The American teen musical runs the gamut from saccharine to acerbic - taking in as varied a landscape as Grease, Clueless, Heathers, Mean Girls and High School musical itself.
David Linsday Abaire's Jersey-set tale arrives in London laden with Tony awards and deliciously leans towards the quirky, dark and sardonic - with the twist that heroine Kimberley Levaco is a teenager with a terminal ageing disorder that means she looks four times older.
To add to her misery, she's literally the grown up in the room with a boozy dad and narcissistic mom whose dreams were curtailed when they became teenage parents.
We're in Bergen County New Jersey, a dead end working class suburb where the only hang out is the local skate rink, and Kimberley's new class mates are the geeks and outliers who beautifully harmonise in the witty opening number about never getting invited to parties.
Sure it's downbeat, but Lindsay-Abaire, songwriter Jeanine Tesori, and veteran director Michael Longhurst fashion a life-affirming and moving night out from this oddball story.
Soutra Gilmour's revolving set spotlights the clock counting down Kimberley's shortened life expectancy, and the spartan home that's invaded by her potty-mouthed jailbird aunt Debra who lures her into a lucrative check fraud scam.
Most of the supporting cast get their spotlight in a story that becomes about shattered dreams, seizing the moment and accepting everyone's flaws.
Buddy (Steven Boyer) knows he's a shitty dad but wants to be better, mum Pattie (Niahm Perry) is pregnant again in the hope of getting something right, and the quartet of gay and straight high schoolers - all in love with the wrong person - are aiming for the Show Choir State Finals where they can finally shine.
Kimberley (Maria Friedman) develops a touching relationship with Tuba-playing Hobbit fan Seth - a tear-jerking standout turn from Gilli Jones - and Alice Fearn steals pretty much every scene as the straight-talking Blues-singing Aunt Debra.
At 66, multi-Olivier nominated, Sondheim stalwart Friedman gets a starring role as the teenager trapped in an old woman's body.
It feels sacrilegious to say, but for much of the show it was impossible to bury the notion of an older actor pretending to be a much younger woman with little authenticity of the inner teenage life behind the awkward physicality and occasionally cracking singing voice.
But two moments pull you up short - when Kimberley dresses as Seth's granny to effect the cheque fraud and looks exactly like Mary Whitehouse, and when the departing Kimberly sings to her mother Before I Go about not being the daughter she wanted in a house haunted by the ghost of a girl she will never be.
Friedman brings her vast experience to quietly nail the pathos of the exchange before joyfully embarking on an uplifting bucket list adventure with Seth that will send you out of the theatre brushing away tears and laughter.
Kimberly Akimbo runs at Hampstead Theatre until November 7.
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