Alicia Keys to close Hell’s Kitchen on Broadway, shift focus to tour and overseas

Alicia Keys announced that the Broadway production of Hell’s Kitchen will close on Feb. 22 after a nearly two‑year run, and that attention will shift to an ongoing North American tour and planned productions in Australia, Germany and South Korea. Keys, the show’s lead producer, said the Broadway run had not recouped its $22 million capitalization but had returned 60 percent of that amount to investors.

The production has been seen by 986,000 people and sold $110 million in tickets; weekly grosses peaked in June 2024 at $1.8 million and were $828,000 last week, as of Jan. 11. Keys said, “As a producer, I definitely have a fiduciary responsibility to our investors,” and added that the tour is “going crazy — they’re selling out everywhere they’re going.” Hell’s Kitchen, which grew out of an Off Broadway production at the Public Theater, began Broadway performances in March 2024.

Directed by Michael Greif with a book by Kristoffer Diaz, the musical was nominated for 13 Tony Awards and won two, and it also won a Grammy Award for best musical theater album. The show follows a 17‑year‑old girl raised by a single mother near Times Square and tracks her sexual and musical awakening, a narrative that parallels chapters of Keys’s early life.

Keys said she was proud of the company of roughly 200 people who worked on the show and of attracting diverse audiences, including stronger turnout from Black audiences.

Key Topics

Culture, Alicia Keys, Hell's Kitchen, Broadway, North American Tour, Public Theater