Ann Morrison turns back time for ‘Kimberly Akimbo’

There’s a scene at the end of Act One of Kimberly Akimbo, the Tony-winning Broadway musical onstage next week at Tampa’s Straz Center for the Performing Arts, that finds some of the characters ice skating (and singing) at a local rink called Skater Planet.

Actress Ann Morrison has the title role – a 15-year-old New Jersey girl who, because of a rare genetic disorder, has the body of a much older woman.

Morrison joined the Kimberly Akimbo tour in August. “The first week of rehearsal for me was in the city of New York, and I had two hours on real ice,” she said. “I’m 70, and I haven’t been on ice skates since I was 15. That was a long time ago.”

It won’t be actual ice on the set at the Straz Center – it’s PolyGlide, a rubbery, synthetic ice. The blades on the actors’ skates are well-lubricated with glycerin before the scene starts.

Still.

“The cool thing is that I don’t have to be a great skater,” Morrison said. “Kim is not a great skater. So I basically just glide across the floor, slapping everybody’s hand, do a little turn and come to the middle of the stage where everybody skates around me. It’s pretty easy.

“But I’m 70, with osteoporosis, so I don’t want to fall.”

The tour will travel the country through next May – so why take on the job at all? “I love adventures,” said the veteran performer. “And I’ve never done my career like a lot of people do – I just go wherever doors open. Life’s more fun for me that way. And this door opened.”

Morrison made a memorable Broadway debut as the original Mary Flynn in Merrily We Roll Along, the 1981 Stephen Sondheim musical comedy, for which she won the Theatre World Award. She also appears on the bestselling original cast album.

Her career arc includes numerous Off Broadway, West End and regional productions, and she’s part of a distinguished club of solo performers known and revered for their cabaret performances (Morrison appears regularly at New York’s prestigious 54 Below). And she’s a playwright and a director.

Since 2008, she’s also been a resident of Sarasota. She is the co-founder and owner of SaraSolo, a theatrical organization that helps people create and develop solo stage performances.

Ann Morrison

Morrison is currently on hiatus from teaching, and cabaret working, because she’s otherwise occupied.

“Ask me in May how I feel about it!” she laughed. “Right now, I’m not bored, that’s for sure. And I am the oldest cast member, so I do rest a lot. I don’t like to do a lot of the adventures that they like to go out – because they’ve been doing it for a while, and they’re all bored.

“I’m happy to be mediating. I’m writing another play. I’ll go out and do little walks, but I don’t exert myself much.” She declined to join the young cast members on a snorkeling excursion when the Kimberly Akimbo tour stopped in West Palm Beach this week.

She’s tuned in to her character. “Kim’s very optimistic. She’s got a very dysfunctional family, hilariously funny but they’re very dysfunctional. She has an aunt that might get her caught up in a felony charge. She’s in a new high school where she looks like the lunch lady. She’s trying to negotiate and make friends, and not be the weirdo in the school.

“And she does make a friend, a delightful friend, and because of that she gets to meet other nerdy teenagers.

“People in the audience expect that they’re going to be weepy, weepy, weepy in a sad way, but they’re actually weeping because it’s such an uplifting show. The message is, life is short. So just enjoy the ride.”

Morrison’s distinctive, pixie-esque voice – so memorable from the Merrily recording, and her cabaret videos on YouTube – gives her portrayal of Kim a shot of poignancy. She really does sound like a young person trapped in the body of a … well, a not-so-young person.

That voice, she knows, is her calling card. “I have short red hair, and I wear a wig in the show,” Morrison said. “So when I leave the theater, nobody knows who I am, until I open my mouth. If I happen to say something, then people will go ‘That’s Kim!’”

The Kimberly Akimbo tour is in Morsani Hall, at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa, Nov. 18-23. For showtimes and tickets, visit the website.