NEW YORK — The music of Alicia Keys is nicely suited to a jukebox musical: the burst of vitality that flows from hits like “Lady on Fireplace” are dynamic blasts completely suited to a present clearly drawing from Keys’ personal origin story as a child rising up within the federally sponsored artist’s haven Manhattan Plaza in Hell’s Kitchen, a transformative affect on that neighborhood and a tower that has sheltered all method of Gotham creatives from the saxophonist Ricky Ford to the actor Timothée Chalamet .
“She’s livin’ on the planet and it’s on fireplace,” that thrilling track goes, right here calling out to the title of the brand new musical on the Shubert Theatre and aligned with Keys’ 17-year-old self. “Stuffed with disaster. However she is aware of she will fly away.”
There are various different Keys songs in “Hell’s Kitchen,” together with “Fallin’,” “No One,” and “If I Ain’t Acquired You.” However, In essence, the e book author Kristoffer Diaz took the lean lyrics of “Lady on Fireplace” and crafted his fortunately romantic and adoringly biographical plot.
Therein, Ali (Maleah Joi Moon) is the Keys alter ego who describes opening the elevators of the constructing onto a loving neighborhood of dancers, musicians and actors, a lot of them surrogate mother and father and mentors, together with a decided if aged pianist and trainer, named Miss Liza Jane (Kecia Lewis). It’s visiting the soulful Miss Liza and her Ellington Room piano that helps the rebellious however deep-feeling and interracial Ali fly away from fights together with her supremely protecting white mother, Jersey (Shoshana Bean) and the disappointments of her largely absent however well-meaning dad Davis (Brandon Victor Dixon), a jazz musician who completes the opposite facet of Ali’s musical schooling.
In a lot the identical means that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Within the Heights” was a tribute to the folks of Washington Heights, so is “Hells Kitchen” a tribute to the creative historical past of Manhattan Plaza, though it’s a way more private present. Its music and lyrics had been written by a massively gifted star, and it tells of her adolescence and far of its attraction depends in your fascination with all of that. I think there can be loads of takers for the younger lifetime of Alicia Keys, even when we’re left questioning at occasions what is going on on all these different flooring.
There’s a fantastic deal to take pleasure in right here, together with an outstanding efficiency by Lewis, to not point out how the director Michael Greif provides his signature steely edge to what’s in any other case deeply sentimental materials. Higher but, the choreographer Camille A. Brown provides a high-energy motion suite that manages to be performatively thrilling with out feeling overly faraway from how actual youngsters swagger round tenth Avenue after college. The present is a visible blast regardless that there’s nothing extreme about Robert Brill’s set. It’s simply so vibrant in its zest and vitality.
The mentioned, you’ll get zero surprises from a e book that instantly indicators it is going to be a few mom and daughter struggling via the latter’s teenage years and finally arriving at a mutually appreciative rapprochement alongside a religious and inventive mentor whose predictable exit creates the requisite sense of loss and restoration in Act 2.
Keys has sparked an enormous Broadway tribute to her mother, an exquisite factor to have the ability to do, particularly since that mom is so spectacularly nicely performed by Bean. A cynical marketeer would possibly see this as a gambit for that ever-crucial Broadway viewers of mother-daughter combo, nevertheless it nonetheless feels honest, partly as a result of Bean is so decided to maintain all the pieces grounded.
The younger actress Moon has a formidable process on her plate right here and she or he’s a captivating lead. However she doesn’t all the time sing in the course of the notes of those blazing Keys songs, or at the least that was the case on the efficiency I noticed. In all equity, it gave the impression of her instrument was not at its healthiest within the sometimes exhausting run as much as opening night time. In order that is probably not your expertise.
Dixon, although, sounds simply as spectacular as Davis, embodying as he does the unreliable charmer, a stereotypical musician-dad for certain. I needed to struggle some irritation there and elsewhere on the broadness of the narrative strokes.
However kudos to Keys for making her youthful self a needy ache within the neck, in any other case generally known as an artistically inclined teenager.
On the Shubert Theatre, 225 W. forty fourth St, New York; www.hellskitchen.com
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
