Kennedy Caughell as Jersey, left, and Desmond Sean Ellington as Davis in “Hell’s Kitchen,” which tours to ATG San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre.
Marc J Franklin/ATG San Francisco
Imagine Alicia Keys’ 2001 hit “Fallin’” — a young lover’s mix of earnest confusion, grief, rage and desire, all set to slow and steady minor-key arpeggios on the piano.
Now slow it down further, as if the vocalist can barely wrench the words out.
“Hell’s Kitchen”: Book by Kristoffer Diaz. Music and lyrics by Alicia Keys. Directed by Michael Greif. Two hours, 40 minutes. Through May 24. $69-$275. Orpheum Theatre, 1192 Market St., S.F. 888-746-1799. https://us.atgtickets.com
On the first “I keep on fallin’ in and out of love with you,” bounce on the word “I” as if you’re throbbing with desire. Pronounce the word “out” with the tang of “bow-chicka-wow-wow.”
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So begins the recipe for the ecstatic remix of the song in the bio-musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” directed by Michael Greif.
In the show, which draws from Keys’ down-to-earth yet probing R&B catalog, “Fallin’” is a come-on in the mode of the sultry jazz number “Fever.”
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When Davis (Desmond Sean Ellington) croons it to Jersey (Kennedy Caughell), darting up into his otherworldly falsetto, she arches her back, then balls herself up, in an effort to resist.
She has no chance, though. Before long, they’re harmonizing in a fugue, their interwoven vocal strains fluttering downward, the musical equivalent of intoning, “Take me now!”
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That’s just one highlight of the show, which opened Thursday, May 7, at ATG San Francisco’s Orpheum Theatre with one of the best ensembles of singing voices in any touring cast to visit the Bay Area in recent memory.
Maya Drake and the ensemble of “Hell’s Kitchen.”
Marc J Franklin/ATG San Francisco
Maya Drake, who was raised in San Jose, does the Bay Area proud in her professional theater debut as Ali, an avatar for Keys. As our 17-year-old heroine courts the older Knuck (JonAvery Worrell), spars with her white mother, Jersey, and starts learning piano from her older neighbor Miss Liza Jane (Roz White) in her Manhattan Plaza housing complex, Drake embarks on vocal runs with the preternatural assurance and thoughtful daring of a jazz musician.
She’s gauze; then she’s a force of nature. If, as an actor, she veers toward hyperanimated — endowing every half-impulse with a full-body jerk, to the point of distraction — it’s worth remembering that some high schoolers really do move like that.
At times, though, you might yearn for her to transmute some of that same energy into stillness, so that the really important motions stand out more.
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Caughell, as a long-suffering, overprotective mom occasionally bemused at the harridan she’s becoming, makes a whispered lyric as forceful as other people’s belts. She drenches one line in desire, sets another ablaze with rage. Without sacrificing an ounce of musicality, she sings like she’s an unhinged rock star smashing a guitar onstage.
The ensemble of “Hell’s Kitchen.”
Marc J Franklin/ATG San Francisco
The one major weak spot in the show is a common one for jukebox musicals: the book, which, unlike those for made-from-scratch productions, must connect the dots of preexisting songs.
In Kristoffer Diaz’s effort here, the characters read as mere sketchy types — the angsty teenager, the absent dad. The chief conflict, between mother and daughter over her forbidden love with Knuck, sidles in as if its importance has already been established.
Sometimes it feels like all the show’s tension boils down to whether a parent should be allowed to set rules or an adolescent to talk back — the kind of material that stops feeling earth-shattering with voting age.
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But then there’s Camille A. Brown’s choreography, which conjures that youthful feeling of stepping outside and wanting to embrace the thumping, whirling city streets with your whole body. In the song “Kaleidoscope,” her dancers are so fluid — in era-perfect camo, cargo jeans and Tommy Hilfiger by costume designer Dede Ayite — that they start to look like abstract geometric shapes in a constant state of morph.
In one of the best sections of the show, about Manhattan Plaza’s sizable artist population, Ali hears strands of opera, jazz and more on her elevator rides and stumbles into music lessons thanks to a piano in her building’s rec room.
The point isn’t to beat you over the head with the platitude that children should be surrounded with art; instead, “Hell’s Kitchen” implies that music comes from everywhere, from the bucket drummers outside your door to your own humdrum, one-bedroom apartment that can, with patience and forgiveness, fill with love.