Chris Lee and Maleah Joi Moon Photo: Joan MarcusNew York‘This girl is on fire,” sings the ensemble in a jubilant high point of “Hell’s Kitchen,” a new musical drawing on the catalog of the R&B singer-songwriter Alicia Keys . The song celebrates a turning point in the life of the heroine, a 17-year-old based on the younger Ms. Keys. But the lyrics might equally apply to Maleah Joi Moon , whose incandescent performance in the central role of Ali, as the Keys character is called, provides the show with a blazing heart—and a voice with its own thrilling firepower, virtually an equal of Ms. Keys’s own superlative instrument.

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Persons: Chris Lee, Maleah Joi, Joan Marcus, ”, Alicia Keys, Maleah Joi Moon, Ali