Off-Broadway Musical Review—Alicia Keys’ “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Public Theater

Hell’s Kitchen

Book by Kristoffer Diaz; music and lyrics by Alicia Keys

Directed by Michael Greif; choreographed by Camille A. Brown

Performances through January 14, 2024

Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC

publictheater.org

Maleah Joi Moon (center) and cast in Hell's Kitchen (photo: Joan Marcus)

Alicia Keys joins the long line of pop stars looking to make their mark on the world of stage musicals. Hell’s Kitchen, which comprises songs Keys had already written, recorded and turned into hits as well as new songs created specifically for the show, is a quasi-autobiographical show about a rebellious teenager, Ali, who lives with her harried single mom in a high-rise apartment building in the heart of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood and pines for romance with a street drummer named Knuck (the appealing Chris Lee) and a burgeoning musical career as a way out of what she considers a dead-end existence. 

The musical is your garden-variety generation-gap comedy-drama, as Ali’s mom—unsubtly named Jersey—tries to shield her daughter from the temptations she fell prey to herself at the same age, getting pregnant while still very young and immature. Ali’s dad, a musician named Davis (the excellent Brandon Victor Dixon), is charismatic but unreliable. Ali, of course, will have none of what her mom dishes out, fighting back at what she thinks are unfair restrictions. One day, she wanders into her building’s music room and comes until the spell of the wise old Miss Liza Jane (the scene-stealing Kecia Lewis), who becomes a sort of surrogate mother, teaching her the piano and other necessary life lessons. 

Despite the material’s shopworn quality, Hell’s Kitchen is often exuberant and always energetic. Keys’ songs are rhythmically propulsive, and she has already written showstoppers of a sort: “Girl on Fire” is smartly placed near the end of act one, and it’s no surprise that “Empire State of Mind” is the show’s big finale, even if it’s somewhat anticlimactic. Michael Grief directs with a fine sense of proportion of the visual and the dramatic, making great use of Robert Brill’s multi-tier, fire-escape sets, Peter Nigrini’s clever projections and Natasha Katz’s inventive lighting design. And Camille A. Brown’s choreography is as dazzling as Keys’ songs are catchy.

But what makes the show unmissable are the performances of the leads. As Jersey, Shoshana Bean finally has a role worthy of her talent, and she not only acts the hell out of the loving but difficult mom but also lends her powerhouse voice to several songs. Even better—and making an amazing professional debut—is Maleah Joi Moon, who as Ali has a winning stage presence, acting chops, a terrific voice and enough moves to keep up with the ever-dancing ensemble, all the way from Hell's Kitchen to the Public Theater and—in the spring—to Broadway.