17 Reasons to Love Alicia Keys’ ‘Hell’s Kitchen’

The national touring production of Alicia Key’s “memory musical,” Hell’s Kitchen, arrived at the Benedum this week. With a short run in Pittsburgh, and as part of a largely well-attended subscription series, interested single-ticket buyers should purchase their seats soon as availability is low. That is, until the show returns. Which it very likely will. And for many good reasons. The show only runs as part of the PNC Broadway in Pittsburgh Series through November 9.

A well-proven genre for Broadway hits, jukebox musicals like Hell’s Kitchen represent a theatrical format in which a well known musician reveals his or her life story (often as a coming-of-age tale) and which is replete with the hit songs that made the artist famous. Fans of Carole King fawn over Beautiful. Stans of Neil Diamond are star struck by A Beautiful Noise. And generations of near geriatric groupies have gushed over the life stories of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons (Jersey Boys,) the Temptations (Ain’t Too Proud,) or even the Beach Boys (Good Vibrations). Many point to the ABBA-inspired Mama Mia! as the first successful jukebox musical, but there is now seemingly no end to the trend. That said, Hell’s Kitchen may go down as the standard-bearer. This is a well written, well-balanced musical in its own right, one that might stand on its own without the lure of Alicia Keys’ celebrity serving as the inspiration for it. And that may be the rare exception Hell’s Kitchen will play in the pantheon of jukebox musicals.

True or not (staged biographies lean naturally to the fictional), a young Alicia Keys, here a 17-year-old Ali, serves as narrator of her own formative years when living with her single mom in an apartment building filled with creative types. Ali introduces us (by way of an elevator ride that stops to hear the many sounds of musicians filling this central Manhattan high-rise) to her mother, friends and neighbors. Mom is overly protective. Ali is interested in the boys—one named Knuck, in particular—drumming their street buckets outside. Mom fears what will happen if she can’t control it, so she enlists the doorman to call the police if the sexy scene gets too heated. And, of course, Ali defies her mother and seeks out Knuck at his place of work. Their relationship dawns. And so do the songs Alicia Keys has written to mark these moments in a barely budding career she only comes to realize when her neighbor, the elderly and wise Miss Liza Jane, plays the piano in their building’s common room. When Ali is caught openly flirting with Knuck, Mom recalls her own rebellious adolescence when she met Ali’s father, Davis (a musician, too) who, in addition to the birth of Ali, has created great disappointments.

That’s the set up (or exposition) for this love-to-loss-to-life lesson tale which fittingly moves quickly in dramatic harmony with the songs many have come to hear. “The Gospel,” “The River,” “You Don’t Know My Name,” and “Not Even the King” serve the storyline seamlessly. It’s nearly impossible to say which of these titles were written expressly for Hell’s Kitchen because, if they were released earlier on any of Key’s nine studio albums, it doesn’t mean they weren’t. Alicia Keys first started crafting this stage bio twelve years ago. (What possible harm would there be if one song (or several) should become a hit before arriving on Broadway?) The notable song “Seventeen” (which is sung by Ali’s Mom, here named Jersey) was written by Keys expressly for this moment in her musical. Fair-weather fans of the 17-time Grammy Award winner will thrill to hear “Girl On Fire, “Perfect Way To Die,” “Fallin’,” and “Empire State of Mind.”

The primary number seventeen figures so prominently in this show—Ali’s age, a song title, and the number of Grammys Alicia Keys has won (thus far)—it may be appropriate, therefore, to highlight seventeen reasons to see it. With apologies to those who may not like the idea of a “listicle” to highlight a theater review, here’s what I find compelling about Hell’s Kitchen.

#17  The set; a multi-visual backdrop defines location, space, memories, and, of course, locations like Ali and Jersey’s apartment kitchen, where there’s lots of hell to pay.

#16  Costuming; a cast of teens, including Ali, wear street clothes that help define the era of a New York City run under the aegis of a mayor who will become notorious for a different kind of chaos. But these kids must dance, too, and their free-flowing crop tops, colorful pants and 90s hairstyles are right-on.

#15  Lighting; as elucidating as Alicia Keys’ lyrics are to her songs in this story, so too is the stage lighting illuminating the frantic, colorful and dangerous streets of the “hellish” neighborhood in which police are ever-present. Beware the flashing lights of cop cars.

#14  Crystal, Millie & Ray; nosy neighbors and allies of Ali’s Mom, Jersey, respectively Rashada Dawan, Beda Spindola, and Chikezie “Chike” Nwankwo, who plays the doorman, ever attentive to the other two women in his lobby who are laughably large and in-charge.

#13  The orchestra; upstage, behind the scrim, elevated, and hardly seen, masterful musicians deliver a solid volume of sound coming from seemingly hundreds of creative musicians living in the appropriately tight space of an NYC high rise. Further to the talent of the pianist and percussionist, these guys must mask the music played by actors on stage. Is Ali playing the keys on stage? Are Knuck and his buddies beating those paint buckets? Does it really matter from whence the music flows?

#12  Pittsburgh; yes, Pittsburgh, our great city. It’s part of the story!

#11  Ali’s Girlfriends; street sisters, the girls who prod, dare and defend Ali in her courage to meet a boy, played daringly by Gigi Lewis, Marley Soleil, and others from the chorus who are unidentified.

#10  Choreography; exhilarating, styled to the 90s as the streets of NYC became the Marley mat for break dancing, house dancing and hip hop.

#9  Knuck; played smoothly by JonAvery Worrell. It’s hard to say if the character was modeled after a real boyfriend in Alicia’s life, but Worrell delivers a damn fine boyfriend any young girl might dare to date.

#8  The audience; more than excited, more than responsive, “jukebox” theatre-goers typically don’t sit back and wait for their favorite tunes. Here the audience anticipated, supported and “woo-woo-ed” at every appropriate turn, even when the first dancers hit the opening number, titled “The Gospel.”

#7  Ali; played and performed so powerfully by Maya Drake. Her cast credit says she made her professional stage debut in Hell’s Kitchen as a recent high school graduate. Boy, she’s off to a fast start!

#6  The denouement; jukebox musicals typically end with the celebrity hero realizing they have finally made it big. Not Hell’s Kitchen. What a welcome relief from expectation. Credit Kristoffer Diaz for this excellent book.

#5  The plot; simple and well-serving. 

#4  Miss Liza Jane; played majestically by Roz White. Imagine Maya Angelou, Phylicia Rashad and Lena Horne rolled into one person; what a performance!

#3  Musical balance; perhaps the hardest feat in writing a jukebox musical is determining if the story line supports the artist’s famous music or if that music should inspire the famous story line. There’s a kind of theatrical equanimity here rarely found in any musical—jukebox or not.

#2  Jersey; played by Kennedy Caughell. Ali’s mother is stern, brutal, insecure, aggressive, repentant, indifferent and tender. That’s a lot for any one actor to convey in the course of a single show. Oh, but no; Caughell must do more. She’s gotta sing! And, man, can she sing. Good God, y’all.

#1  Davis; Ali’s Dad, played by Desmond Sean Ellington. Every so often, an actor shines on stage in a role that is a supportive one at best. Rarely does that actor, without harm to the lead or other central characters, steal the show. Ellington is a mic drop. Boom.

Photos by Marc J. Franklin.

C. Prentiss Orr is a Pittsburgh-based writer who covers theater and other topics for Entertainment Central. He is the author of the books The Surveyor and the Silversmith and Pittsburgh Born, Pittsburgh Bred. Mike Vargo is an independent writer based in Pittsburgh.

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