‘Hell’s Kitchen’ brings Manhattan fire to Charlotte

This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on September 9, 2026. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.

by Lawrence Toppman

There couldn’t be a better time than this week for the national tour of “Hell’s Kitchen” to make its debut at Belk Theater. Though it’s powered by nearly two dozen Alicia Keys songs and a story very loosely based on her youth in the neighborhood of the title, what it’s really about is the unquenchable spirit of New York City: pain that can be turned into creativity, streets where beauty and danger contend for primacy, the feeling that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere — a line from a Kander and Ebb song that Keys incorporates into one of her own.

During the last rousing number, “Empire State of Mind,” shots of the New York skyline flash across the back of the stage and glow as if lit by a hundred spotlights. The 20-year-old Keys released her first album, “Songs in A Minor,” just 11 weeks before the Twin Towers fell. Seeing this musical in the 25^th-anniversary week of the 9/11 attack makes it seem more than ever like a love letter to the place where she was born, trained as a classical pianist and built a basement studio. (She later married musician Swizz Beatz, and they eventually defected to La Jolla, Cal.)

Kristoffer Diaz’ book for the musical takes too many liberties with Keys’ real childhood for me to see the main character — called Ali, no last name — as a direct reflection of Keys. Both Ali and Keys were raised by a single mother in the Manhattan Plaza, a federally subsidized high-rise on the west side of Manhattan that offers 70% of its apartments to performing artists. Both had an absent father, though the one in the play seems to drift in and out of his daughter’s life.

Yet “Hell’s Kitchen” is really a narrative of a few months in the life of a 17-year-old girl with no direction, and Keys emerged as a piano prodigy long before that. Ali (Maya Drake) wrestles with her contentious relationship with Jersey (Kennedy Caughell), her protective mother; sexual and romantic longings for gentle Knuck (Jonavery Worrell); and unwilling fondness for her wayward, likeable dad (Desmond Sean Ellington). Ali learns not only piano lessons but life lessons from Liza Jane (Roz White), who plays every day on the grand piano in the Plaza’s community room.

The musical started Tuesday in an overbearing way, with an assaultive sound mix that buried a lot of lyrics and some dialogue in early numbers. But the engineer or my ears adjusted somewhat, and Keys’ versatility as a writer emerged through anthems, tender ballads, quasi-raps and dance numbers choreographed with verve and humor by Camille A. Brown. (Watch people in the backgrounds of movement scenes; they’re always doing something interesting.)

Drake stood out for her motor-mouthed exuberance, ability to navigate sudden mood swings and emotional vulnerability. She’s constantly in motion, contrasted by director Michael Greif with the quiet, towering dignity and stillness of White. Ali needs to locate her pianistic voice, where all her joy and pain can find expression, and fiercely wise Miss Liza points her toward it.

All five of the leads have terrific pipes, sometimes in the service of breathtaking high notes that last until the singer runs out of breath — too showoffy to be my thing, but audience-pleasing. The other three supporting actors are asked to sound only a single emotional note each, and they do: Caughell one of thwarted affection, Ellington one of roguish unreliability, Worrell one of hardworking sincerity. That last is difficult to put across without seeming bland, but he pulls it off.

Settings for the songs don’t always mirror Keys’ original intentions: “Girl on Fire” is about a strong, independent woman “Lonely like a highway/She's livin' in a world and it's on fire/Filled with catastrophe.” Here it’s more of a celebration of Ali, who’s suddenly aflame with love and/or lust for Knuck. But the soloists and the tireless ensemble put the numbers across with such conviction that they take on new meanings.

Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.