Hiccups highlight ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ opening night in Tucson

It happened 10 or so minutes in, just as Ali (Maya Drake) and the extraordinarily talented ensemble cast was midway into the opening song and dance number “The River.”

An announcer apologized and said the performance was paused due to technical difficulties. Seems there was a hitch with the neon-lighted elevator set piece that Ali stood beneath as she rode the elevator, introducing the residents by the sounds coming from the hallways at each stop.

When the play resumed more than 30 minutes later, the set piece was gone and the action picked up nearly to the word where it had left off.

It’s rare, but sometimes opening nights can have a hiccup or two.

For JonAvery Worrell, the actor portraying Ali’s boyfriend Knuck, the hiccups were real.

Minutes into the late Act 1 duet “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready)” with Drake, Worrell hiccupped. A couple of verses later, he did it again. All told, there must have been four or five audible hiccups throughout the song.

After the intermission, the announcer told the audience that Knuck would be played by understudy Jaylen T. Bryant.

Once the curtain came up, the audience seemed to forget about the 30-minute delay as the cast brought new life to some of Alicia Keys’ biggest hits including “You Don’t Know My Name,” ”Teenage Love Affair,” “Love Looks Better,” “If I Ain’t Got You” and “Like You’ll Never See Me Again.”

At its core, “Hell’s Kitchen” is stereotypical mother-daughter coming-of-age story:

Single mom Jersey (Sherèe Marcelle Dunwell) is overprotective of her teen daughter Ali, especially when it comes to her daughter’s attraction to the older Knuck. They fight and Ali finds an escape in the Ellington Room of her Manhattan Plaza apartment building, where all of the residents have some connection to art.

It’s there that she befriends Miss Liza Jane (Roz White), a pianist who teaches Ali how to play and becomes her mentor. There’s also Ali’s absentee piano-playing father (Desmond Sean Ellington), who comes in and out of her life with no consistency.

Kristoffer Diaz, who wrote the book, didn’t break any new ground in the genre, but choreographer Camille A. Brown’s dance scenes were electric and Adam Blackstone’s arrangements of Keys catalogue brought new life to beloved songs.

And this cast knows how to sing those songs from White’s soaring soprano on "Authors of Forever” to Ellington’s R&B-soul baritone on “Fallin’ ” and University of Arizona alumnus Sydney Townsend’s super fun and energetic performance of “Girl on Fire.”

Drake as the headstrong Ali— a role she landed not long after graduating from high school in 2025 — was singing and moving for the bulk of the 2½-hour performance including showing off her nuanced vocal and emotional range on songs including “Kaleidoscope,” “The River” and her “Un-Thinkable” duet with Worrell.

Dunwell, though, earned some of the evening’s biggest applause for several show-stealing scenes including the lush ballad “Love Looks Better” and the emotionally charged mother-daughter reconciliation duet with Drake called “No One.”

“Hell’s Kitchen,” which closes out Broadway In Tucson’s 20th anniversary season, repeats at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 7;30 p.m. Saturday and 1 and 6 p.m. Sunday at Centennial Hall, 1020 E. University Blvd., on the U of A campus. Get tickets and more information at broadwayintucon.com.