from hell's kitchen, In Schubert.
Photo: Mark J. Franklin
It's worth being wary of a musical that positions itself as a love letter to New York City. There are many reasons to love New York (and this publication is in the habit of compiling them), but this paean to the trash-stained metropolis can quickly lose its specificity. . Remember the lesson from last season's tourism brochure. new york new york. Or take Alicia Keys' famous hook from “Empire State of Mind.” This hook inevitably thuds at the end of her musical. hell's kitchen: New York is a “concrete jungle where dreams are born.” Because “There's nothing you can't do/You're in New York.” As an anthem, it's especially good when Keys, or Ali, her musical stand-in character played by Marea Joy Moon, stretches out the “e” and “o” of “New York” over the undulating sounds of drums and piano. , extremely excited. Brooklyn Bridge suspension cable. Hearing that refrain in the Shubert Theater, where the bass blares enough to set off seismographs, it's easy to see why this song has such staying power and why it's the current mayor's favorite uplifting piece of music.
But as a work of storytelling, “Empire State of Mind” doesn't go far beyond generality. In this case, the song even cuts out the more vibrant picaresque neighborhood-jumping elements that make up Jay-Z's rap verses. (According to my playbill, the show licensed Keys' solo answer song, “Empire State of Mind, Part II (Broken Down),” rather than the more famous duet.) As well as the part hell's kitchen' director Michael Greif and choreographer Camille A. Brown channel as much frenetic energy as they can into the grand finale, but the showy sound covers a vague core. Why do ants like this concrete bunhole? Why does an Obama-era recession banger end a 1990s musical set? Why is this happening in front of a montage of New York landmarks? real housewife Segue?
That sequence is frustrating because there are elements of . hell's kitchen It's specific, well-motivated, and moving, but it's overshadowed by the musical's leanings toward bombast.3 versions of hell's kitchen In Christopher Diaz's zigzag book, multiple personalities compete for attention, creating a multiple-personality quality. The show follows Ali, a rebellious 17-year-old raised in subsidized artists' housing in Manhattan Plaza, as she learns to better understand her protective white mother Jersey (Shoshanna Bean). It's a coming-of-age story about learning to reconcile. her itinerant black musician father Davis (a dangerously badass Brandon Victor Dixon); This is also a romance of sorts between Ali and her older, seemingly bad boy Knack (Chris Lee, endearingly recessive), in exchange for her actual friend (about her in “Girl on Fire”) (I exist to sing) will be lost. And in the most convincing way, hell's kitchen It's about becoming an artist. Almost by chance, Ali begins taking piano and life lessons from Miss Liza Jane (Keshia Lewis, Magistrate), an older black woman who lives in the same building.
hell's kitchen The film is biographical to some extent – Keys had a recording contract at age 15, before his fictional avatar discovered music, but he certainly grew up in Manhattan Plaza with similar parents. –However, the scene between Ali and Miss Liza Jane is more memorable than a typical biography. A musical reproduction that depicts the origins of an artistic worldview. In the power relationship between teachers and students, hell's kitchen For Ali, music is used as a conduit for discipline, sensitivity, and history, and explores how creation becomes a way to process everything raging around her. Liza Jane will lecture on the history of black women pianists such as Florence Price, Margaret Bonds, and Hazel Scott. Then, as the notes Ali plays during piano lessons swell into the buildup to “Girl on Fire,” we see her joy of invention in action. And when Ali's mother's actions led to her daughter's older lover Nak being arrested by the police, Lewis provided solace through art. At the end of the piece's first act, her voice builds a cathedral of sound as she sings the ballad “Perfect Way to Die.”
The moment is both powerful and symbolic of inaccuracy. hell's kitchen It's very frustrating. Keys released 'Perfect Way to Die' in the summer of 2020, with lyrics inspired by the police murders of Mike Brown and Sandra Bland.those losses carry emotional weight hell's kitchen It cannot contain itself and is not interested in considering it fully. In the second act, even after Nak is found safe, he remains secondary. That's good! This drama is about Ali, but it takes finesse to extract so much pathos from the events that concern the protagonist. Ali's dynamic relationship with his girlfriend's parents similarly becomes blurred. In their book scenes, Greif stages Moon, Bean, and Dixon as if they were in a naturalistic, full-scale musical drama. Next to normal or Dear Evan Hansen In A minor. The set for Ali and her mother's apartment by Robert Brill resembles the Wayfair furniture interiors of those shows, plus some classic Greif scaffolding. rent vein. But that naturalism feels out of place in Keys' songbook. She writes her own impressive techniques, and the actors follow suit. You can imagine the logic as follows. If you're going to sing Alicia Keys, you'd better sing.. The results tend to be ostentatious. It might work: When Jersey and Davis reminisce about their past through the Keys' early hit “Fallin',” you can get a sense of their entire relationship from Beane and Dixon's vibrato alone — she's the only one in line. Tight as if, he sounds as if he is trying to make her relax. But things get ridiculous when the songs play out the storyline over and over again. Jersey bursts into a scene and tries to get Davis' musician friends to buy her jewelry. Because, according to Diaz's flimsy justification, she's willing to pay Davis to get him out of her life. The real reason is that Shoshana Bean needs to light up the number “Pawn It All,” which she does with some pretty clever riffs and options. Keys herself gave advice to the singers, along with musical director Lily Lin, but her vocal performance kept stopping the show, so much so that it often felt as if she wasn't moving at all. .
To Mr. Moon's credit, we approach all of this as grounded as possible. She is a great discoverer and a virtuoso who seems surprised and delighted by her own talent. Dressed in Dede Ayite's '90s-nostalgic outfits (Tommy Hilfiger, giant pants, etc.), Moon has both an arrogance and an important naivety, even when the story veers away from her. , which makes Ali feel like a real, conflicted teenage girl. Her voice, despite its strength, has a sandpaper-like edge, a texture that makes her stand out among many younger singers who sound clean and even. I wish the work written for her had been as distinctive. hell's kitchen Contains 3 new songs by Keys. One is “Seventeen,'' a song about “well, my daughter's frustration,'' sung by Ali's mother. Ali herself sings a song from Standard Issue's “I Want'' called “The River,'' about the part of the Hudson River she can see from her window. A great image, but the result is ambiguous (“I know there’s more to life than this” / Because something is calling me”). Ari begins learning piano in her music room, and begins working on another new piece, “Kaleidoscope.'' The song is an up-tempo number with jumbled lyrics (“A night like this is in the Guinness Book of Records”) that first brings to mind a pub, then a club, but both are artistic discoveries. It's not a teenager's song right before . It does not matter. Greif explodes the scene with light and color as Brown's ensemble of dancers enters with a frenzy. Even though it's a great spectacle of music and movement in its own right, it's not quite what you'd expect from a musical.
hell's kitchen I'm at the Schubert Theater.
