Posted: 1/19/24 at 10:54am
idioteque... said: "theaterdarling said: "Kimberly Akimbo for Wednesday night January 17 Orchestra G 113, 114 and 115. Gorgeous seats, however, the theater gods giveth and they also they taketh away: Victoria Clark was out - without any notice anywhere (except, apparently her Instagram page which indicated she was on vacation for a week). I only found out about it after my ticket purchase (on Tuesday) from the Kimberly chat thread on this site. I asked the box office person when I picked up the tix about why this was not made known and she said, "we just found out about it." - which was weird because it seemed by then she had already been out the previous night - I guess it depends on what the meaning of "just" is."
How was her understudy?"
Despite seething that Clark was not there, I calmed down and (thankfully) enjoyed the show. I can only say that Colleen Fitzpatrick was fine and not an impediment to said enjoyment. Her voice that night was somewhat less than pristine, and she definitely does not have Clark's vocal chops, which were sorely missed. I'm not the best judge since I have not seen it with Clark (have only seen clips) and an analysis perhaps best left to those who have seen both fully perform (some on the Kimberly thread have seen both I believe).Based only on the clips, in addition to the lesser vocal prowess, I think there was just a depth and spark and knowingness and playfulness that was missing from Fitzpatrick's performance. I think Clark lobbed a fairly good show with serviceable, good enough, but not great music into the excellent category and I just got the fairly good show. Maybe my imagination, but based on the Tony clip, Cooley's performance seemed a bit diminished without Clark to bounce off of - but he was still wonderful, and Mulligan burned brightly. Sorry if this was too much of a response for the question, but since you asked, I had some grief to get off my chest!
