Hell’s Kitchen, the new musical based on Alicia Keys, is reportedly the most expensive musical production ever staged at the Public Theater.
Using Keys’ discography, as well as originals she composed for the show, it’s the story of Ali, a biracial 17 year-old girl living in a Hell’s Kitchen highrise with her mother, who works nights to keep them afloat.
Mom tells her to stay put when she leaves for work, but Ali has other ideas, including spending time with her crush, Knuck, a painter who plays the bucket drums when he’s off work. When mom finds out and the cops show up, things get bad.
Ali finds refuge with a neighbor, concert pianist Miss Liza Jane, who becomes her stern but loving teacher and imparts some real life lessons.
Ultimately, the show is a love story, but not between Ali and Knuck – it’s between a daughter and her mother.
Hell’s Kitchen is currently in previews and opens Sunday, Nov. 19, and runs through Jan. 14.
WNYC’s Alison Stewart talked to the creative team behind the show: writer Kristoffer Diaz, director Michael Greif, and musical supervisor Adam Blackstone, who is also Alicia’s longtime collaborator.
Below is an edited version of that conversation; you can listen to the whole discussion here.
Alison Stewart: Adam, I’m going to start with you. You wrote on Instagram that you and Alicia have been cooking up this musical for more than a decade. What do you remember about the original conversations about the idea?
Adam Blackstone: Ironically, my son is 8 years old. I got a FaceTime in the middle of a scoring session for this – that my wife was going into labor.
And I took an Uber from New York City all the way down to Delaware to watch my son be born – thank God, healthily. I literally have been working on this all of his life.
In the early stages, I remember she was very adamant about telling a story through her music. And so, the first thing that we did was sit down, get her whole catalog in front of us, sat on two pianos. I remember it…
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