Review: HELL’S KITCHEN at Hollywood Pantages

If there is a certain “I’m doing this my own way” attitude to Ali, the teen-age protagonist of HELL’S KITCHEN, it should come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. Ali, after all, is the young composer-writer-actress Alicia Keys whose pre-mogul years this musical dramatizes and whose song catalog comprises its soundtrack. The same Alicia Keys who, at age 23 told Oprah Winfrey, “My music is heart music; giving it any other description is dangerous.”

As substantial as its built-in assets are, the two-time Tony Award winner, musical – which closed on Broadway in February – is lacking in other areas. Book writer Kristoffer Diaz has crafted an exciting leading character, and an even more interesting supporting player. Alas, he has also included a rather perfunctory family triangle between an overprotective mother, her rebellious daughter and the flakey uninvolved father that gums up the play’s second act. Surrounding all of this are plenty of sizzling dance moves choreographed by Camille A. Brown, the always vibrant staging of Michael Greif (RENT, DEAR EVAN HANSEN) and – best of all! – more than 20 songs by Keys, a lady who knows how to craft a tune, spin a song’s story and get people moving, often all at the same time.

The national tour of HELL’S KITCHEN, under Greif’s direction at the Hollywood Pantages through the end of June, is equal parts a showcase for Keys’s music as it is for Maya Drake who makes her professional stage debut as Ali. We get to tag along as Drake guides us up and down the elevators of the Manhattan Plaza onto the musically-charged streets of Hell’s Kitchen and back into a private practice room with a piano and a lady (not Keys!) who knows how to play it. We roll with Ali, with the unfiltered, motor-mouthed teen whose passion and hormones frequently outweigh her common sense. Drake wears her baggy denim, strategically untucked orange jersey and her bristly attitude with equal panache. The leap from recent high school graduate to headlining a musical and playing a musical legend is a leap, and Drake more than holds her own.

HELL’S KITCHEN’S most kinetic moments are, predictably, when it’s out on the streets with Music Director Emily Orr’s band (supervised by Adam Blackstone) pumping away. A slew of artists and musicians may indeed populate the apartment building where Ali lives with her mother, Jersey (played by Kennedy Caughell), but the real music is out there on West 43rd Street where the entire city seems to be in song. Particularly enchanting is a group of bucket drummers, led by Knuck (JonAvery Worrell) with whom Ali is seriously smitten if she can just get him to notice her.

Life at home is more fraught. Single mom Jersey is holding down two jobs, while still helicopter parenting Ali who increasingly chafes at mom’s overprotectiveness. Ali and Knuck’s burgeoning relationship scares Jersey to the point of calling the cops on her daughter’s boyfriend. But mom is also conflicted. After all, Jersey herself was once 17 (Keys has a song for that) and susceptible to the charms of an older musician.

Ali’s non-street haven is to a corner of rarely occupied Ellington music room where Miss Liza Jane (Roz White, golden voiced and captivating) plays the piano in a manner that breaks Ali open. Miss Liza Jane is a kind, if no-nonsense older woman, and she’ll teach Ali not only how to work the ivories, but – by example – to tell her own story. As the rift between mother and daughter widens, Jersey calls in Davis (Desmond Sean Ellington), her estranged piano-playing ex and also Ali’s father.  If Ali is tapping into her artistic self, Jersey figures, the kid’s dad. Plus, she’s at the end of her rope. “I need help,” she tells him. And he arrives.  

As can often be the case with jukebox musicals built around the catalogs of hit musicians, a comparatively weak libretto can leave audiences more eagerly anticipating when a beloved song will arrive than giving a toss about the plot. The selection of Keys songs sprinkled through HELL’S KITCHEN spans the artist’s career and unquestionably display her very considerable gifts. The musical opens with “The River,” a character- and scene-establishing  “I want” song that finds Ali starring out of her one-room apartment and dreaming of where the Hudson River might take her. Later we get “Kaleidoscope,” after her first encounter with Miss Liza Jane: “Nights like this, they belong in the Guinness; Nights like this, never want them to finish.” As umpteenth VOICE, AMERICAN IDOL hopefuls over the past couple of decades has discovered, the songs of Alicia Keys seriously rock no matter who is singing them – male or female, young or old.

That said, many of the artist’s largest hits are left for the second act and shoehorned into clunky situations where they come off as obligatory instead of organic. Plugging “Fallin’” into Davis trying to rekindle something with Jersey comes across as clunky, particularly since Caughell and Worrell don’t have much chemistry with each other. The placement of “If I Ain’t Got You” as a bridge-building father-daughter duet between Drake and Worrell plays marginally better although – truth be told – that’s such a kick-ass song to begin with. And the “where dreams are made of” anthem “Empire State of Mind” would bring down the house wherever it slotted in. Smartly, Diaz and Greif use it as the show’s finale.

Ultimately, with its energy, hope and general positivity, HELL’S KITCHEN is an easier show to admire than to wholeheartedly embrace.  That said, keep an eye on Maya Drake, a lady who looks like she’s going places well beyond has well beyond The River.

HELL’S KITCHEN plays through June 21 at 6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood.

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