Life — and trouble — comes fast in Broadway hit ‘Kimberly Akimbo’

By the time you get to Act Two in the Broadway hit musical Kimberly Akimbo you ll apparently be too caught up in the plot to notice it But if you can watch for the interplay between actors Jim Hogan and Emily Koch He plays Buddy the father of Kimberly a teenager who is aging at times her normal rate suffering from a affection similar to progeria Koch plays Buddy s sister-in-law Debra Buddy and Debra despise each other Act Two is one of the climaxes of the show where everything comes to a head and everything starts to go wrong We re sitting at a table yelling at each other Hogan mentioned It ll be a screaming match on stage at the Academy of Music and the job for both actors involves loathing to the max Except in real life they don t They re boyfriend and girlfriend together for more than seven years since a first kiss at a cast party in Appleton Wisconsin when both were understudies on the Broadway tour of Waitress Emily Koch center with cast members of Kimberly Akimbo Photo by Joan Marcus What they do on stage and maybe it s not the majority of professional is to try to make each other laugh while loathing We re pranksters onstage and backstage commented Hogan who grew up in the Roslyn section of Abington Township in Montgomery County We re maybe passing our eyes at each other or he might imitate her wild gestures Our hope is to have a few fun with each other and go as far as we can to push that envelope he reported The other actors know what s up and they too need to avoid getting caught up in the laughter But sometimes Hogan stated someone forgets a line or there s a momentary silence until the actors collect themselves Not that the audience notices Hogan denies ever yelling at Koch in real life and says that while there may be certain cathartic moments in the onstage screaming he can t remember them He and Koch were a couple when she and her parents first saw the musical adaptation of Kimberly Akimbo in an off-Broadway production in New York in She came back raving about the show and bought more tickets insisting that Hogan see it with her telling him it was the best theater she had seen in a decade He agreed instantly he revealed and started working to be involved When the Tony Award-winning musical opened on Broadway in Hogan and Koch landed roles as understudies The show was nominated for eight Tony Awards and won five including best musical book and tally When they auditioned Hogan commented the directors didn t know they were a couple Both got cast in main roles for the touring version and are now subletting their Manhattan apartment in Washington Heights Hogan commented his first experience with theater came when he was about and his parents took him to see his sister perform in Bishop McDevitt s High School s production of South Pacific I thought it was the coolest weirdest thing Hogan commented He was directly hooked taking classes and working with Summer Stages in Upper Darby the same theater project that nurtured actor Tina Fey He eventually studied musical theater at Penn State University s main campus Jim Hogan is from Abington Pa He calls Philly my happy place Photo by Joan Marcus Besides acting Hogan sings with T an a cappella trio famous on social media for its covers of Broadway Disney and pop hits They got to the quarterfinals in season of America s Got Talent On a two-week break from the show Hogan will return to Philly with the trio and pop singer Jon McLaughlin to perform on Dec at World Caf Live Kimberly Akimbo opens with Kimberly waiting for her father Buddy to pick her up He s hours late because he s been at a bar There are mishaps all over the place involving both Buddy and Kimberly s mother Pattie a nutty hypochondriac Debra Pattie s sister is the family felon getting Kimberly involved in a fraudulent credit card scheme Meanwhile Kimberly has a complicated relationship with a teenaged boy who not surprisingly doesn t perpetually adjust well to the way age changes her Typically Kimberly s role is played by an actor in her s or s This is a story about living your life to the fullest Hogan reported And there s a lot of love in the show Upon seeing Buddy s activity it s not formidable to see he s been making certain poor decisions Hogan explained He s definitely in love with his daughter but he has strange avenues of coming up short He makes efforts and grand gestures and they fall apart Hogan speaking from Atlanta last week noted he s looking forward to being back in Philadelphia His family will come to see him in the show He plans a pilgrimage to John s Roast Pork where he ll order a cheesesteak not the roast pork He plans to check out reports on the latest cheesesteak craze a sandwich from Angelo s in South Philadelphia and see how they compare He likes the Japanese fusion food at the Double Knot sushi bar in Center City There s something about Philly that makes me the happiest he reported It s my happy place FYI Kimberly Akimbo Oct -Nov Ensemble Arts Philly and The Shubert Organization at the Academy of Music S Broad St Phila - - The post Life and trouble comes fast in Broadway hit Kimberly Akimbo appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY