Theater Evaluate: Not everybody will probably be ‘Fallin’ over Alicia Keys’ Broadway musical ‘Hell’s Kitchen’

Should you had been to shut Alicia Keys ’ massive semi-autobiographical musical on Broadway with any of her hit songs, which wouldn’t it be? In fact, it must be “Empire State of Thoughts.” That’s the pure one, proper? It’s additionally as predictable because the R prepare being delayed with sign issues.

“Hell’s Kitchen,” the coming-of-age musical a few 17-year-old piano prodigy named Ali, has fantastic new and outdated tunes by the 16-time Grammy Award winner and a proficient solid, however solely a sliver of a really protected story that tries to appear extra consequential than it’s.

It needs to be genuine and gritty — a outstanding variety of swear phrases are used, together with 19 f-bombs — for what in the end is a portrait of a younger, proficient girl dwelling on the forty second ground of a doorman constructing in Manhattan who relearns to like her protecting mother.

The musical that opened Saturday on the Shubert Theatre options reworks of Keys’ best-known hits: “Fallin’,” “No One,” “Woman on Fireplace,” “If I Ain’t Acquired You,” in addition to a number of new songs, together with the terrific “Kaleidoscope.”

That Keys is a knockout songwriter, there isn’t any doubt. That playwright Kristoffer Diaz is ready to make a convincing, relatable rom-com that is additionally socially acutely aware could be very a lot unsure.

That is, appropriately, a woman-led present, with Maleah Joi Moon fully gorgeous within the lead function — a jaw-dropping vocalist who’s humorous, giggly, passionate and strident, a star flip. Shoshana Bean, who performs her single, spiky mother, makes her songs soar, whereas Kecia Lewis as a soulful piano trainer is the present’s astounding MVP.

Once we meet Ali, she’s a pissed off teen who is aware of there’s extra to life and “one thing’s calling me,” as she sings within the new music, “The River.” At first that is a boy: the candy Chris Lee, taking part in a home painter. There’s additionally reconnecting along with her unreliable dad, a properly slippery Brandon Victor Dixon. However the factor calling Ali is, in fact, the grand piano in her constructing’s multipurpose room.

Exterior this house constructing within the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood — we get a clue the time is the early Nineties — are “roaches and the rats/heroin within the cracks.” However no criminality is proven — at worst some unlawful krumping? — and the cops don’t truly brutalize these residents deemed undesirable. They type of simply shoo them away. This can be a sanitized New York for the M&M retailer vacationers, regardless of the lyrics in Keys’ songs.

Another excuse the musical fails to totally join is that plenty of the music performed onstage is faux — it is truly the orchestra tucked into the perimeters making these piano scales and funky percussion. (Even the three bucket drummers onstage are principally simply pretending, which is a disgrace.) For a musical a few singular artist and the way vital music is, this feels a bit like a cheat.

Choreography by Camille A. Brown is muscular and enjoyable utilizing a hip-hop vocabulary, and director Michael Greif masterfully retains issues transferring elegantly. However there’s — forgive me — every little thing however the kitchen sink thrown in right here: A supposed-to-be-funny refrain of two mother pals and two Ali pals, a ghost, some delicate parental abuse and a bizarre fixation with dinner.

The best way the songs are built-in is impressed, with “Woman on Fireplace” hysterically interrupted by rap bars, “Fallin’” was a humorously seductive ballad and “No One” reworked from an achy love music to a mother-daughter anthem.

However everyone seems to be ready for that music about “concrete jungles” the place “massive lights will encourage you.” It comes proper after we see a younger girl snuggling on a sofa, excessive over the town she’s going to quickly conquer. You may, too, in case you simply go previous the doorman and comply with your goals.

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Observe Mark Kennedy on-line.