The Tony-winning musical about a teenager ageing four times faster than her friends reaches Europe for the first time at Hampstead Theatre.
Kimberly Akimbo, winner of the 2023 Tony Award for Best Musical, has its European premiere at Hampstead Theatre in Swiss Cottage from Friday 28 August to Saturday 14 November 2026. Maria Friedman, a four-time Olivier Award winner, plays Kimberly.
David Lindsay-Abaire wrote Kimberly Akimbo as a play in 2000, first staged at South Coast Repertory in California. Two decades later he rewrote it as a musical with the composer Jeanine Tesori.
It opened off-Broadway in December 2021, then moved to Broadway, where it won five Tony Awards, Best Score and Best Book among them.
The story follows a New Jersey teenager whose condition ages her body four times faster than her friends’. Weeks from a sixteenth birthday she is not guaranteed to see, she faces a dysfunctional family, a first love from the ice rink and an aunt’s get-rich-quick scam.
Lindsay-Abaire won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2007 for Rabbit Hole. Tesori’s scores include Caroline, or Change and Fun Home.
Michael Longhurst directs on the Main Stage. It is his first Hampstead production since Next to Normal transferred from the Donmar to the West End on an Olivier nomination.