The musical Kimberly Akimbo is the story of a teenager (63-year-old Victoria Clark) suffering from a disease similar to progeria, causing her to age 4.5 times faster than normal. Her adolescent concerns are fairly typical, except for getting pregnant - she has already been through menopause. (In many ways, the jokes write themselves.) Kimberly struggles with her relationships with peers - naturally - and her dysfunctional family, including alcoholic Buddy, her dad, and sociopath Aunt Debbie (played by Bonnie Milligan, who nearly steals the show).
The play Pictures From Home is based on a book, a "photo memoir" of the same name by photographer and author Larry Sultan (Danny Burstein, in performance), who spent ten years photographing, interviewing and writing about his parents: father Larry (played by Nathan Lane) and mother Jean (Zoe Wanamaker). A major player in this production is the set, and the manner in which the photos are introduced as the centerpiece around which the action revolves. To know more about that you'll have to see it for yourself. You could also read the book.
This back-to-back description of these shows - both comedies of a sort - brings me to their common theme: how we deal with aging and mortality. This is a favourite topic of mine, with which I will not bore you further. These two shows are each excellent in their way, and you'll hear about them again, I have no doubt.
If, on the other hand, you have no desire to have any thought - deep or otherwise - and wish to be entertained in the manner of Fawlty Towers meets Monty Python meets the Marx Brothers playing Agatha Christie, go see "The Play that Goes Wrong," presently at New World Theaters, a nifty five-theatre Off-Broadway complex in Hell's Kitchen. It's quite fun.
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