THE GUARDIAN INTERVIEW WITH JEANINE TESORI
Posted on 16 September 2026.
Posted in: Interviews with cast and creatives
‘We all have an expiry date’: Kimberly Akimbo, the achingly funny musical about a teen with a 64-year-old body.
The uplifting, award-winning show about a girl ageing four times too fast electrified New York. As it hits the UK, co-creator Jeanine Tesori talks The Guardian’s Emma John.
Jeanine Tesori is thinking about her mother back home in the US. “She’s 95,” says the composer, “and she’s not been well. But she would look in the mirror and be like, ‘I can’t believe I’m old.’ It’s always a surprise, always. There’s an interiority about ageing, especially as women. You stay playful and you stay curious, but the world has other ideas.”
Ageing – and growing up, which is not necessarily the same thing – are a central consideration in the musical that Tesori has been rehearsing. Kimberly Akimbo, which the composer developed with David Lindsay-Abaire from his play, follows a teenage girl with a rare genetic condition that causes her to age at four times the normal rate. Its London debut stars the 66-year-old Maria Friedman as Kimberly. “And she has such a bright young energy,” says Tesori as we chat in a rough-and-ready rehearsal room in London, “that she doesn’t have to do anything to play 16.”
If a story about a girl with a life-shortening condition sounds like a tragedy, don’t be fooled. Kimberly Akimbo is a comedy about a chaotic family (from a hypochondriac mother to a criminal aunt) and a tender teenage romance. Uplifting and achingly funny, the original New York production was the biggest winner of the 2023 Tony awards. Tesori watched the London cast rehearse its bittersweet ending with her lips zipped firmly shut: “David and I know the show so well that we have to just let people interpret it their own way.”
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At 64, her own life looks a fulfilled one: mother, teacher, legend of her industry. Her compositional dexterity and range, combined with an extraordinary ability to turn playwrights into lyricists and librettists, has produced everything from fun-packed Broadway shows (Thoroughly Modern Millie, Shrek), to complex, thought-provoking musicals (Soft Power, Caroline, or Change) and avant garde operas about police racism, drone pilots, and Eugene O’Neill’s marital rows.
“Everybody knows she’s a brilliant composer,” says Lindsay-Abaire, when he swings by rehearsals during lunch. “But she’s also one of the most insightful dramatists – she understands story structure and character and things that not all composers do or are even interested in.”
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Tesori adds: “I love working with playwrights who are looking at the global conversation.” And her deep friendship with Lindsay-Abaire is obvious. “We both have a similar sense of humour,” he says. “We like dark, inappropriate comedy, which is why this show is funny and sad at the same time.”
Click the link below to read the full interview.
Kimberly Akimbo plays the Main Stage until 7 November.
