Alisha Keys and her songs form the latest jukebox musical

 

The songs are good and the performances first rate, but as with so many biographical jukebox musicals the book for Hell’s Kitchen (by Kristoffer Diaz) is weak, making for another disappointing show in this genre, this one at The Public Theater, which has given us great musicals such as Hair, A Chorus Line and, most recently, Hamilton.  The difference is that those three shows were original musicals.

Jukebox musicals by their nature are contrived.  Instead of starting with a fresh story and having composers and lyricists write songs to further it, jukeboxes start with familiar songs and build a story around them.  The latest, Hell’s Kitchen, directed by Michael Greif, uses Alicia Keys’ songs to tell her story of growing up in that Manhattan neighborhood on the western edge of the Theatre District.

This works in the first act, which is the oft-told story of a teenage girl longing to break away from home and be heard.  It’s nothing great but it’s cute.  Its power to entertain is in Maleah Joi Moon’s performance as Ali, portraying Keys growing up with a single white mother (Jersey, played by Shoshana Bean) and an absent Black father.  Her voice is strong and clear, her dancing natural and rhythmic and her acting holds such presence and timing that I was shocked to learn from the program that this is her first professional performance.  She is completely at home onstage and in that role as a restless teenager rebelling against her mother.  She is a joy to watch.

A nice scene has Ali heading out minutes after her mother has left for work after telling her to eat dinner and finish her homework.  A typical boy-crazy 17-year-old, Ali wants to be partying on the street with her friends and checking out the boys who play buckets as drums. 

Riding down in the elevator, she addresses the audience to explain that she and her mother live in “a one-bedroom apartment on the 42^nd floor of a 44-story building on 43^rd Street. . .  Manhattan Plaza is affordable housing for artists, which means almost everyone who lives here is an artist, which means you never know what you’re going to hear when these elevator doors open up.”

To prove this, she announces what will be happening on each floor before the doors open.  The onstage band plays out each scenario, starting with a jazz trumpet.  It’s fun.

“That’s Mr. Gordone playing his trumpet.  Thirty-second floor.”

The doors close and she descends.

“And, ooh, I hope the Piniero sisters’ dance class is going on on 27.”

The doors open to an up-tempo merengue.  “There they go.”

Doors close.  “You’re gonna love 17.  Seventeen’s always good.”

The doors open on an operatic duet.  “I got no idea who that is or what they’re saying but I think they’re in love.”

Doors close.  “And then 9 is the poets, 8 is the painters, we got a whole string section on 7, 6, 5 and 4.  And then you hit that ground floor.”

Act One pretty much plays out in this lighthearted way until the end when it turns unexpectedly serious.  Miss Liza Jane (Kecia Lewis) who has been teaching Ali to play the piano in the building’s community room discloses in the song “Perfect Way to Die” that her son was gunned down while walking to the corner store and another dream was lost.  It’s a somber ending that seems to be inserting a contemporary Black Lives Matter moment into a play set in the 1990s.  Yes, young men were gunned down then too – Amadou Diallo, an unarmed Guinean student shot 19 times by 41 rounds fired by police officers, comes to mind – but the sensibility is different now that there have been so many Amadous.  We’re more aware so it would fit better in a play set in the present.

Then there’s Act Two, which is more or less a mess.  Ali’s father, Davis (Brandon Victor Dixon), is suddenly in the plot, reminiscing about the good times he had with Jersey and Ali.  He and Jersey sing a duet of “Fallin’” that is followed by a duet of Davis and Ali singing “If I Ain’t Got You” and I thought, Where did that come from?  It’s sweet but appears to have been a manufactured way to use the songs.  There’s no indication in the first act that Jersey and Davis had a relationship beyond the night they met and “couldn’t put the brakes on,” resulting in Ali’s appearance nine months later.  I also had no inkling that Ali and her father had had a relationship.  I assumed that she never knew him and that he might never even have known he had a child.  Then suddenly warm memories of times together.

This is why these jukebox musicals are so lame.  The creators are determined to use good songs so the credibility or comprehensiveness of the story takes a back seat.

An Alisha Keys musical wouldn’t be complete without her biggest hit, “Empire State of Mind.”  Moon is the embodiment of Keys and presents a powerhouse finish, which unfortunately is spoiled by choreographer Camille A. Brown’s intrusive choice to send a troop of dancers to jump manically around the stage, taking away the focus on the song as an appropriate ending.

Keys has been developing this show for 12 years.  I wish she had had a better creative team.  She’s a gifted singer/songwriter.  She deserves a better reflection of her life and talent.