'because they have their bright shiny futures ahead, and she has a very limited amount of time.' Advertisement To channel those formative years, Carmello observed and studied the body language of teenagers in real life. 'How do they hold their shoulders? How much eye contact do they give? There's a self-consciousness because you don't feel comfortable in your own skin yet — 'I'm not really sure if I want to look at you because I don't know what you're thinking about me.'' She vividly recalls being 14 or 15 years old and walking down the street in her hometown of Albany, N.Y., and feeling overwhelmed by anxieties over 'grades, feeling like I didn't fit in socially with whatever group I was aspiring to, probably having a crush on somebody who didn't notice me, and dealing with my parents, who didn't understand anything that I was doing. 'I remember that feeling and saying to myself, 'I'm never going to forget how hard this is and how nobody understands. I want to be an adult who remembers how hard this is,' because adults are dismissive of kids that age. So I'm tapping into that.' For the show's creators, the choice to adapt 'Kimberly Akimbo' into a musical had a few advantages. Since it was Lindsay-Abaire's play, he held the rights. Plus, the 'scaffolding' of the story was already in place and it didn't have an overabundance of plot. 'There was elbow room in there to get under the hood and actually expand on what was in the play and dig in a little bit deeper,' he says. ''Kimberly' had very complicated characters with rich inner lives, deep emotional needs, desires, urges, and longings, and that's what you want in a musical. So you can stop a scene and tell the audience what they're feeling or what they hope to achieve or make a realization in the midst of the song.' Advertisement Lindsay-Abaire's plays have always walked a delicate tonal tightrope of acerbic, absurdist, and laugh-out-loud comedy with fathoms-deep explorations of pain, heartache, and regret. He can trace his sweet-and-sour style to the sardonic commentary that spilled forth from the family and friends he grew up with in South Boston. 'The comedy comes out of these painful places, and the pain comes out of the funny places sometimes, and that's how it always was in my family,' he says. 'If somebody made a comment that cut so deep or something was so painful, the only way to have relief from it was to make a joke out of it.' 'Horrible things would happen, and we would laugh ourselves sick at them. But that's just how we would cope with hard times,' he says. 'It was the armor that [my family] wore to protect themselves from the pain that was at their centers.' In writing the show, he and Tesori struck that careful balance. 'If anything ever became too earnest, Jeanine would say, 'Oh yes, but we need to squeeze some lemon juice on it now,'' he says. 'Or if something was feeling too funny, 'let's have a penny drop moment where we make the audience gasp a little bit.'' In revisiting the characters more than two decades after he wrote the original play, Lindsay-Abaire learned more about them and found his perspective shifting. 'When I first wrote it, I was mostly identifying with the younger characters and really channeling some baggage I had in my relationship with my parents,' he says. Advertisement But now that he's a dad with two sons of his own, 'I hope [the parents] have a little more humanity, that we see how Buddy's drinking and Patty's narcissism is a direct result of their terror of losing their child. This is what they are doing to themselves in order to not feel this horrible pain. It was something I had a lot more access to in writing the musical.' Ultimately, Carmello hopes audiences walk away with a reminder to cherish our time on earth. Echoing the lyrics of the final song 'Great Adventure,' she says, 'Look around at the things and the people that are important to you and just appreciate them, because you never know when it's going to be over. We only get one chance to do this, so try to live the life that you want to live.' KIMBERLY AKIMBO Book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire, music by Jeanine Tesori, presented by Broadway in Boston. At The Emerson Colonial Theatre, May 6-18. Tickets from $45; 888-616-0272; Christopher Wallenberg can be reached at
Boston Globe
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Grand Kyiv Ballet takes flight with ‘Swan Lake'
The csárdás is omitted from the act three lineup of national dances and the beginning of act four is abbreviated; running time Wednesday was just over two hours, with one 20-minute intermission. There's some reduction in forces, but six couples for the first act waltz and polonaise is ample, and so is the contingent of 18 swans in act two and the quartet of foreign princesses hoping to wed Siegfried. The adjustments that have been made to the Petipa/Ivanov choreography are not significant. As is common in Slavic productions of 'Swan Lake,' the court has a Jester to comment on the action; Siegfried's Tutor, however, is absent. Advertisement The scenario offers some novel touches. Before receiving his birthday-present crossbow, Siegfried is knighted (by whom it's not clear) and given a medal by his princess-regent mother. When he enters in act two, swinging the crossbow in search of