The company of the North American Tour of Hell’s Kitchen | Photo by Marc J Franklin
“…and then you play this note.”
“…and then you play this note.”
“…and then you play this note.”
This ad nauseam bit of instruction from a dying piano instructor to her rebellious teenage pupil is emblematic. Training involves monotonous repetition—this is right and practical, music is, on a technical level, just one note after another. The exalting allure of art, though, is alchemy—the sum being somehow greater than the parts—and that just didn’t happen for me in Hell’s Kitchen—the Alicia Keys’ musical, a North American tour presented by Mirvish, that loosely tracks her early days in the titular New York neighbourhood and which is, admittedly, not my thing. Continue Reading