I know you come here for film reviews. That’s what I primarily like to do with my free time, go to the movies and write about what I see. However, I am also an avid fan of live theatre, I go to see as many plays and musicals as I possibly can. And earlier this year, when a friend of mine suggested a weekend trip that would let me get to New York to see some Broadway shows that were on my list of things to see, I immediately jumped on it and checked every box that would allow this trip to happen. This was around March/early April of this year.

I had three shows that I knew I did not want to miss. One – the lauded revival of Jason Robert Brown’s musical Parade, which transferred to Broadway after a sold-out limited run at New York City Center in 2022. Two – Kimberly Akimbo, another critically acclaimed musical poised to be a Tony contender, which was introduced to me through a song that popped up on my social media feeds – Better, sung by the luminous powerhouse Bonnie Milligan. After some research about the show’s plot, it sounded like the kind of lightning in a bottle thing I would be remiss not to see on Broadway. And the third is the big, grand, expensive revival of Stephen Sondheim’s seminal masterpiece Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford.

I managed to get good seats to all three shows. This trip happened in the last weekend of June 2023. I had a great time at all three shows. Today I will be recapping these shows and what I thought of them. Not full-form reviews, but some general thoughts, the aspects of each production that stood out to me, the things I can’t stop thinking about, and the reason that live theatre is so important to me. This might be the start of something – I might do a Theatre Thursdays segment whenever I see a new live theatrical production, local to me in the Pittsburgh, PA area, or otherwise. I’m seeing a locally produced production of Stephen Sondheim’s classic Into the Woods on Friday night. Maybe a review of that will be forthcoming next week? Not sure, time will tell.

KIMBERLY AKIMBO

The first show I went to was the Tony-winning Best Musical this year. An adaptation of the play of the same name, both times written by David Lindsay-Abaire, with music by Jeanine Tesori. Kimberly Akimbo stars the now two-time Tony winner Victoria Clark as Kim, a lonely but well adjusted all things considered teenage girl who has recently moved to a town in New Jersey with her family. Kim has an unnamed rare disease that afflicts one in 50 million people, that forces her to age four and a half times faster than the average person, meaning Kim is about to turn 16 years old and she looks like a 70-year-old woman. And the average life expectancy for someone with her condition is, you guessed it, 16 years. 

So, as teenage Kim faces her own mortality, her family is falling apart. Her mother (Alli Mauzey) is pregnant again and somehow is in a position that put both of her arms in casts. And she’s a horrible narcissist who is terrible to Kim, the daughter she never wanted. Her father (Steven Boyer), meanwhile, is an alcoholic who is in denial about what’s happening around him. And yet, Kim finds connection with a big-hearted loner (Justin Cooley) who doesn’t look at her like everyone else does. Meanwhile, Kim’s aunt Debra (Bonnie Milligan) who’s been living on the lam approaches Kim and a group of her friends, in the hopes of getting them involved in her latest get-rich-quick scheme which involves check fraud.

Kimberly Akimbo is a perfect show. I loved it from the opening moment until the bittersweet final note. It seems like the kind of show that will appeal to the widest audience possible and should live a long life on Broadway itself, but also on tours around the world. It’s among the most emotionally wise, heartbreaking and yet joyful and life-affirming shows I’ve seen in my life. My last trip to New York included a production of Dear Evan Hansen with the complete original cast, and that show had a profound emotional impact on me and led me to look at my own emotions and my worldview, really, in a different way. It still sticks with me to this day, and I will defend that damn show until my dying breath. And Kimberly Akimbo was the Dear Evan Hansen of this trip for me.

I walked out of that theater, after having cried a whole bunch, feeling better about life in general. Feeling hopeful, feeling seen, feeling like life was possible. Like maybe the things that keep me up at night will pass and not haunt me one day. The show puts you through the emotional wringer, but ensures you come out on the other side in a more introspective, thoughtful, more emotionally perceptive place. It’s not a huge show, taking place in the 800-seat Booth Theater on 45th Street, the vibe is intimate and small-scale and it feels like the appropriate size for this show. Aside from an impressive ice skating rink scene where the actors skate on the stage, there aren’t many big production-style numbers. The talent of the actors on display is the true draw here.

