Alicia Keys’ music came alive on a Toronto stage last week as “Hell’s Kitchen”, the Broadway musical inspired by her life and catalogue, brought a powerful mix of music, family, Black identity and coming-of-age drama to the Ed Mirvish Theatre.

Built around Keys’ songs and lyrics, with a book by playwright Kristoffer Diaz, “Hell’s Kitchen” draws loosely from the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter’s upbringing in Manhattan during the 1990s. The production first opened at New York’s Public Theater in 2023 before making its Broadway debut at the Shubert Theatre in April 2024.

At the centre of the story is Ali, a headstrong 17-year-old growing up with her mother, Jersey, in Manhattan Plaza in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood.

Ali is eager to discover life beyond the boundaries set by her protective mother. Her journey takes her through first love, conflict with Jersey, disappointment with her often-absent father and, most importantly, the discovery of music through Miss Liza Jane, a gifted pianist who becomes her mentor.

For Caribbean audiences, that relationship carries an interesting historical echo. The production makes reference to Hazel Scott, the Trinidad-born pianist, singer and actress who became one of the most celebrated Black entertainers of her era. making her name especially meaningful in a production centred on a young Black woman finding her identity and her voice through the piano.

For audiences familiar with Keys’ catalogue, one of the pleasures of “Hell’s Kitchen” is discovering how familiar songs have been transformed to serve the story.

Hits including “You Don’t Know My Name,” “Girl on Fire,” “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You,” “No One” and “Empire State of Mind” take on different emotional meanings as they are woven through the characters’ lives rather than simply performed as a greatest-hits collection.

There is even a smaller Caribbean moment that may bring a smile of recognition to Jamaican and wider Caribbean audiences. Amid Ali’s developing relationship with her boyfriend, she brings him a “Jamaican patty”, an everyday detail, but one that feels perfectly at home in the multicultural New York neighbourhood in which the story unfolds.

The vocal performances are another major attraction.

Following the performance, The Caribbean Camera spoke with several audience members, particularly Black theatre-goers, who praised the production and its performers.

“The voices in this musical were off the hook,” one audience member said.

Another said she was particularly surprised by the vocal power of the performer playing Ali’s mother, Jersey.

There was also disappointment among some patrons at seeing relatively few Black audience members in the theatre for a production featuring an overwhelmingly Black cast.

That observation is particularly significant because productions such as “Hell’s Kitchen” provide Toronto audiences with an opportunity that still does not come along often enough, seeing Black performers commanding a major theatrical stage across leading and supporting roles.

Keys herself has previously spoken about the importance of representation in theatre. She was a producer and music composer on Lydia R. Diamond’s “Stick Fly”, the 2011 Broadway production centred on a Black family gathering at their Martha’s Vineyard home.

“Hell’s Kitchen” takes that commitment to representation several steps further.

Beyond the familiar Alicia Keys songs is a story about mothers and daughters, young love, racism, community, loss and the complicated process of growing up.

And for Caribbean audiences, the nod to Trinidad-born Hazel Scott and even the appearance of that familiar Jamaican patty add another layer of recognition to a production deeply rooted in the broader Black experience.

For Toronto’s Black community, it is also something worth celebrating: a major musical where Black performers are not standing at the margins of the story, “they are the story.”