Playwright: David Lindsay-Abaire
At: A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells
Phone: ( 312 ) 943-8722; $14-$20
Runs through: Dec. 18
Kimberly LaVaco is 16 years old and her life is a mess! Her pregnant and hypochondriac mother has both wrists immobilized in bandages after surgery to correct carpal-tunnel syndrome. Her father habitually unwinds with a 'few' beers after work every day, often not returning home until late at night. Her Aunt Debra is an itinerant—and inept—con artist whose relentless pursuit of her kinspeople is unhindered by their frequent relocations throughout New Jersey.
Oh, did I mention that Kimberly has the body of a 60-year-old, her condition engendered by a birth defect called progeria? Playgoers needn't anticipate a hankie-wringer, however. David Lindsay-Abaire, the playwright who gave us Fuddy Meers, quickly abandons the clinical details of this rare disease, preferring to use it as a symbol of the spiritual and economical malaise that cripples the other family members, as well as a spur to his heroine's seize-the-day unconquerability, but chiefly as a device to facilitate the inclusion among his dramatis personae of a frail old lady who talks like a wittle bitty guuurl.
It is to director Shade Murray's credit that he resists his text's temptation to coast on the cuddliness of its blue-collar stereotypes, instead focusing on the plight of the imperfect child, psychologically abandoned by her parents—a rejection intensified by the impending arrival of a sibling who, presumably, will not share her defect. The Red Orchid aesthetic may mandate that a full-sized post office box be dragged across the stage at one point, and that Mama LaVaco break her water in full view of the audience. But Roslyn Alexander generates adolescent poignancy in the role of the—literally—old-before-her-time Kimberly. Matt Kozlowski and Mierka Girten as the stressed-out Mr. and Mrs. LaVaco, Jennifer Engstrom as the twitchy Aunt Debra, and Steve Haggard as Kim's nerdy schoolchum Jeff, likewise navigate the line between caricature and cruelty to emerge all the more grotesque for being so gol-durn pitiful.
Together this fire-breathing ensemble attack its roles with an unflinching candor that more than earns our hearty endorsement of Lindsay-Abaire's shamelessly contrived Romeo and Juliet—or Harold and Maude, anyway—happy ending.