Hampstead theatre, London Maria Friedman plays a 15-year-old with a rare ageing condition in a heartfelt and funny show that manages to sustain its sweetness

I t’s a bizarre concept for a musical: a girl with a rare condition that causes her to age four times faster than her peers, in a family so dysfunctional that she’s the normal one. Meanwhile, the musical highlights are songs about cheque fraud and scurvy. And yet, somehow, through all this artifice and elaborate setup comes a show so sincerely heartfelt, one that is genuine, hilarious and utterly endearing.

Kimberly Akimbo started out as a play, in 2001, by Pulitzer prize-winner David Lindsay-Abaire, adapted into a musical with composer Jeanine Tesori (Shrek, Fun Home, Caroline, or Change) in 2021. It was lauded on Broadway, where audiences fell for its feels and kooky charm and it won five Tony awards .

For this London premiere, 66-year-old Maria Friedman plays the 15-year-old Kimberly Levaco, living with her pregnant mother Pattie (Niamh Perry) and alcoholic father Buddy (Peter Hannah). They have fled to a New Jersey neighbourhood after something unpleasant went down in their old town.

Kimberly’s new-girl shyness soon gives way to a sunny, sweet character that Friedman plays wide-eyed and guileless, moving in the orbit of a quartet of misfit pals and the absolutely adorable Elvish-speaking, tuba-playing Seth (Gilli Jones). Their youthfulness is portrayed with an amped-up cutesiness, which works in a show where everything’s a little brighter than real life.

Designer Soutra Gilmour puts the Levaco family in a three-storey house with a well-worn sofa and a well-used swear jar. It’s a brilliant set that rotates and turns into a skating rink, a school library, a corridor full of lockers decorated with stickers of Daria and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, in case there was any doubt we’re in the 1990s (see also: Seth’s Velcro wallet).

Like everything else in this show it’s agile, slotting into place without heavy effort.

This is a story, after all, that takes in criminality, alcoholism, neglect, thwarted dreams and life-limiting illness. It’s dealt with lightly – not dismissively – but with a deft handling of tone by Tesori and director Michael Longhurst.

It is frequently laugh-out-loud funny (in an opening number about the joys of New Jersey and not fitting in: “I think Springsteen’s just OK,” sings Seth). Alice Fearn has great timing as Pattie’s felonious sister Debra who arrives with a get-rich-quick scheme.

Rather than anthemic choruses a la Springsteen, Tesori’s songs are conversational and colloquial (“Oh my God, I’m such a tool”), skating across musical styles from ukulele strums, to pop-soul and jazzy harmonies. But she can also suddenly pull the rug to land in more emotional territory, as in Kimberly’s desire just to sit at the table for dinner as a family for once.

It’s a show about wanting things we can’t have and making the best of what we’ve got, and the privilege of having ordinary problems. Perhaps when the emotional climax comes, finally addressing the reality of Kimberly’s condition, the incredulity in the family dynamic is stretched a step too far, but there’s enough goodwill by that point for it not to matter.

Kimberly Akimbo deals breezily with serious subjects and is all the more bittersweet for it. The average life expectancy of someone with her condition is 16, Kimberly tells Seth, as her birthday approaches. “It’s just an average!” she says brightly, and your heart melts at this winningly hopeful show.

At Hampstead theatre, London , until 7 November