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Tony Awards Countdown

 The first number in a show just needs to set a tone; it can tell you a bit about the planet you're visiting, and it can communicate sexiness or humor or anxiety.


With "All That Jazz," we don't really need to know much about "buckle shoes" and "rouged knees"; we just need to note Chita Rivera in a slinky gown, and we need to see her beckoning to us:

Start the car.....I know a whoopie spot....
Where the gin is cold, but the piano is hot....

"Little Shop of Horrors" broadcasts its own artful silliness right away:

Shang-a-lang....
Feel the sturm und drang in the air!

And "Dear Evan Hansen" makes us worried, even though we're just witnessing a family breakfast in suburbia:

Does anybody have a map?
Does anybody happen to know how the hell to do this?
I don't know if you can tell, but this is me just pretending to know.
So where's the map?
I need a clue.
Because the scary truth is: I'm flying blind....
And I'm making this up as I go....

The new musical "Kimberly Akimbo" aims for "bittersweet." Quickly, we learn we're in small-town New Jersey in the 1990s: We hear allusions to Oksana Baiul, Springsteen, Bergen County, "the zamboni on the ice." At the same time, there is a mild bitterness between the lines:

It's Saturday night in Buttcrack Township...
On a road without a sign....
In a town where there's not much in...
Forty minutes east of Hope....
Forty miles from Metuchen...

This show is about loneliness--missed connections--and you get the message within the first two minutes:

It's Saturday night and I'm the new girl,
So I get to start from scratch.
Next to Lodi, this is dreamy....
Sure, tonight I'm getting looks...
But tomorrow they might *see* me....
(They never really *see* me....)

The idea of "being seen" stays with us all the way until the climactic number, when it's like an exploding bomb. ("There's a ghost of a girl I'll never be. Before I go....let's give up the ghost. Just let her disappear....And then, maybe, you'll *see* me....while I'm still here...")

Kimberly's loneliness is the main concern of the night, but there is loneliness in the subplot, as well: Delightful gay high schoolers dream of converting their "straight" crushes to a new way of life. "I'm with the one I love....but my love goes unrequited! Nothing's right....Nothing is what it should be...."

We watch these people wrestle with their loneliness; they suffer into truth. (Indeed, several show-choir characters want to stage Effie's big "Dreamgirls" number, "I Am Changing," and they want to raise funds for additional costumes so that they can LITERALLY CHANGE CLOTHING between the first and second verses.)

You hear a ukulele at the start--and you hear it at the end, as well. It seems like everything is by design.

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