KPFA Theatre Critic Richard Wolinsky reviews the national touring company production of “Hell’s Kitchen” at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco.
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Following the release of her debut album in 2001, Songs in A Minor, singer songwriter Alicia Keys became an instant superstar, a position firmed up by a series of successful albums and Grammy Awards over the course of the next decade.
So it is not surprising that a jukebox musical would at some point emerge. And thus we have Hells Kitchen, which runs at the Orpheum Theatre through May 24th.
Most jukebox shows fall into two categories: a history of the performer’s career, with the songbook performed in the order the songs were recorded, with occasional numbers shoehorned into the story, or an original story retconned to make the songs fit the plot. Hells Kitchen presents new songs and shoehorned ones in a sanitized autobiography. The show focuses on Alicia Keys’ life at the age of seventeen, as she and her single mom reside in a high-rise inthe gentrifying neighborhood west of Times Square. She fights with her mom over an older boy and winds up learning piano from an elderly woman living in the building’s public room.
The low stakes — who didn’t fight with their parents at that age? means there’s minimal forward movement. Despite the piano lessons, we never learn of Ali’s talent, nor her ambitions. The songs themselves, well it’s hard to follow lyrics distorted by melisma and drowned out by orchestration. The reconstructed old songs are unrecognizable, and the new ones have no center. Many songs start small and turn into a cacophany, with random dancers performing aerobics disguised as choreography. This may work at a Demi Lovato concert, or a Warriors Halftime Show, but doesn’t quite fly inside a stage musical.
There are pleasures, most notably in the work of Kennedy Caughell as Jersey, Ali’s mother, Desmond Sean Elliott as Davis, Ali’s dad, and most notably, Roz White as Miss Liza Jane, the pianist who teaches Ali how to be a musician.
And while Alicia Keys isn’t there to perform them, her songs all work within her own specific musical ballpark. It’s Alicia Keys without Alicia Keys, one supposes.
Ultimately, none of the complaints matter. The show ran two years on Broadway, over 750 performances. Costing 22 million dollars to produce, the show made back only 60% of its capitalization. This tour is an attempt to make up the difference, and judging by the ovation opening night at the Orpheum, it just might.
Hells Kitchen runs at the Orpheum through May 24th. For more information, go to atgtickets.com. I’m Richard Wolinsky on Bay Area theatre for KPFA.