Piece of New York comes to Cleveland with launch of Alicia Keys' 'Hell's Kitchen' musical
The Tony- and Grammy-winning musical "Hell's Kitchen," which has been creating a stir on Broadway since 2024, burst onto the Playhouse Square stage Oct. 10 when the show's North American tour launched in Cleveland.
"Hell's Kitchen," created by 17-time Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys and featuring her music and lyrics, is a semiautobiographical jukebox musical featuring a segment of Keys' life as a teen in New York.
The story is set in Manhattan Plaza artist housing in Hell's Kitchen, where Keys, now 44, grew up with her single mom. The musical's heroine is 17-year-old Ali, played on tour by Maya Drake, who grapples with finding herself while living under the protective eye of her mother, former singer Jersey (Kennedy Caughell).
Ali's story is all about dreaming big. The teen, searching for her independence and her place in the world, meets a musical mentor who changes her life and is supported by her family and neighborhood.
Ali rebels along the way but the story is ultimately one about the love between mother and daughter.
The 28-member cast, which has gone through technical rehearsals at Playhouse Square's State Theatre, will give 26 performances before the tour moves to Pittsburgh, its next city of nearly 30.
Besides a score full of Keys' top hits, the North American tour has gained more recent star power with tennis luminary Serena Williams joining the producing team. Williams, involved with her first Broadway show, said in a statement that she was "blown away" when she saw "Hell's Kitchen" on Broadway last summer.
Keys believed that her teenagehood, which was ripe with artistic influences and her own artistic possibilities, made for a good story. She enlisted the help of book writer Kristoffer Diaz to develop that into a musical.
New York native Diaz, a Pulitzer Prize finalist for the drama "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity," lived and worked in Cleveland in 2007-2008 when he was an education associate for Cleveland Play House.
"It was just before my playwriting career had sort of started off in earnest," Diaz said by phone Oct. 3 of his time in Cleveland.
By 2010, he became a Pulitzer finalist for "The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity," which was his career breakthrough. The next year, he started working with Keys on her story for a musical.
"I was the first person hired onto the project. Alicia had an idea about a show that she wanted to do using some of her music, some new music, and loosely based on a particular period of her life," Diaz said. "She said when she was a kid, she was learning about the piano, she was learning about music, she was learning who she was. She said this is fertile ground for a story."
"We hit it off right away. I'm a little bit older than but we had a lot of the same reference points" in music and pop culture, Diaz said.
"Hell's Kitchen" takes place in the late '90s, with its musical styles as well as its fashions, including FUBU jackets, Timberlands and baggy jeans.
Diaz and Keys spent about two years just hanging out, getting to know each other.
"We would get together, we'd watch movies in her house, we would chill out at her recording studio and it's super fun. She's great. She's a lot of fun," Diaz said. "You forget sometimes like, 'Oh, this is my buddy' but also she's this incredibly, remarkably famous genius."
The musical's story isn't literally true but needed to be emotionally true to Keys' experiences, Diaz said. That meant including characters like the people who introduced Keys to music and influenced her approach to community.
Diaz and Keys decided to associate each character with '90s musical artists or groups. That meant mother Jersey was associated with soul and R&B singer Teena Marie, Ali's father Davis was based on Sammy Davis Jr. and her two best friends on '90s sensations TLC and SWV.
"We wanted to create people that were recognizable to fans of the music in that time period and that were also ways for Alicia to sort of pay respect to the artists who shaped her," Diaz said.
During Diaz and Keys' research years, Keys left periodically on her world tours. Once the first draft was done, they hired Broadway director Michael Greif to help shape the story's raw material.
"Hell's Kitchen" made its premiere Off-Broadway at the Public Theater in 2023, transferring to Broadway about six months later. Diaz spent 13 years from the time he started working on the book to the show's Broadway debut.
He made some changes to the story in its move to Broadway, including cutting one song, moving some others around and making a big change to the ending.
"It's a show about a young woman learning to sit down and be comfortable playing the piano and expressing herself through the piano, and we had to make sure that we had an ending that really served that story," he said.
'Hell's Kitchen' in Cleveland
Nearly all of the tour cast members are new to "Hell's Kitchen," except Desmond Sean Ellington, who plays Davis and hails from the Broadway company.
"We're thrilled that we get to bring a little bit of New York City to places all over the country," Diaz said. "We're thrilled with these folks (cast members), a lot of them who are making their national debuts, in some cases making their real professional debuts on tour for the first time."
Diaz said he hoped to travel to Cleveland with his wife and kids, ages 13 and 10, to take in the tour launch.
"I'm not sure when I'm gonna have such a good excuse to get back to Cleveland again," he said. "We're gonna hopefully get out for at least a day or two and show them around my old stomping grounds."
Other lead actors in the "Hell's Kitchen" tour are Roz White as Miss Liza Jane, Ali's piano teacher; Ellington as Davis, Ali's father; and JonAvery Worrell as Knuck, the young bucket drummer who is Ali's love interest.
The 22-song score includes Keys' hits spanning soul, R&B, pop and hip-hop. They include "Fallin'," "Girl on Fire," "No One" and "Empire State of Mind," with new song interpretations within unexpected plot lines. That includes a cool jazz version of "Fallin'," sung by a male character.
"The music is so good. The story is so good about finding yourself, your purpose and your community. This show is incredible to cast. Your mind is about to be blown," Keys said in a video address to Cleveland audiences.
Arts and restaurant writer Kerry Clawson may be reached at 330-996-3527 or kclawson@thebeaconjournal.com.
Details
Musical:"Hell's Kitchen"
When:Continues through Nov. 1, 7:30 pm. Tuesdays-Fridays, 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays
Where:State Theatre, Playhouse Square, 1519 Euclid Ave., Cleveland
Onstage:Maya Drake, Kennedy Caughell, Roz White, Desmond Sean Ellington, JonAvery Worrell, Stemarciae Bain, Miya Bass, Jaylen Bryant, Rashada Dawan, Sheree Marcelle Dunwell, 'Zaiah Ellis, Mae-Lynn Flores, Marques Furr, Destini Hendricks, Jeffrey May Hyche, Alfred Jackson, GiGi Lewis ,Christopher Miller, Usman Ali Mughal, Chikezie Nwankwo, Sangeetha Santhebennur, Marley Soleil, Beda Spindola, Asten Stewart, Teetee, Sydney Townsend, Timothy Wilson, Ethan Zundell
Offstage:Alicia Keys, music/lyrics; Michael Greif, director; Camille A. Brown, choreographer; Kristoffer Diaz, book; Emily Orr, music director; Tom Kitt and Adam Blackstone, orchestrations; Alicia Keys and Adam Blackstone, arrangements; Lily Ling, associate music supervisor; Robert Brill, scenic design; Dede Ayite, costume design; Natasha Katz, lighting design; Gareth Owen, sound design; Peter Nigrini, projection design; Mia Neal, hair and wig design; Michael Clifton, makeup design; Monet, associate director; Ricky Tripp, associate choreographer; Veronica Aglow, production stage manager
Cost:$34.80-$150
Information:playhousesquare.org, 216-241-6000
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Alicia Keys' 'Hell's Kitchen' musical tour launches in Cleveland
