Hell’s Kitchen is the Tony Award-winning new musical on Broadway featuring the Music and Lyrics of the Grammy Award-winning artist Alicia Keys and Book by the Pulitzer Prize-finalist Kristoffer Diaz.
The musical was nominated in 13 categories by the American Theatre Wing and received Tony Awards in two.
Newcomer Maleah Joi Moon won Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical in her Broadway Debut as Ali in Hell’s Kitchen and Broadway veteran Kecia Lewis capped a 40-year career with her first-ever nomination and win for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for her role as Ali’s mentor Miss Liza Jane.
Hells’ Kitchen is as much a love letter to the boisterous neighborhood that spawned Key’s explosive talent as it is to the relationship between an over-protective mother and her precocious, yet talented mixed-racial teen-aged daughter.
Part West Side Story, with a nod to Bernstein’s Romeo and Juliet theme, part Rent, minus the Aids pandemic, and part Stomp, with its street music dominated by found objects augmented with the Music Direction of Lily King and Choreography by Camille A. Brown, Hell’s Kitchen moves at warp speed through its two hours and 35-minutes.
Set in the central Manhattan neighborhood with a name that speaks for itself, Hell’s Kitchen goes behind the impersonal concrete walls of the Manhattan Plaza building where 17-year-old Ali lives with her long-suffering single mom, Jersey, performed by the electrifying Tony and Grammy-nominated Shoshana Bean.
Manhattan Plaza in the mid-90s is as much a physical place as it is the metaphorical universe that surrounds the musical’s central characters.
Scenic design by Robert Brill, Costume Design by Dede Ayite with Lighting Design by Natasha Katz, Sound Design by Gareth Owen and Projection Design by Peter Nigrini all combine to create the heady milieu of Manhattan Plaza and Hell’s Kitchen.
It is notable that Hell’s Kitchen received several nominations from the American Theatre Wing for technical achievement.
Ali’s world is set in motion as she takes the elevator from her claustrophobic 42nd floor apartment, to the plaza below. As she descends, she absorbs the sights and sounds of Manhattan Plaza. The world inside the building is reflective of the outside world in microcosm.
Sounds of a lone trumpet player emanate from floor 17. A seemingly endless piano lesson continues a floor below. Unseen voices ring out with strains of opera songs on yet another floor.
In real life, Manhattan Tower has special meaning to many in the cast and crew of Hell’s Kitchen. Scenic Designer Robert Brill revealed in an interview that he lived just blocks from the Plaza in the time frame in which Hell’s Kitchen is set.
“In the mid-90s, I lived just north of Manhattan Plaza, “Brill told Broadway World, “and my daughter Sophia grew up in that vibrant community.” He further explained. “In fact, her preschool was in the basement of Manhattan Plaza, and PS212 was her lower school, which shares the same building as the Professional Performing Arts School where Alicia had attended years earlier. Many of my daughter’s close friends lived in the Manhattan Plaza towers, so working on this piece held significant meaning for me.”
From the window of her cramped apartment, Ali can see the Hudson River in the distance and the bright lights of the city below. The sight gives flight to her dream of fame and fortune.
Within the walls of Manhattan Plaza, there is a burgeoning life force that almost oozes through the building’s clogged ventilation system, and spills onto the street below.
This is where Ali’s spirit can break free. She finds her inner voice within the noise and chaos of all the kids who beat out the rhythm of life and hope with a hurricane of raw energy. This is the spirit that burns inside Ali suddenly brought to life. This Girl Is On Fire!
And then there’s the Duke Ellington Room, the multi-purpose gathering space on the lower floor of Manhattan Plaza, with its out-of-tune piano and broke down instructor. This is where Ali encounters the ailing Miss Liza Jane, who would become her mentor and sole spiritual champion.
With her Mahalia Jackson voice and towering emotional presence, Miss Liza Jane imparts to the impressionable Ali all her down-home Mother Wit and wisdom and her Fannie Lou Hamer-like resiliency that would steel the socially naive Ali against the racial and emotional slings and arrows that have yet to come into her young life.
Hell’s Kitchen doesn’t shy away from the politically obvious. Ali is a mixed racial girl in a society that mistreats both women and people of color.
Despite her mother’s vain efforts to shield her precious daughter from the teeming social gumbo around her, Ali is drawn to the joyful chaos of the steamy streets beneath her tarnished ivory tower.
Opposites always attract and the tender 17-year-old quickly aligns herself with the much older and emotionally hardened Knuck, a black itinerate project house painter with a chip on his shoulder and society’s target on his back. Knuck is played with smoldering indignation in a command performance by Chris Lee, in his Broadway debut.
Ali’s own mother sets off the dramatic tripwire of Hell’s Kitchen. She calls the cops on Knuck when she suspects him of having sex with her underage daughter, resulting in his arrest.
It may not be Rodney King or the Central Park Five, but it sets off a social tempest that undercuts the forced gaiety of an otherwise depressing situation.
Then there’s Ali’s estranged Black father, Davis, a gifted but hapless musical talent, played with captivating charm by Emmy, Grammy and Tony Award-nominated actor and producer Brandon Victor Dixon.
Ever the absent father figure, he manages, in his own meandering way, to somehow show up on time.
On the surface, Davis is someone you’d love to hate, but he’s so deeply flawed and engaging that you wind up loving him anyway. Such is the push-pull dynamic that governs the triangular relationship between he and Jersey and Ali.
With its schmaltzy story line, lively set pieces and captivating music, Hell’s Kitchen judiciously weaves together a tight sound tapestry of original music with signature songs from its creator.
Listening to the music of Hell’s Kitchen, it becomes apparent that the hit songs Alicia Keys wrote over the years were entirely autobiographical and eerily prescient. They seem tailor-made for the Broadway success that she and her musical drama now enjoy. Bravo to her!
Hell’s Kitchen continues at Broadway’s Sam S. Shubert Theatre. For more, visit hellskitchen.com.
