INTERVIEW: Steven Boyer on being self-aware in ‘Kimberly Akimbo’
Photo: Steven Boyer plays the character of Buddy in the Broadway musical Kimberly Akimbo. Victoria Clark portrays the title character. Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus / Provided by Polk & Co. with permission.
The new musical Kimberly Akimbo, now playing on Broadway at the Booth Theatre, follows a teenager from New Jersey (Victoria Clark) who happens to look like a 72-year-old woman. She has an aging disease, and she finds life with friends and family members a struggle — and this is exacerbated because, as promotional material for the musical states, time is not on Kim’s side.
In addition to Clark as the title character, the cast includes Justin Cooley as Seth, one of Kim’s friends in high school; Steven Boyer as Buddy, Kim’s father; Alli Mauzey as Pattie, Kim’s mother; and Bonnie Milligan as Debra, Kim’s one-step-ahead-of-the-police aunt. The cast bring to life Jeanine Tesori’s music and David Lindsay-Abaire’s book and lyrics eight times a week. The show is actually based off Lindsay-Abaire’s previous play of the same name.
Boyer is a Broadway alum who received a Tony nomination for his unforgettable performance in Hand to God. He has also appeared in Time & the Conways and I’m Not Rappaport. Much like the rest of the cast, he has been with Kimberly Akimbo ever since it premiered off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2021.
“I auditioned for this back before COVID,” Boyer said in a recent phone interview. “At the time, it was like, ‘Atlantic is going to do Kimberly Akimbo with music by Jeanine Tesori.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that sounds like something I would definitely be interested in.’ I auditioned for it, and then COVID hit. And they were like, ‘We still want to do this.’ I had a lot of friends in a lot of shows that just got canceled, but this one they held onto it. And I’m really glad they did, but every six months or so, we’d get an email being like, ‘We’re still going to do the show. Are you still interested because we’re still going to do it?’ And I think they held onto it because [of] the pedigree of the material and the creatives involved. I think their intention the entire time was to go all the way to Broadway with this one. They didn’t want it to slip away because of some little thing like a global pandemic.”
Boyer said that Buddy, the father, is a complicated character to portray. He’s an addict, often seen with a beer in his hands, and he often covers up his addiction. However, there’s a lot of humor in Boyer’s characterization of Kimberly’s dad.
“I like playing characters that aren’t just one thing,” said Boyer, who has appeared in the films Hustlers, Bridge of Spies and The Wolf of Wall Street. “Buddy is funny, but he also breaks your heart. Audience members might ultimately hate him, and that’s OK. I feel like, I don’t know necessarily need them to like him because I know that in his heart he’s trying to do the right thing. I knew David Lindsay-Abaire for a long time. He was a playwriting fellow at Juilliard when I was a student there, so I’ve been a fan of his work for a long time. So I knew that the book was going to be an incredible mix of humor and pathos and catharsis, and it is. You can’t go wrong with Jeanine Tesori because she’s a musical genius. At the audition I had to sing the song that Buddy sings into the camcorder to his unborn daughter, and I had a really hard time working on that song and not breaking down into tears. That was my main hurdle: Get through the song without crying. So I took that as a sign that it worked.”
The actor has had ongoing conversation with himself and the cast about judging these characters. Kimberly is a positive, endearing person, even when she’s facing an uncertain future and unsettled home life. Her parents are less than desirous and often appear to be oblivious to Kim’s life, including her goals and passions. It’s almost as if they talk about her in the past tense and are trying to replace her with a new child.
“There’s different schools of thought about whether or not to judge your characters,” he said. “Some people think I can’t judge the characters that I play even if I’m playing the ultimate villain. I can’t judge them. I can’t stand in judgment of them. I kind of feel like I don’t necessarily subscribe to that idea because I feel like a lot of times we judge ourselves, whether fairly or unfairly. We pass judgment on ourselves and our choices, and we have regrets. And we have flaws, and we often look at ourselves not in the kindest light. I feel like it’s important to see the whole person, to observe the whole character. You can say don’t judge the characters you play, but the audience will. And I kind of I try to find where they fit in the story, how their actions propel the story forward, how they support the main character or they’re an impediment to them in their journey. If that involves facing the less savory aspects of the character, then so be it.”
There have been changes between the Atlantic run in 2021 and the Broadway transfer. For one, Buddy and Pattie appear to be more self-aware on stage. In the off-Broadway version, it was in doubt whether they even realized the hurt they caused Kim as distant parents, but some of this lack of self-awareness has been modified. And for Boyer, that’s a good thing.
“That was a big question in the transfer between the Atlantic and Broadway,” Boyer said. “I think at the Atlantic both Buddy and Pattie did not have any self-awareness. They did not know when they were hurting their daughter. They were completely oblivious, and it made them more into villains. And then the script had little surgical changes that reverberated across the whole story when we moved to Broadway, and the changes mostly had to do with the parents and their relationship to Kim. I think the Broadway version of Kimberly Akimbo, both Buddy and Pattie are a little more self-aware, but not so self-aware that they’re angels. They still have their problems, and their problems are standing in the way of them being truly good parents and self-aware people. They’re not completely clueless. I think Buddy knows when he has disappointed Kim, and it’s those moments that force him to try and change and be better for his daughter. But ultimately he is too flawed to actually make that change, so his attempt to be a better human being is kind of the tragedy of the character because he never really gets there.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Kimberly Akimbo, featuring Steven Boyer, continues at the Booth Theatre on Broadway. Click here for more information and tickets.
