“This girl is on fire?” Let’s go with, these vocals are ablaze.
It’s not unusual for musicals like “Hell’s Kitchen” to be better sung on tour than on Broadway, especially when they have just hit the road. On Broadway, lots of issues go into casting: how famous you are, how much experience you have, how many social media followers are in your fold. But when it comes to redoing this Alicia Keys jukebox musical for the road, those considerations tend to fall away. Experienced directors like Michael Greif are more open to taking risks on newcomers and everyone focuses on who is really best for the part. And musical directors usually get more power.
Remarkably, this tour has cast an 18-year-old named Maya Drake in the lead role. Few performers of that age, at their level of training, can handle the lead in a Broadway musical with this kind of demand on the voice — let alone the acting and discipline required. But Drake is really amazing. And, of course, she looks and sounds like the age of the character she is playing, which was not the case when I first saw this show in New York.
So that casting pays off spectacularly well with this brand-new tour of one of Broadway’s few recent hit musicals, a show inspired by the formidable R&B catalog of the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter-musician. Keys’ core fan base is younger than other singers whose song backlist has been turned into a show, such as Tina Turner or Donna Summer. And the book by Kristoffer Diaz and the choreography from Camille A. Brown reflect a new generation.
“Hell’s Kitchen,” which is set in and around the New York City apartment building where Keys grew up, is not a biography per se (Keys did not want one), but an exploration of the 17th year of a fictional, Keys-like character named Ali (Drake). Ali is lucky enough to live with her mother in Manhattan Plaza, a Midtown tower filled with artists of all stripes, sharing their creativity and nurturing their young.
In essence, Diaz, who has many ties to Chicago theater, has crafted a mother-daughter story based on Keys’ biography. Ali is a rebellious teenager who pushes back against her protective white mom, known here as Jersey (Kennedy Caughell) and hangs out with her crush, Knuck (JonAvery Worrell) — even as her Black musician father Davis (Desmond Sean Ellington) wanders in and out of her life, even as he inspires her talent. But this is also a tale of the importance of mentors in the arts. Ali falls under the tutelage of the building’s resident pianist Miss Liza Jane (Roz White), a formidable character based on Keys’ own musical mentor in early life.
Between all of that, you get a good chunk of Keys’ biggest hits and deep cuts woven into the narrative: “Perfect Way to Die,” “Empire State of Mind,” “Fallin’” and many more. It’s all Keys’ music (with a couple of new songs), so the show obviously has particular appeal to her fans, although when you have singing like this on call, there also will be much appeal for those less familiar with her catalog.
The caveat with “Hell’s Kitchen,” if that’s the word, is that you are watching the concerns of a 17-year-old who will, you quickly figure out, get over all this. Still, stars like Alicia Keys typically have a lot of control over these kinds of musicals and I find it admirable that she was willing to let herself be depicted as a headstrong brat, albeit an uber-talented one.
Diaz and Keys were also smart enough to know that the show couldn’t all rest on that one character, given her age, and, unlike many jukebox shows, they spread out the music over a broader range of performers. In the case of this tour, this clearly attracted middle-career singers to these roles. Kennedy, a recording artist in her own right, just kills it, like really kills it, on “Pawn it All,” and the silky-smooth sounds of Ellington, a “Hamilton” alum, sent the woman across the aisle from me into convulsions of pleasure during his several numbers. Which is kind of the point of the character.
Diaz clearly was influenced here by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights,” with Manhattan Plaza basically playing the role of the entire neighborhood of Washington Heights; both are shows about communities and the plots have many similarities, even down to the loss of a godmother. So “Hell’s Kitchen” does not reinvent its genre and you should also know that this Equity tour has some minor simplifications of set, not that you are likely to notice.
But there are no simplifications in the vocal performances. On the contrary, there are amplifications. In the direction of veracity and excitement.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Hell’s Kitchen” (3.5 stars)
When: Through Nov. 30
Where: Nederlander Theatre, 24 W. Randolph St.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets:$62-$295 at broadwayinchicago.com
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