HELL’S KITCHEN Broadway San Diego
Hell’s Kitchen is a universally talented tribute to youthful ambition and the community spirit.
I like to imagine a comprehensive word to encapsulate each production I see, and in the case of Hell’s Kitchen that word is Powerful. The sonic landscape of the theatre is pounding and intense, pulsing out wave after wave of percussive emotion. Not to mention the performances are of such astounding, eye-watering quality that the actors cannot be said to wield anything less than pure feminine power.
This is, first and foremost, a multiracial story. The most influential aspect of the titular setting on the plot of the show is the diverse cast and characters. As a pseudo-memoir, the story follows a young mixed-race girl with musical ambitions whose father is not as present in her life as she would like. These character details are informed by Alicia Keys’ own adolescence in New York City.
Alicia Keys' Hell's Kitchen | Photos by Marc J. Franklin
Though bombastic and energetic, the show does not follow a far-reaching heroic journey. The story is, if anything, introspective. We see a slice of a young woman’s life aspiring for art, enjoying her community, and hating to see that community oppressed, amid other adolescent desires, a crush on an older boy, feeling anger at a perceived overbearing parent, wishing her dad would pay attention to her. The societal and personal concerns of Ali (Maya Drake), the main character, are balanced excellently, and we are endeared immediately to her concerns. We understand both the deeply serious matters and the capricious whims of a teenager as high stakes affairs because of how much Ali cares about them. A magnificent coming-of-age story about a young and hungry artist realizing and living in the gravity of the world.
Drake is a singular and immense talent as Ali, remarkably funny, performatively versatile, and a total phenom at such a young age that her future shines with the promise of the electric light bulb in 1878. Her personability and exuberance carry the performance, and her relationships with the key characters in her life ring out with charm and kindness.
The show’s central dynamic is between Ali and her mother, Jersey (Kennedy Caughell). Their relationship is a classic installation in the corpus of art about tension between a single mother and her rebellious child. Jersey is stern, reproachful, and desperate for her daughter to connect with her. Stories about characters’ messy relationships often derive their conflict from the difficulty of connecting, and in this case the frustrating bond of mother and daughter is showcased marvelously and in a deeply affecting way. Ali and Jersey’s constant fallings out and incapability of speaking how they feel to each other is deeply relatable and an empathetic gut-punch. Though Ali is the out-and-out protagonist whose perspective governs the majority of the plot and around whom most of the complicated relationships are framed, Jersey is given numerous opportunities to belt her heart out about how hard it was to have a kid at seventeen with a father who does not care enough to be in the picture.
Speaking of which, Kennedy Caughell has pipes to rival a church organ the size of Philadelphia, and her sonorous vocals could be heard to make flowers bloom six blocks over. Her musical intensity alone is something to be in awe of, let alone her evident mastery of her instrument. It was the kind of fervent vocalization one feels in the back of one’s eyes, one’s vertebrae, and skull. Musical euphony so palpable it was kinesthetic.
Caughell is matched in musical ability by another actress who portrays a critical matriarch in the story, Roz White as Miss Liza Jane. Miss Liza Jane is Ali’s ferrywoman into the world of music, playing piano music for her in the Ellington room in her Hell’s Kitchen apartment during a spell of steep angst, and agreeing to teach her how to play. Jane is treated with the utmost reverence by the script; she is not just a Black woman teaching Ali how to play the piano, she is the embodied history of Black women making art and inspiring others to do so. The reverence is appropriate, as White’s voice and commanding presence in the role is heavenly. Miss Liza Jane is Ali’s constant point of refuge and fosters her burgeoning interest in piano. It is the show’s most tender and healing relationship, and Roz White can SING.
Hell’s Kitchen is, regrettably, not about gay women, and so Ali and Jersey each have a love interest they struggle with attraction to over the course of the show. Jersey’s paramour—or former paramour—is Davis (Desmond Sean Ellington), a successful musician who got Jersey pregnant and now is absent from their daughter’s life as he pursues his singing career at the expense of paternal presence. Jersey holds Davis in contempt for leaving her to raise their daughter mostly alone, but she compulsively forgives him whenever he comes back into the picture briefly and does a big gesture to try to make things right. It is a dynamic of understated manipulation that is written with nuance by Alicia Keys and the book writer Kristoffer Diaz. Ellington is mighty charismatic as Davis, and his charm helps us understand why Jersey fell for him recklessly.
Ali spends much of the musical infatuated with one of the amateur musicians on her block, Knuck (JonAvery Worrell), who draws Ali’s limerence mostly because he is older and the kind of person who disconcerts her mother. She pursues him throughout the show, and her journey is that of understanding that that kind of relationship is not one she should covet. Worrell is extremely down-to-earth as Knuck and is the representation of the working class in a show about the many kinds of people struggling to live the life they want to live in New York.
As a Broadway mega-musical, the show features vigorous dance numbers that energize the mind and body with their movement. The choreography by Camille A. Brown is electrifying and brought to gorgeous life by an ensemble of powerful dancers, who manage to augment but mostly not detract from a deeply personal story about growth and love.
Other technical elements that astound one to look at are the projections by Peter Nigrini and the hair and wig design by Mia Neal. The former are massive fast-moving designations of where the characters are in New York. While it can become intrusive—we have understood the location of a scene without having the name of the location plastered across the back wall for most of theatre history—the projections, at their best, are grand abstract paintings that indicate not just place but theme.
As for the hair and wigs, it is important to mention that loving care and attention has gone into rendering the fabulous diversity of Black hair, which is an extra detail that makes Hell’s Kitchen a beautiful celebration of diversity from a majority-Black cast and crew. Though the first act spans multiple days in Ali’s life, the characters all emerge for the second act with their hair differently styled, demonstrating that Neal hasn’t even played a fraction of her hand in regard to her knowledge of Black hair styling.
Hell’s Kitchen is a beautiful celebration of artistic creation by anybody from any place in society, whether it be a street drummer playing with borrowed sticks and a stained bucket or a classically trained pianist writing a concerto. It is a moving piece about family and about youth and a funny and heart-wrending ode to community and togetherness. If you have the means to see it, do so. But even if you do not, this show wants us to make our own beautiful art for our own beautiful people. It is in the spirit of the show to create wherever possible.
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