Victoria Clark just won her second Tony Award for her performance as the titular character, and she is absolutely remarkable. She really sells the perspective of an isolated teenager who’s afflicted with this terrible condition. She’s lonely and in a difficult emotional place, but she’s never a downer to be around. And Clark’s soaring voice is worth the price of admission alone – her very specific skillset brings the viewer from laughter to sobbing tears within the same number. 

Much has been said about Bonnie Milligan’s performance as Kim’s aunt Debra. She comes into the show midway through the first act and initially appears as a comic relief device, but the same emotional wisdom prevalent in the rest of the show is there, and this is entirely dependent on Milligan’s spectacular performance. Even though I’d heard her belt Better in multiple contexts, via the cast recording and plenty of videos online, I was not ready for her bring-the-damn-house-down vocals in person. This woman is an otherworldly talent. Her comedic talent is every bit as sharp as her voice. She’s a star and I could see her enjoying a long, legendary career after her time with Akimbo comes to an end.

This material is also so good because it gives each member of its nine-person cast a standout moment, and a big song. Alli Mauzey, playing the mother introduced basically as an antagonist, has a standout number that will bring on the tears in full force. Justin Cooley, a very young actor making his Broadway debut with this show, is also wildly talented. He has a number in act two that seems cute and harmless, but leaves you with an emotional wallop that you couldn’t have been anticipating. Truly, each member of this cast is so expertly chosen, and even though I hope the show itself has a long, long life, it will be hard to imagine the show being quite this good with any other cast.

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET

After a trip to the Kimberly Akimbo stage door where I met some of the people I just gushed about, I went to check into my hotel and recharge a bit before the evening’s event, Thomas Kail’s hot ticket revival of Stephen Sondheim’s classic 1979 musical Sweeney Todd, starring Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford. After waiting on line to get into the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, which felt like forever, I was impressed to see my way-on-the-end of the orchestra seat in row 5 actually provided the perfect view, with a raised stage that would obstruct your view if you were any closer. 

Josh Groban’s Sweeney Todd carries the same gloomy vitriol of those who have played the role so well in the past. His soaring voice is as impressive as you’d expect, and he couldn’t be better in the titular role. Annaleigh Ashford’s Mrs. Lovett is leaning hard into the comedy of this character. This is the horniest Mrs. Lovett I’ve ever seen. I don’t really think of that character as a comic relief character though. I think of her as someone who’s every bit as broken as Sweeney himself, but in contrasting ways. Vocally, she’s perfect. Ashford has proven herself as something of a musical theater chameleon, effortlessly pulling off different accents and kinds of characters. I’m not sure if the comedy of the role really resonated with me in the ways intended. Maybe that was in Ashford’s interpretation, maybe it was in the way she was directed. Maybe this story is just too dour not to have some kind of comedic relief inserted into it.

I’ve always thought the story of Sweeney Todd to have a lot of inherent humor built into it. It’s a dark, bloody revenge saga but it’s also about what broken, selfish people will do to get what they want. If you want evidence of the humor, look at the A Little Priest number and the very idea of combining Todd’s murders and Mrs. Lovett’s pie business. This also gives a modern and very literal reading to the whole “eat the rich” narrative in today’s culture. There’s lots of commentary and irony that transcends generations and different revivals. I think the humor in Sweeney Todd is strong enough without making Mrs. Lovett into a joke. That was the main thing that bugged me about this revival.

