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| Christine Mosere and Melanie Calderwood in Kimberly Akimbo |
by David Lindsay-Abaire
Directed by Eric Lewis
Starring Melanie Calderwood, Jay Jenkins, Christine Mosere, Carissa Meisner Smit, and Woody Lotts
The Phoenix Theatre
through June 22
If you haven't been out to Edmonds lately, there are two theater companies there and both are well worth paying attention to. Driftwood Players is one, and The Phoenix Theatre is the other. The Phoenix Theatre grew out of the ashes of Edge of the World Theatre which probably felt like the edge of the world if you attended their ramshackled and unamenitied performances. Melanie Calderwood and her crew fixed up the space, painted, made a cute lobby, and turned it into a little piece of escapism.
The Phoenix tends to focus on comedies, and they do them well. But just because they are funny does not make the comedies bland or without societal commentary. Their latest offering is Kimberly Akimbo by David Lindsay-Abaire. The biggest surprise in this play is that the main character, 16 year old Kimberly, suffers from progeria, a condition where a child ages so rapidly that he/she physically appears to be aged and often dies by age 16.
Lindsay-Abaire does not just give Kimberly this condition, he also makes her mother somewhat neglectful, narcissistic, and think she's dying of cancer, and her father an alcoholic, he also adds an aunt that has been in and out of jails and homeless! That description would, by itself, sound more like a tragedy. But if you give it a chance, it's a bittersweet comic take on resourcefulness and family resilience.
The cast does a lovely job of bringing the play to life, centered by the sweet and patient performance of Melanie Calderwood. She is note-perfect as a 16 year-old trapped in an 80ish year old body. She understands her condition, tolerates her parents - mostly, and is marvelously entranced by maybe finally getting a boyfriend. Calderwood is a frequent performer in her theater and I have yet to see her fail to bring each character fully to life.