It was inevitable that Alicia Keys’ semiautobiographical musical would jump from downtown to uptown—now that it’s on Broadway, it’s playing right near the neighborhood in which it’s set. Hell’s Kitchen comprises songs Keys had already written, recorded and turned into hits as well as new songs created specifically for the show. It introduces a rebellious 17-year-old, Ali (short for Alicia), who lives with her harried single mom in a high-rise apartment building a few blocks from the Schubert Theatre, where the show is now playing: Ali pines for a romance with an older street drummer and begins a burgeoning musical career that might give her a way out of a neighborhood she considers stifling. 

 

Hell’s Kitchen is your garden-variety generation-gap musical comedy-drama, as Ali’s mom—whose name is, no lie, Jersey—tries to protect Ali from the temptations Jersey herself fell prey to as a teenager, finding herself pregnant with Ali while she was too young and immature to handle it. Ali’s dad is a musician named Davis (the fiery Brandon Victor Dixon) who’s charming but extremely unreliable. Of course, Ali fights back at every turn, complaining that whatever her mom wants or says are simply unfair restrictions. 

 

Fortuitously, one day while seething over something her mom is making her do (or not do), Ali wanders into her building’s music room—seemingly for the first time, which is kind of strange in this context—and immediately becomes spellbound by wise old Miss Liza Jane (the scene-stealing and vocally formidable Kecia Lewis), who becomes a sort of surrogate mother to her, teaching her to play the piano along with other needed life lessons. 

 

Despite the material’s shopworn quality, which has been accentuated on the larger Broadway stage, Hell’s Kitchen is always energetic and nearly as often exuberant, thanks to Keys’ rhythmically propulsive songs, which include those (sort of) showstoppers she has already written—and had huge hits with: a smart reconceiving of “Girl on Fire” is perfectly placed near the end of act one, and (no surprise) “Empire State of Mind” is the show’s big finale, even if, in this context, it’s somewhat anticlimactic. A song that wasn’t in the original Public Theater incarnation, “Kaleidoscope,” has been shoehorned into the middle of the first act, neither hindering nor improving its surroundings.

 

Since everything is bigger in the move to Broadway, it’s to director Michael Grief’s credit that his staging retains an impeccable proportion of the visual and the dramatic, thanks to Robert Brill’s multi-tier, multi-use fire-escape sets, Peter Nigrini’s clever projections of various areas of Manhattan and Natasha Katz’s always inventive lighting. As ever, Camille A. Brown’s dazzling choreography both complements and roars past Keys’ catchy tunes.

 

But Hell’s Kitchen is, ultimately, a vehicle for two remarkable leads. Although Maleah Joi Moon (Ali)—who made a stupendous professional debut when the show premiered at the Public—was unfortunately out the night I saw the show on Broadway, her understudy Gianna Harris was a more than capable singer, actress and especially dancer. 

 

But the center of the show—which she wasn’t in the original incarnation—is Ali’s mom, Jersey, and Shoshana Bean runs with it, not only acting the hell out of the standard role of the difficult but loving mom but also lending her powerhouse voice to several songs. If Hell’s Kitchen settles in for a long Broadway run, it will be interesting to see who may replace Bean as Jersey—Idina Menzel? Sutton Foster? Sierra Boggess? In the meantime, run to the Schubert Theatre to see Shoshana Bean at the top of her game.