In the production I saw, Daniel Yearwood had taken over the role of Anthony following Jordan Fisher’s abrupt exit from the show. He’s fine. Although this character is supposed to be, like late teens-early twenties and Yearwood looks like he’s about 40. Although I’m sure that issue isn’t as prevalent for those further back in the orchestra or in the balcony. Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things fame played Tobias, and he was better than I was expecting. I don’t know why I wasn’t expecting much from Matarazzo, he has a musical theatre background. I just remember it feeling like desperate stunt casting when he showed up in the Dear Evan Hansen cast close to the end of its run. But I was wrong, he has some real talent for this kind of thing. Especially in the later parts of the show, where Tobias goes dark.

I saw Jeanna de Waal of the now infamous Diana: The Musical as the beggar woman. And her work is quite good here, and she’s bringing humanity to this character who is mainly painted to be a punchline. Ruthie Ann Miles, who usually plays the role, is currently out of the show, doing NY City Center’s current revival of The Light in the Piazza. It’s too bad I missed Miles, who was nominated for a Tony for her work here. I look forward to hearing her vocals on the forthcoming cast recording for this revival, however.

Overall, Sweeney Todd is one of Sondheim’s most complex and challenging scores, for the actor. Lots of rapid-fire, dialogue-heavy lyrics and complicated melodies pervade this mostly sung-through show. And from the moment you sit down in the blue velvet Lunt Fontanne seats and you see the smoke billowing from the stage, you know you’re in for a treat, and you know you’re about to bear witness to something iconic. And you are. Josh Groban is a perfect Sweeney Todd. Annaleigh Ashford is giving a vocally perfect performance, one so good that it makes my issues with the characterization feel a bit like nitpicking. All in all, Thomas Kail’s Sweeney Todd is still a outstanding night at the theater, even if it is the weakest of the three shows I saw on this trip to Broadway.

PARADE

Like I said, in my last theatre trip to New York City, I saw Dear Evan Hansen, before it won a bunch of Tonys and before it became the wrongful target of internet vitriol from people who didn’t get the show. That night was a kind of healing experience for me, as it allowed me to inadvertently confront some of the demons that still haunt me from my high school days, and this show, and specifically Ben Platt’s tour-de-force performance, stuck with me long after I saw it. Since then, I’ve followed Platt’s career and defended him when confronted with his internet trolls, and when I heard he would be involved with the revival of Jason Robert Brown’s Parade, I knew I would have to come see the show if I at all possibly could. 

This show was the main reason I wanted to do this trip to New York in the first place. Parade recently won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, and Best Director for Michael Arden. Again, I’m glad I booked these tickets ahead of time, because Akimbo and Parade definitely garnered more attention and higher ticket price points after the Tonys became a factor. And the main event, as it were, of this trip, did not disappoint. Parade is an ingeniously mounted production of one of the most important musicals I’ve ever seen.

For those unfamiliar (most of you, probably), Paradeis the story of Leo Frank (Platt), a Jewish man who recently moved from Brooklyn to Atlanta, Georgia with his wife in the year 1913. He runs a pencil factory and one day a 13-year-old worker comes to collect her pay for the week, and she is soon after found dead in the building’s basement. Frank couldn’t have possibly committed this murder, but due to the prejudice of the era (and this one, it turns out), he is considered the prime suspect. We follow this accused innocent man and his wife (Micaela Diamond of The Cher Show) as they fight to prove his innocence against a town that would rather see him dead than see justice served.

Spoiler alert, but you should go in knowing this.Parade does not have a happy ending. Parade is a painful reminder of this country’s shameful past and a stark reminder of how far we haven’t come in this country with regard to accepting and loving people who don’t act or look like us. Leo Frank is remembered for having been a scapegoat, and his story ended in an overwhelmingly tragic way. Frank was kidnapped from his prison cell and lynched by a group of crazed white supremacists after having his sentence commuted, avoiding the death penalty. This case has been re-examined and looked over multiple times over the years, with the most recent legal attention given to it, having been in the year 2019, well over a hundred years since it took place. This is shameful and deeply disheartening.

