Jeanine Tesori is thinking about her mother back home in the US. \u201cShe\u2019s 95,\u201d says the composer, \u201cand she\u2019s not been well. But she would look in the mirror and be like, \u2018I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m old.\u2019 It\u2019s always a surprise, always. There\u2019s an interiority about ageing, especially as women. You stay playful and you stay curious, but the world has other ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ageing \u2013 and growing up, which is not necessarily the same thing \u2013 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. \u201cAnd she has such a bright young energy,\u201d says Tesori as we chat in a rough-and-ready rehearsal room in London, \u201cthat she doesn\u2019t have to do anything to play 16.\u201d<\/p>\n
double quotation markMy dad was a man of science who really wanted to be a fisherman. He wanted sons and got daughters<\/p>\n
If a story about a girl with a life-shortening condition sounds like a tragedy, don\u2019t 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: \u201cDavid and I know the show so well that we have to just let people interpret it their own way.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Tesori, a protagonist who knows she may not reach adulthood raises the question of how we use our time. \u201cWe all have an expiry date,\u201d she says, recalling the line from Mary Oliver\u2019s poem, The Summer Day: what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? \u201cI lost so many friends during the Aids crisis. I\u2019m from that generation of watching these incredible people, mostly men, disappear. You become aware of how you live.\u201d<\/p>\n
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<\/a> 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\u2019Neill\u2019s marital rows.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody knows she\u2019s a brilliant composer,\u201d says Lindsay-Abaire, when he swings by rehearsals during lunch. \u201cBut she\u2019s also one of the most insightful dramatists \u2013 she understands story structure and character and things that not all composers do or are even interested in.\u201d<\/p>\n