Check out details of the musical that Alicia Keys prepares based on her own life

For more than ten years, Alicia Keys has been crafting a musical inspired by her own turbulent adolescence growing up among artists in New York. Now the musical, “Hell’s Kitchen” is almost ready to be seen. It will open this fall at the Public Theater, the nonprofit in downtown New York from which “Hamilton” and “A Chorus Line” came.

The musical will be huge by any measure: it has a 20-person cast, the biggest budget of any show ever put on by the Public Theater, and, of course, features songs by Alicia Keys, the pop and R&B singer who has sold tens of millions of albums. . The show will feature some of Keys’ most famous songs, as well as new material she wrote for the musical.

“This musical is my pride and joy,” she said in an interview. “It’s a big turning point in my trajectory.”

“Hell’s Kitchen” doesn’t accurately follow the events of Alicia Keys’ own life, but there are clear parallels. Set in the 1990s, the story takes place over the course of a few months in the life of a 17-year-old girl named Ali who is being raised by her single mother in Manhattan Plaza, a large housing complex whose residents are performing artists. There is family tension, sex and musical discovery. Like Alicia Keys herself, Ali is transformed by her passion for the piano.

Keys was deeply involved in the musical’s development, and his own production company owns the commercial rights to whatever life the show may have after the Public Theater. “I never do things from afar,” Keys said. “There isn’t a page, a score, a word, a song, a melody, nothing that happens in this show without me being completely immersed in it and guaranteeing its authenticity.”

The musical was Keys’ idea, and in 2011 she tapped playwright Kristoffer Diaz (“The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity”) to write her libretto. In 2018, the two asked Michael Greif (“Rent”) to join the project as director, and so Greif took him to Public Theater.

“It’s about a young woman who tests boundaries,” said Greif. “It’s the story of a series of collisions she had with very important people in her life when she was 17 and how these collisions affect the person she later becomes.”

Previews of “Hell’s Kitchen” are set to begin on October 24th, and the musical will open on November 19th. An up-and-coming actress named Maleah Joi Moon will play the role of Ali; Ali’s mother will be played by Shoshana Bean (“Wicked”), and her father, with whom she has no contact, by Brandon Victor Dixon (“Hamilton”). Choreographies are by Camille A. Brown.

The Public Theater already plans to stage “Hamlet” this summer, with Kenny Leon directing and Ato Blankson-Wood in the lead role, in its only Free Shakespeare in the Park production. Now the play will be followed by a new Public Works adaptation of “The Tempest,” with songs by Benjamin Velez and direction by Laurie Woolery. The Public Works program, which stages musical adaptations of classic works with a few professional actors and a large cast of amateur New York artists, was born in 2013 with a different adaptation of “The Tempest”.

“The Tempest” will be the final production at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park through 2025; the Public Theater is trying to decide if and where it can stage a production in the summer of 2024 while the Delacorte is being renovated.

In October, Public Theater will partner with NYU Skirball to present three plays by Seán O’Casey in a production by Irish theater company Druid.

Starting in November, at its downtown theater, Public intends to stage “Manahatta,” a play that connects Manhattan’s Native American history with the contemporary financial industry, written by Mary Kathryn Nagle and directed by Woolery. In February, “The Ally,” written by Itamar Moses and directed by Lila Neugebauer, stars Josh Radnor as an atheist Jew whose commitments to social justice are complicated by Middle Eastern politics.

In March there will be “Sally & Tom”, by Suzan-Lori Parks and directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, about a contemporary theater company looking to put on a play about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. And in April, “Jordans,” written by Ife Olujobi and directed by Whitney White, is a comedy about blackness in a largely white workplace.

One thing Public Theater won’t be doing is presenting its previously held annual festival of experimental works Under the Radar. “It’s a decision driven solely by financial considerations,” said the company’s artistic director, Oskar Eustis. “That’s not to say Public is abandoning its relationship with experimental downtown artists. But we’re going to look for a new way to incorporate that.”