Hell’s Kitchen: Behind the Dream

The evolution of Hell’s Kitchen, a jukebox musical loosely based on the coming-of-age of Grammy winner Alicia Keys, is comprehensively chronicled in this colorful melange of interviews, photographs, and song lyrics compiled by Keys (More Myself) and Funderburg (Pig Candy), a creative writing lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania. Frustrated by theater’s lack of diversity, Keys in 2010 began sketching out a musical about a strong-willed mixed-race girl who grows up in 1990s New York City under her mother’s watchful eye and seeks to carve out her place in the world. The narrative covers Keys’s search for a playwright (Kristoffer Diaz), a director (Michael Greif), a theater (New York’s Public Theater) willing to back a risky new production, and a cast and crew. Drawing on extensive interviews, the authors intersperse the account with sections on key people, ideas, and places from Keys’s life, including the Manhattan building where she was raised (nicknamed “Broadway’s Bedroom” for its proximity to city’s theater district). Along the way, Keys and Funderburg transform what might have been a supersized Playbill program into an intimate and in-depth look at the joys and challenges of bringing an original musical to life at a time when TV and film adaptations are more palatable to risk-averse Broadway producers. Theater geeks and Keys fans alike will savor this enthusiastic peek behind the curtain. (Oct.)