And yet it feels like a story that absolutely must be told. With the rise of antisemitism in this country, due to bigots feeling empowered to hatred by the previous presidential administration, stories like this are more essential than ever. I was not familiar with the story of Leo Frank. This was never taught in schools when I was growing up. We tend to teach the stories where America ends up looking good in the end. We shy away from the stories that tell the truth about ourselves, and I think that’s why Parade is so important. Not just that, but this is one of the most complete and satisfying Broadway scores I think I’ve ever heard. Jason Robert Brown’s music touches a variety of musical genres – classical musical theater, pop, folk, country, blues – it’s all here, and every member of this incredible cast has a big musical moment that all manage to feel distinctly memorable in some way.

After all the pain of this story, what the audience is left with and what they remember is the craft on display in this revival. I would say the main reason to go is the one-two punch of legendarily great leading performances. As a devoted and somewhat obsessive Ben Platt fan, his involvement with this show is what attracted me to it in the first place. He’s somehow better than he’s ever been here, bringing so much emotional depth to this soft-spoken character who is struggling to deal with the traumatic circumstances thrust upon him. And of course, Platt’s soaring, once-in-a-lifetime kind of voice is already a musical theatre staple, this early into his career. He’s two-for-two with extraordinary leading Broadway performances, and I’ll continue to make the six-hour drive for whatever Platt decides to do next on the Broadway stage.

Not enough can be said about the luminous Micaela Diamond as well. I was less familiar with her work, and she’s also very young and will likely go very far in her career. Like Platt, Diamond was also nominated for a Tony Award for this performance, and it’s hard to believe you aren’t watching winning performances when you’re seated at the Jacobs. Both are so, so good and their marvelous singing voices compliment each other so well. Good luck making it through the duets This Is Not Over Yet and All the Wasted Time without violently sobbing. Because I definitely wasn’t able to. Lots of great supporting performances here as well – Alex Joseph Grayson, Danielle Lee Greaves, Jake Pederson, Courtnee Carter, Jay Armstrong Johnson, as well as pretty much every actor with a solo – is giving a vocally precise, very accomplished performance and the book and libretto allows there to be no small parts here. Everyone makes a strong impression.

I would overall say Parade is the best show of the three I saw on this trip to New York. The spectacular cast and bold and unforgettable direction of this story make something that could feel like homework feel thrillingly alive and powerfully of this moment. It packs quite the emotional punch, and the implications of the power of this story are not lost on any viewer. And beyond all that, it’s simply a joy to see actors who are really, really good at their jobs being given the opportunity to really dig deep into thoughtfully written characters and perform some really special music.

But also, I haven’t quite stopped thinking about Kimberly Akimbo. David Lindsay-Abaire’s book encourages the viewer to re-examine the way they think about life, and encourages them to enjoy the things we take for granted. Akimbo could be a really depressing, devastating show. The general plot outline makes it seem like a legendary bummer, but it’s really anything but. There is so much love, joy and catharsis radiating from this show, and the energy on display is infectious. You’ll definitely want to get the cast album on Spotify when you’ve left the theater. In the week since I’ve seen these shows, the music from Kimberly Akimbo has been stuck in my head more than any of the others. Luckily, a tour of the show will be starting next fall, and I’ll be able to see it again, hopefully.

I had to put these tickets on separate credit cards and watch my spending for the next couple weeks or so after purchase. And yet, I will say not a penny was wasted on any of these. Kimberly Akimbo provided the kind of life-affirming catharsis that I love in musical theatre, but experience all too infrequently.Sweeney Todd just gave me a thrillingly mounted production of a show I’m very familiar with. And Parade blew me away in just about every imaginable sense. And if I’d had the extra money or time, there were about four other shows on Broadway I would have stuck around to see.

This trip reminded me why live theatre is so important. It can do so much for a viewer emotionally to sit in a crowd full of strangers, even if you come there by yourself, and let something envelop you. To go on this journey dictated by a cast and crew that possess more talent than you, yourself, could ever hope to. And then to leave feeling fundamentally changed by what you’ve just seen. Broadway is a magical, wonderful utopian place and I hope my next visit comes sooner rather than later.