ajhlovestheatre

HELL’S KITCHEN

Music and lyrics by Alicia Keys

Book by Kristoffer Diaz

Directed by Michael Greif

Shubert Theatre, New York City – open ended run

https://www.hellskitchen.com

Talk about having your cake and eating it. Hell’s Kitchen, the breathtaking, heart-pounding Alicia Keys musical now on Broadway hopefully until hell itself (if such a place exists) freezes over, is both a love letter to the “concrete jungle where dreams are made of” which New Yorkers will watch with pride-filled hearts and damp eyes, and also the quintessential NYC theatrical experience for tourists. Not since Rent, with which it shares director Michael Greif, has a musical so compellingly captured the relentless energy, sharp edges and bruised magnificence of the city that never sleeps. Not even In The Heights, which it also superficially resembles in its depiction of a teeming Manhattan community on stage, achieved this sense of caffeinated urgency tinged with wonder and danger.

Over a decade in the making, Keys’s semi-autobiographical musical, now on Broadway after a sold out premiere at the Public, tells the story of 17 year old Ali (the abbreviated name isn’t by accident) growing up in the 1990s at Manhattan Plaza, the mighty tower block right in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen that provides low cost housing for artists and other creative people. It’s a real building and Alicia Keys really did grow up there. Kristoffer Diaz’s feisty, engaging book charts Ali’s joyous discovery of music, also boys, and her sometimes fractious relationship with her solo parent, mother Jersey (a beautiful, selfless performance by Shoshana Bean, that only becomes showy when she turns up the vocal heat to exhilarating effect).

Diaz’s script namechecks historical Black female musicians via the authoritative, slightly elusive figure of Miss Liza Jane (a sublime, incandescent Kecia Lewis) who spots Ali’s musical potential and nurtures it with tough love and uncompromising excellence. If the unreliable dead-beat Dad, forever promising to show up then failing to do so, is a bit of a cliché, although one superbly played by Brandon Victor Dixon, the character of Knuck (Chris Lee, heartcatching), the tough-looking but honourable street drummer Ali falls for, really is not. Similarly, there’s nothing particularly original about the way the pull-and-push of the mother-daughter relationship is depicted, but it’s so well acted and the dialogue is vital and authentic, so it’s impossible not to get involved.

Then when you then throw in Keys’s beloved songbook, a host of thunderously successful technical elements, Camille A Brown’s wild, raw, gorgeous choreography (surely this is the most exciting dancing currently on Broadway) and a truly phenomenal cast, you may find yourself not just involved but catapulted joyously into the stratosphere. Hell’s Kitchen might be the greatest legal high available in New York City right now, even allowing for the fact that cannabis has been decriminalised here.

Yes, it’s really that good: a kaleidoscopic, emotional, visual and aural rollercoaster that captivates non-stop. From the first glimpse of Robert Brill’s complex, gleaming urban jungle set, dazzlingly lit by Natasha Katz, through to the soul-stirring ‘Empire State of Mind’ finale, so thrilling it’s almost an out-of-body experience, Hell’s Kitchen is a full-on New York assault on the senses as much as it’s a traditional musical.

The frenetic chaos of the multicultural Manhattan streets gives way to the oasis of calm that are Miss Liza Jane’s piano lessons for Ali, and number after number threatens to rip the roof off the Shubert (Gareth Owen’s sound design is sensational, as are Tom Kitt and Adam Blackstone’s orchestrations which succeed in preserving the essence of Keys’s original recordings while making the songs sound dynamically theatrical.) Each ensemble member reads as an individual, even when executing Brown’s jagged but graceful dances in unison, and they are all utterly fabulous.

Kecia Lewis closes the first half with a transfixingly powerful version of ‘Perfect Way To Die’, Keys’s mediation on police brutality and racism (“Another dream lost /Another king and queen lost /Another broken promise they refuse to make right”) which is one of the most extraordinary examples of acting through song I’ve ever witnessed. Lewis’s voice is ringingly sweet in its upper register and like a growl of deep-rooted pain in the lower. She’s stunning. The unbridled joy of ‘Girl on Fire’ and a glorious new song written especially for the show, ‘Kaleidoscope’ (staged with a kinetic vitality that stirs the soul) is equally moving, but for very different reasons.

At the centre of it all is newcomer Maleah Joi Moon as Ali, delivering one of the most blazingly impressive debuts within living memory. Tiny in stature but mighty in everything else, she captures the rangy freshness of Keys’s vocals but without resorting to impersonation. Her acting is wonderfully alive and in-the-moment, she has the comic instincts and the emotional depth of a seasoned pro decades older, and makes Ali a tough but infinitely lovable go-getter. She’s lost yet cocky, ambitious but never obnoxious, even when warring with Bean’s memorable Jersey. She gets a little croak in her voice at moments of high emotion that tears at your heart, and has an irresistible energy and edge. It’s a platitude, but a star really is being born here.

Greif’s direction and Brown’s often witty choreography, with influences from Alvin Ailey to street dance and much in between, marry whirring restless energy with complete clarity. Batteries of lights spin and whirl, great walls of sound surge through the theatre and the multilevel set, with musicians arranged in towers on either side of the stage, is in constant motion, augmented most pleasingly by Peter Nigrini’s colourfully inventive projections…technically the show is an absolute marvel, yet never at the expense of the humanity at the core of this compelling story.

Vibrant, transformative and just damn beautiful, Hell’s Kitchen is the sort of show that makes you fall in love all over again both with the theatre and with New York City. To misquote one of Keys’s lyrics, “this show is on fire”….and it’s on fire ‘cos it’s dynamite.