swans, Rothbart sneaks up behind him and stalks him. At the end of that act, Siegfried does not swear eternal fidelity to Odette. She bourrées off, drawn by Rothbart's invisible power; only then does Siegfried decide, making the two-finger troth mime, and once again, as the curtain falls, Rothbart appears behind him, as if to say, 'We'll see about that.' Advertisement Act one is pleasing, if a shade underpowered; Grand Kyiv's 'Swan Lake' comes to life when the 18 swans enter in act two, crisp and quiet in their pas emboîtés and sautés en arabesque. Svitlana Svinko's grounded Odette is as much woman as swan, wary of Siegfried more as a man than as a hunter. From the outset, there's a touch of the tragic about her. Svinko shows off feathery sissonnes, dreamy développés, a razor-sharp passé-relevé sequence, and, even at a slow adagio, superb control in attitude and arabesque on pointe. Her Odile is arch and authoritative; standing unsupported on pointe for a few seconds is no problem. As Siegfried, Daniel Kish serves up high-flying cabrioles and scissor jumps, neat double tours, and eye-catching tours à la seconde, but what for me stands out is confident, unobtrusive partnering that makes Svinko look good at every turn. Other highlights include a flawless quartet of cygnets, a Spanish dance with deep backbends, a zippy Neapolitan, and a back somersault from the Jester. The fourth act includes a quartet of black swans, perhaps referring to Siegfried's perfidy; that's a Slavic tradition, and so is the conclusion, where Siegfried frees the swans by tearing off one of Rothbart's owl wings. Tchaikovsky's score rises from B minor to B major at this point, so it seems only right that Odette should rush into Siegfried's arms as dawn breaks and the curtain falls. Advertisement SWAN LAKE Music by Petr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Choreography by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, adapted by Anatoliy Shekera. Costumes: Serhii Aleshyn. Lighting: Ihor Samarets. Presented by Grand Kyiv Ballet. At Emerson Colonial Theatre. Remaining performance: Feb. 20. Tickets $39-$89. 888-616-0272, Jeffrey Gantz can be reached at
CBS News
19-02-2025
- Entertainment
- CBS News
"Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" coming to Boston for 6 weeks later this year
The Tony Award-winning play that's a sequel to the story of Harry Potter is coming to Boston later this year. "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" will be at the Emerson Colonial Theatre for six weeks from Nov. 9 to Dec. 20. Tickets will go on sale on Friday, Feb. 28 at 12 p.m. and will range in prices from $49 to $149. Select premium seats will also be available for $199. Sequel to "Harry Potter" books "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child" is a sequel to the popular fantasy series and takes place where the last movie and book left off, 19 years after Harry, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger saved the wizarding world. In the play, they're joined by the next generation that arrives at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, including Harry's son Albus. Highest-grossing Broadway play The play premiered in London in 2016 before opening in New York in 2018, where it won six Tony Awards, including Best Play. It also holds the Guinness World Record as the highest-grossing non-musical play in Broadway history with more than $270 million in sales and 2.5 million tickets sold. The play is currently on its first-ever North American tour and is also making stops in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Atlanta and Minneapolis before coming to Boston. online. Theatergoers can also sign up for an exclusive ticket presale on the theater's website.
Axios
04-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Axios
Things to do around the Boston-area: 2/3-2/9
Things to Do Monday, 2/3 Bill Gates discusses his memoir, "Source Code: My Beginnings" with Henry Louis Gates Jr. at the Emerson Colonial Theatre, 7pm. Price: $112+ Tuesday, 2/4 Dark Mode, a local counter-culture lifestyle brand, hosts a candle-making and intention-setting workshop, involving coconut wax and other materials, 7-8:30pm. Price: $60. Alice in Chains' Jerry Cantrell plays the House of Blues as part of his "I Want Blood" tour. Price: $49.50+ Wednesday, 2/5 Trident Booksellers returns to Samuel Adams' downtown taproom for the Romantasy Book Fair, 5-8pm. Free, but RSVP required. The Hasty Pudding Theatricals welcomes Wicked star Cynthia Erivo, who is receiving the group's 2025 Woman of the Year Award, 6-10:15pm. Price: $252+. Thursday, 2/6 Iconic 70s Blaxpoitation film "Super Fly" plays at the Coolidge Corner Theater, 7pm. Friday, 2/7 One Brattle Square hosts a Black History Month marketplace pop-up, 12-7pm. The Museum of Science's SubSpace Project presents a sensory-filled show of Prince's music at the planetarium, 7:30-8:30pm. Price: $8-$10. Side Quest Books & Games in Somerville hosts a sip and swap with cider, 7pm. Price: $5 Saturday, 2/8 Puerto Rican cuatro player and singer Fabiola Méndez performs at CHROMA Space downtown, 7pm. Sunday, 2/9 Game On! in Fenway is taking reservations for a Superbowl Sunday watch party, which includes a halftime prize giveaway, Superbowl-related trivia and food and drink specials.
