The chances of seeing Alicia Keys in San Diego are slim but never none since her family moved to the Razor House in La Jolla.
Yet I managed to miss seeing her two times in one week. Last Friday, I delighted at the empty “Giants” galleries at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Only later did I learn the reason the crowd cleared out: Keys was dancing on the patio.
Then Keys attended Tuesday’s opening night of her musical “Hell’s Kitchen” during its San Diego engagement. I attended the next night, so missed her speech praising the audience for supporting diverse stories and funding the arts.
“This is such a powerful story. You can’t even believe how emotional and beautiful this story is,” Keys told the ebullient audience.
I did, however, see the musical loosely based on a period in Keys’ life growing up in a subsidized building for artists in Manhattan. So while I didn’t see her, listening to her top songs translated to the staged production made me feel like I understood her better. (A cope.)
The reinterpretation of her catalog for the stage did give familiar favorites new meaning. Songs I always viewed as simple romantic ballads took on new meaning when sung as mother-daughter or father-daughter expressions of love, as in “No One” and “If I Ain’t Got You.”
A lot of biopic jukebox musicals aim to tell a sweeping story about an artist’s life and origins. “Hell’s Kitchen” benefits from taking a closer look, that only lasts a few months, at the petty dramas and major tragedies that make up one girl’s formative years as she finds herself as an artist.
The audience doesn’t need to know everything that ever happened to Alicia Keys. Knowing just what happened in one pivotal year, and more importantly, what it felt, breathes life into the performance.
The relationships between the semi-autographical Ali and her parents, uptight, hard-working single mother Jersey (Kennedy Caughell) and absent, pianist father Davis (Desmond Sean Ellington), are key to the coming-of-age story.
And while Ali, played with aplomb by Maya Drake, laments that she is trapped in the tower, with her mother afraid of the mean streets, her world is filled with other people too. Ali is surrounded, sometimes too closely in her estimation, by many gatekeepers. They include a responsible doorman, her mother’s closest friends, her own two best friends – who try to rein in the hormonal tendencies of a 17-year-old girl itching for freedom – and even boys.
“Hell’s Kitchen,” a Broadway production that garnered 13 Tony Award nominations, two of them for UCSD alums. (Photo by Marc J. Franklin via today.ucsd.edu)When a relationship with drummer Knuck (JonAvery Worrell) explodes into a messy scene with police, Ali’s solace for her pain and rage is found at the piano with Miss Liza Jane (Roz White). She teaches Ali piano while folding her into a legacy of Black women artists.
Limiting the time frame of the production to only a few months also makes the setting feel richer. The choreography, costuming and hair all have a ‘90s feel, highlighted through contrast by a brief flashback to the ‘70s when Ali’s parents met. The verisimilitude of the design makes the musical a sumptuous visual treat. Huge kudos to costume designer Dede Ayite, hair and wig designer Mia Neal, makeup designer Michael Clifton, and associate choreographer Camille A. Brown for bringing to life such a specific New York experience.
Lighting designer Natasha Katz and projection designer Peter Nigrini also added to the visual feast pulled off with the simple yet constantly moving scenic design of Robert Brill, a UC San Diego professor. Director Michael Greif also has San Diego ties as the former artistic director of the La Jolla Playhouse.
“Hell’s Kitchen” continues at the Civic Theatre through Sunday. Find tickets at broadwaysd.com.
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