After scooping up a lot of awards and love on Broadway, an unconventionally fun new musical lands in Australia. Directed by Mitchell Butel, this production boasts a perfect cast of local stars and newcomers.

Centred around a girl growing up in New Jersey in the 1990s, Kimberly Akimbo is sometimes reminiscent of Hairspray with its satirical fondness for place, retro playfulness and comic teen angst.

It also recalls the bittersweet pleasures of Fun Home, which is no coincidence as Jeanine Tesori wrote the score for both – and won Tonys for both. Kimberly Akimbo’s Tony award-winning book is by David Lindsay-Abaire, who adapted his own play.

Christie Whelan Browne, Marina Prior and Nathan O’Keefe in Kimberly Akimbo. Photo © Sam Roberts

Kimberly Levaco has suddenly moved to a new town with her neglectful, self-centred parents: very pregnant Pattie and alcoholic Buddy, whose speciality is empty promises.

Trying to find her way at a new school, Kimberly befriends fellow misfit Seth, whose passion for anagrams underscores his ability to see the world differently.

She also falls in with musical theatre nerds Delia, Teresa, Martin and Aaron, whose unrequited crushes on each other are not helped...