‘Kimberly Akimbo’
Original Cast Album (Ghostlight Records)

“Kimberly Akimbo” is the latest of what is now a trilogy of musical theater works by composer Jeanine Tesori that deal directly with issues of childhood and, as it happens, ever more dysfunctional families. 

The 63-year-old actress Victoria Clark stars as the title character, Kimberly Levaco, a teenage girl with a rare disease that gives her the appearance of a woman four times her actual age. Despite this condition, Kimberly is by far the most well-adjusted and sympathetic person in her family. 

Like “Caroline, or Change” and “Fun Home” before it (not to mention Ms. Tessori’s other shows, “Violet,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and even “Shrek: The Musical”), “Kimberly” creates its own musical and dramatic vocabulary as it goes along. The cast album was released last month.

In this instance, Ms. Tessori and her collaborator, David Lindsay-Abaire, who wrote the book and lyrics based on his play from 2001, are especially fond of a musical theater convention known as the “I Want” song. This usually occurs in the second or third scene, when the heroine sits down by herself and makes it clear to the audience exactly who she is and what she aims to get out of life. 

The score to “Kimberly” contains at least four “I want” song equivalents, each sung by a different member of the family, and they’re each set up with a distinct dramatic conceit. Kimberly’s soliloquy, “Make a Wish,” is quite literally a list of requests, sung as she fills out a form from a philanthropic foundation. It’s a particularly convincing piece of musical acting from Ms. Clark; never do we doubt that she’s a 16-year-old girl trapped in an older woman’s body. 

Even before “Make a Wish,” we hear “Hello, Darling,” sung by Kimberly’s very pregnant mother, Alli Mauzey as Pattie. You might think the idea of an expectant mother leaving a message to her unborn child sounds rather sweet. Alas, Pattie is such a textbook narcissist that everything she has to say is arrogantly defensive and entirely self-serving.

Her father Buddy’s (Steven Boyer) song “Happy for Her” is not so much about what he wants but, delivered from the perspective of a disillusioned middle-aged dad, a litany of what he didn’t get out of life — and never expects to. This quickly morphs into a rather day-late, dollar-short expression of paternal feelings for the daughter who looks much older than he does. “Kimberly Akimbo” is full of moments like this, at once tender and awkward, delivered so powerfully so as to convey that embarrassment to everyone in the audience.

The funniest of the quartet of such songs is “Better,” which resonates as the personal manifesto of Kimberly’s aunt Debra, a larcenous lowlife who cons, grifts, and steals her way from one petty crime to another. Even though Debra is anything but a sympathetic character, the audience all but stands up and cheers when Bonnie Milligan reaches the climax.

Other songs delineate the action and move the plot forward: “Anagrams” is the major getting-to-know-you moment showing the deepening affection between Ms. Clark as Kimberly and Justin Cooley as her teenaged leading man, Seth.  

“How to Wash a Check” has Aunt Debra as a female Fagan enlisting Kimberly, Seth, and their four high school friends (who serve as a singing and dancing chorus accompanying the main action) in a rather hair-brained criminal scheme. “The Inevitable Turn” shows the four family members attempting to have a pleasant civilized meal together before the whole thing inevitably dissipates into a verbal melee in which all the deepest darkest secrets are disclosed even before the main course. There’s also an end of Act One anthem, “This Time,” that lands on the ears like a straight version of “I Believe” from “The Book of Mormon.”

“Kimberly Akimbo” begins with a bright pop confection, suggestive of ’90s and ’00s boy bands, that deliberately misdirects all the profound and complicated emotions underneath. It’s musically hip enough to feature a heroine who equates Mel Tormé with cherry cheesecake. 

The ending is somehow both dark and upbeat at the same time, though we don’t hold it against Kimberly and Seth that they have apparently achieved happiness through one of Aunt Debra’s illicit enterprises. Perhaps the final lesson is that, as Ms. Milligan sings, “When life gives you lemons … you gotta go out and steal some apples. Because who the f— wants lemons?”