This show ‘is on fire’: Alicia Keys-inspired ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ is a moving daughter-mother drama
“Hell’s Kitchen” — 3.5 stars
It seems like every pop singer or songwriter nowadays wants to transform their lives and hit songs into the genre known as “jukebox musicals.” One of the latest examples is “Hell’s Kitchen,” a hit 2024 semi-autobiographical Broadway musical inspired by Grammy Award-winning R&B superstar Alicia Keys (“Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’”).
“Hell’s Kitchen” is now making a stirring Chicago touring debut at the James M. Nederlander Theatre, with exemplary performances all around. It stands out as one of the better examples of a biographical jukebox musical.
Rather than trying to cram a pop star’s entire life into one sitting (mistakes made by past musicals devoted to Cher and Donna Summer), “Hell’s Kitchen” wisely zeros in on a version of Keys called Ali (Maya Drake) at the challenging age of 17.
Like Keys, Ali is a 1990s biracial New York teen growing up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood located a few blocks west of Times Square. Ali lives with her overworked and overprotective single mother Jersey (Kennedy Caughell) in a subsidized apartment high-rise for artists called Manhattan Plaza (where actor Timothée Chalamet also famously grew up).
Ali wants to explore the city and romantically pursue an attractive bucket drummer called Knuck (Jonavery Worrell). But Jersey and a watchful Manhattan Plaza community of residents and employees are concerned that Ali might fall under the bad influence of “gangs, drugs and thugs.”
Jersey, in particular, doesn’t want Ali to end up as a teen mother like she was by recounting the 1970s moment when she fell for Davis (Desmond Sean Ellington), Ali’s amazingly talented and handsome pianist/singer father. But as the show’s narrator, Ali nonchalantly admits to just tuning out her mother’s warnings.
With mother and daughter at constant loggerheads, Ali takes refuge in her building’s Ellington Room, where she encounters a grand piano and the regal musician Miss Liza Jane (Roz White). Initially standoffish, Miss Liza Jane soon takes Ali under her wing as a student and becomes a sort of creative surrogate mother.
What makes “Hell’s Kitchen” gel so well is a smart and self-reflective script by playwright Kristoffer Diaz (a Pulitzer Prize-finalist who first received notice in Chicago’s theater scene with acclaimed plays like “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity” and “Welcome to Arroyo’s”). Diaz genuinely captures Ali’s determination and sarcastic teenage voice, while only hinting at the eventual musical greatness of Keys.
“Hell’s Kitchen” also does a better job than its musical peers in blending Keys’ new and existing pop songs into its narrative. While some audience members may whoop in recognition at the start of certain numbers, the songs have been rearranged, reorchestrated and recontextualized so nearly all the material feels like it has been cut from the same cloth.
Director Michael Greif (“Rent,” “Dear Evan Hansen”) works in tandem with choreographer Camille A. Brown (“Gypsy,” “Once on This Island”) to create a high-tech production filled with sleek urban visuals (a credit to scenic designer Robert Brill, projection designer Peter Nigrini and lighting designer Natasha Katz). Brown is especially skilled at making the talented ensemble feel more like jamming backup artists in a music video rather than choristers you’d normally encounter in a Broadway show. And costume designer Dede Ayite does a great job in differentiating the 1990s and ’70s fashions.
If there are some quibbles, it’s with either the muddy sound design or inexact vocal diction of the cast in big musical numbers. And as a musical mother-daughter love story, “Hell’s Kitchen” certainly gives much more understanding and sympathy to the character of Ali rather than Jersey, who spends most of the show on a relentless harangue.
But overall, “Hell’s Kitchen” stands as an inspiring and shining showcase for Keys’ music and the partially mythologized story of her New York background. And revels in the creative power of music to reflect and interpret all of life’s pains and joys.
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Location: James M. Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St., Chicago
Times: 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday (no shows Nov. 27), 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 1 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday (also Thursday, Nov. 28). Also, 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 16. Runs through Nov. 30
Running time: About two hours, 35 minutes, with intermission
Tickets: $68.15-$165.10 at (312) 977-1700 or broadwayinchicago.com/shows/hells-kitchen/
Parking: Area pay garages and limited metered street parking
Rating: Profanity, teenage sexuality and acknowledgment of 1990s urban ills