Kimberly Akimbo, the 2023 Tony Award winner for best musical, will be closing on April 28.
The musical, which also took home four other Tony Awards, has been running at the Booth Theatre on Broadway since October 2022, after making its world premiere at the Atlantic Theater Company Off-Broadway in 2021. The entire original cast from the Off-Broadway run, including Tony Award winners Victoria Clark and Bonnie Milligan, has remained with the show throughout its run and will remain for the final performance.
A national tour is scheduled to follow. BroadwayDirect states it will be a 75-week, 60-city National Tour, starting at at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts this September.
The musical, which features a book by David Lindsay-Abaire and a score by Jeanine Tesori and Lindsay-Abaire, follows Kimberly (played by Clarke), a 16-year-old girl with a rare genetic condition that causes her to age rapidly, as she navigates a complicated family life and tries to fit in amongst her peers. The show was adapted from a 2001 play by Lindsay-Abaire.
In addition to Clarke, the cast features Justin Cooley, Steven Boyer, Alli Mauzey, Bonnie Milligan, Olivia Elease Hardy, Fernell Hogan, Michael Iskander and Nina White.
At the end of its run, Kimberly Akimbo will have played 644 total performances on Broadway, which puts it on similar grounding with 2015 best musical winners Fun Home, which closed after 609 total performances and 2018 winner The Band’s Visit, which closed after 624 total performances. (The 2022 winner, A Strange Loop, had one of the shorter runs for recent winners, with 314 total performances)
Like these shows, Kimberly Akimbo was critically lauded and has seen a largely healthy, though not overwhelming box office performance. The show saw its highest gross, of $736,318 two weeks after the Tony Awards (which took place June 11, 2023) and was able to come close to that, at $720,330, in the recent lucrative holiday week surrounding Christmas and New Year’s Eve. However, the show saw several weeks of lower attendance this fall and winter, hovering in the 70 and 80 percent capacity ranges. Still, with the closing date four months away, the production likely believes it can make it through the tricky winter months on Broadway, bolstered by momentum around the closing announcement.
Anyone who has the chance to see this show before it closes in April should do so. It really is a gem. The best new musical of last year with the best performance.