Kimberly Akimbo Brings Big '99 Energy to Broward Center and a Carpe Diem Message

By Joanie Cox Henry

AnnAGram! Ann Morrison reminds us life is short, enjoy the ride in Kimberly Akimbo [photo by Joan Marcus]

Some musicals make you laugh. Some make you cry. Kimberly Akimbo, the five-time Tony Award-winning gem now playing at the Broward Center through April 12, somehow does both simultaneously and then sends you home feeling inexplicably grateful to be alive.

Set in 1999 New Jersey, the show is a full-on nostalgia bath for anyone who survived high school at the turn of the millennium. I am one of those surivors! Scrunchies, Lisa Frank rainbow stickers and awkward teenage yearning aside, the story follows Kimberly Levaco, a 16-year-old girl with a rare condition that causes her body to age decades ahead of her years. It's a premise that sounds like it would be a downer, but playwright and lyricist David Lindsay-Abaire and composer Jeanine Tesori have crafted something entirely unexpected: a dark, funny, luminous love letter to the simple act of being here and why our dreams matter. As Levaco and her band of equally uncool friends gather around the lockers for ordinary high school banter, it instantly transported me back to my own awkward high school exchanges by a similar set of lockers. I remember being embarassed about liking a boy and not knowing if he liked me back and how much I just wanted to fit in. In the end, I wish I would've spent less time worrying and more time loving myself but that's only a gift that comes with age.

I was lucky enough to catch this show with the original Broadway cast back in 2024. Broadway veteran Ann Morrison is magnetic as Kimberly, a warm, wry and utterly disarming teenager. She carries the emotional weight of this role with the lightness that feels like a magic trick sprinkled with some sugary cereal and Saturday morning cartoons. Marcus Phillips brings an endearing sweetness to Seth, the anagram-obsessed nerd boy who just might crack Kimberly's guarded heart open, while Emily Koch steals every scene she's in as the gloriously chaotic hot mess auntie, Deb.

Whether you lived through the CD and coffeehouse, cell phone free wonder of 1999 the first time or you're experiencing it through the haze of pop culture nostalgia, Kimberly Akimbo hits differently when you're reminded that time is the one thing none of us can get more or can afford to waste.

Kimberly Akimbo runs at Broward Center through April 12.

Go. Take tissues and an open heart and mind. And don't forget to enjoy the ride!

Get tickets here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLlUY6TVD_c

Opening night at Broward Center April 7, 2026:

A look back at opening night at Kravis Center on Nov. 11, 2025:

A look back at seeing Kimberly Akimbo on Broadway in NYC in 2024.