Hell’s Kitchen at the CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre is a rarity – a jukebox musical with soul

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• Title: Hell’s Kitchen
• Music and lyrics by: Alicia Keys
• Book by: Kristoffer Diaz
• Director: Michael Greif
• Actors: Kennedy Caughell, Roz White, Desmond Sean Ellington, Jonavery Worrell, Maya Drake
• Company: Mirvish Productions
• Venue: CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre
• City: Toronto
• Year: Runs until Oct. 25

Hell’s Kitchen has all the trappings of a ho-hum jukebox musical – at least at first.

Written around the music and lyrics of Grammy-winning sensation Alicia Keys, and largely inspired by Keys’s own coming-of-age in midtown Manhattan, the show opens on 17-year-old Ali (Maya Drake) in the apartment building she calls home, a vibrant tower that houses a good chunk of New York’s working-class artists.

For a while, the stakes seem simple: Ali likes a bucket-drummer named Knuck (JonAvery Worrell). Ali’s overworked mom Jersey (Kennedy Caughell) doesn’t approve. When the teenager sings The River, an “I want” song that hits every cliché in its genre – “I know there’s more to life than this,” she belts rather aimlessly to the city’s skyline – there’s a distinct sense that Hell’s Kitchen might not be all that different from Neil Diamond’s A Beautiful Noise (dreadful) or Michael Jackson’s MJ (worse).

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But a certain alchemy begins to crackle as Hell’s Kitchen settles into its story. The relationship between Ali and Knuck blooms into something more complicated than a forbidden romance; the diverse community around Ali and her mom, dressed in era-appropriate Fubu jerseys and Yankees caps (costumes are by Dede Ayite), crystallizes into something deeper than set-dressing.

Before long, Hell’s Kitchen evolves into a story aimed not at immortalizing its creator’s biography, but at honouring her childhood neighbourhood writ large. Kristoffer Diaz’s book wrestles with the racial politics of the 1990s – Jersey loudly confesses her faith in Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the show’s first few minutes – and while its second act is weaker than its first, the show covers a commendable amount of narrative ground. Its characters make mistakes and offer imperfect apologies; its songs cover emotional nuances that mere dialogue couldn’t possibly convey.

It is, on the whole, a delight.

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Much of the power of Hell’s Kitchen comes from its performances, from 19-year-old Drake (impressive vocally if overly mumbly when she speaks) to the astonishing Caughell, whose second-act rendition of Pawn It All sees the actor sustain a high F6 (!). Roz White, too, is a highlight as Miss Liza Jane, the pianist who instills in Ali a sense of purpose at the piano.

Indeed, as in any musical, Hell’s Kitchen requires its audience to suspend their disbelief in order for its plot to fully gel. An early setup of Ali and Jersey’s friends à la Mamma Mia! disappears after intermission; Ali becomes a musical prodigy seemingly overnight. (Never mind that in Robert Brill’s scenic design, we can see the show’s band on a platform above the stage, making clear that Drake’s not the one producing the notes we hear emitted from the onstage baby grand.)

There’s also the issue of Ali’s dad (Desmond Sean Ellington), whose repeated abandonment of his daughter never feels satisfactorily resolved. (Then again, when do such parental dynamics ever feel fully gratifying?)

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Jersey’s decision to call the cops on Knuck near the end of the first act is a thornier book issue. While the optics of a white woman having a Black man placed in handcuffs are obvious and well-explored, what’s less thoroughly examined is how race factors into Jersey’s relationship with her biracial daughter and vice versa. Miss Liza Jane’s scenes nimbly incorporate Ali’s artistry into the history of Black musicians who came before her, but there’s a missing link in how that history shows up in Ali’s home life beyond the conflict of her boyfriend.

And yet: Hell’s Kitchen is irresistible. Alicia Keys’s songs, though overamplified on opening night, span a vast kaleidoscope of atmospheres, and in Hell’s Kitchen, they’re rearranged and recontextualized just so: Keys’s 2003 track If I Ain’t Got You becomes a gorgeous duet between Ali and her dad. Empire State of Mind, softened and abstracted for the stage with arty choreography by Camille A. Brown, makes a fabulous closing number for a show about New York and its capacity to inspire.

Am I a jukebox musical convert? Not quite. But Hell’s Kitchen offers a surprisingly egoless blueprint for the genre moving forward, with a story from, but not of, Keys’s own origins. “This girl is on fire,” Ali’s friends and neighbours belt happily as her world clicks into place. On this occasion, I’m inclined to agree.

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