Words like “versatility” and “range” are usually invoked to describe actors. But they can be invaluable traits in writers as well.
There are few if any better examples of that in the American theater than South Boston native David Lindsay-Abaire, who teamed up with the gifted composer Jeanine Tesori in a musical adaptation of his own play from a couple of decades ago, “Kimberly Akimbo.”
Directed by Jessica Stone, the touring production of “Kimberly Akimbo” that has arrived at the Emerson Colonial Theatre is funny and heart-piercing by turns, managing to both entertain and move us, and generally achieve an emotional richness that, crucially, stops short of mawkishness.
There’s nary a false note, so to speak, in the performance by accomplished Broadway veteran Carolee Carmello as Kimberly Levaco — a complicated role if ever there was one.
As the musical begins, it’s 1999 in Bergen County, N.J., and Kimberly is turning 16. Birthdays are fraught occasions for her, to put it mildly. Kimberly suffers from progeria, a rare disorder that greatly speeds up the aging process. She has the thoughts and feelings of a teenage girl, but the features and body of an elderly woman.
Kimberly sets out to make friends at her new high school — her erratic family having suddenly moved to a new town for a reason she does not yet know — but she’s approaching the limits of her life expectancy.
None of that sounds or is funny, obviously. But Lindsay-Abaire has a way of scrambling the usual comedic and dramatic equations, and he has surrounded the unsinkable Kimberly with an array of eccentric or off-the-rails characters who are so idiosyncratic and freshly imagined that we experience “Kimberly Akimbo” (and his other work) with a sense of discovery.
Over the past couple of decades, Lindsay-Abaire has created a body of work that has proven his adeptness at entwining the powerful and the comic. “Good People,” which starred Frances McDormand and a pre-“Hamilton” Renée Elise Goldsberry on Broadway in 2011, is one of the best plays ever written about class — that hard-to-cross dividing line we like to pretend doesn’t exist in America.
His Pulitzer-winning “Rabbit Hole” (on Broadway in 2006, starring Cynthia Nixon and a pre-“Mad Men” John Slattery) immerses us in the depths of a mother’s unappeasable grief as she is virtually swallowed by darkness. His “Ripcord” made a freewheeling farce out of two mismatched roommates in a nursing home, presented at the Huntington Theatre Company (now called The Huntington) in 2017. His talents as lyricist and book writer helped make “Shrek the Musical” (on Broadway in 2008, starring Sutton Foster and Brian d’Arcy James) better than it had any right to be.
His collaborator on “Shrek” was Tesori, who also has a pretty wide range, having composed scores for such divergent musicals as “Fun Home,” “Violet,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” and “Caroline, Or Change.”
“Kimberly Akimbo” won five Tony Awards in 2023, including the biggest prize of all: best musical. Lindsay-Abaire won a Tony for best book of a musical, and he and Tesori won for best original score.
With lyrics by Lindsay-Abaire and music by Tesori, the show’s songs are properly scaled; any hints of grandiosity would sink this enterprise. The production at the Colonial sags and thins out a bit in Act Two — that perennial Achilles heel of musical theater — but not enough to diminish the show’s overall impact.
Carmello’s Kimberly wears an expression of perpetual anxiety and worry that is not entirely due to her medical situation. Her home is a madhouse, and she often has to act as the grown-up to keep the Levaco family from coming apart at the seams.
Her father, Buddy (Jim Hogan), is a heavy-drinking and unreliable underachiever. Her mother, Pattie (Laura Woyasz, superb), is very pregnant, with both of her arms and hands in a cast due to carpal tunnel syndrome. Buddie and Pattie are not cruel, but they are clueless and insensitive. Then there’s Pattie’s sister, Debra (Emily Koch), a felonious scam artist, who shows up unexpectedly and is eager to enlist Kimberly and other local teens in her latest illegal scheme.
Meanwhile, at a local skating rink and later in the high school, Kimberly is starting to develop a crush on the sweetly nerdy Seth (Miguel Gil), and getting to know fellow students Martin (the charismatic Darron Hayes), Aaron (Pierce Wheeler), Teresa (Skye Alyssa Friedman), and Delia (Grace Capeless).
All of them are endearing misfits. In many depictions of high school life, they would be targets of bullies, and they would be defined by their efforts to survive that social snake pit, but in “Kimberly Akimbo” they get to define themselves.
There’s an unutterable poignancy to a scene when the teenagers, gathered in a circle, talk about their dreams for the future while Kimberly remains silent. She won’t be part of that future, but by the time we reach the jubilant finale, it’s a safe bet she’ll live on in the memories of those who knew her.
KIMBERLY AKIMBO
Book and lyrics by David Lindsay-Abaire. Music by Jeanine Tesori. Directed by Jessica Stone. Presented by Broadway In Boston. At Emerson Colonial Theatre, Boston. Through May 18. Tickets start at $40. BroadwayInBoston.com
Don Aucoin can be reached at donald.aucoin@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeAucoin.