Even in the Golden Age of musical theater, shows died so often after intermission that critics coined a name for the disease. “Second Act problems” are presented in many ways: isolated songs, desperate cuts, illogical crises, hasty solutions. Yet all those symptoms of the second act stemmed from the same underlying condition: ambitions in the first act.

So it’s not really surprising that a hugely ambitious new musical like “The kitchen of hell”, the semi-autobiographical jukebox built on the life and catalog of Alicia Keys, disappoints after the mid-show break and tumbles straight into the pits it so cleverly avoided in the first half. What’s surprising about this promising show, which opened Sunday at the Public Theater with the clear intention of moving to Broadway, is how exciting it is up to that point.

Surprising to me anyway. I think that jukeboxes – especially biographical ones, like “Motown” and “MJ” – almost inevitably contribute to the ordinary difficulties of musical construction, with difficulties unique to their origins. The involvement of the original artists (or their estates) leads to historical sugar-coating. A rush to hit all the high points results in a cherry-picked resume. The updated catalogue, written for a different reason, fails to move the action forward. And since those songs are the selling point of the show, they wag the story.

But Keys, working with playwright Kristoffer Diaz and director Michael Greif, avoids most of these pitfalls in the show’s first hour, setting up the story with remarkable verve and efficiency. Neatly consecutively, it introduces the main characters (17-year-old Ali and her single mother, Jersey), the primary setting (the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Midtown Manhattan in the late 1990s), the parameters of the plot (Ali’s hunger for love). and art) and a threatening source of conflict (mom).

At the same time, it floods us with music to establish the worlds it takes us into, far beyond the R&B and pop Keys is best known for. In a beautiful elevator sequence, Ali meets opera, jazz, merengue and classical piano as she descends from the one-bedroom 42nd-floor apartment she shares with Jersey, a former actor who juggles two jobs. (The building, Manhattan Plaza, provides affordable housing for artists.) Then when Ali reaches the street, she is surrounded by a gigantic stream of sound; It seems like all of New York is singing, playing and, in Camille A. Brown’s exciting contextual choreography, dancing.

We’re only a few minutes into the show and the fixture is fully in place. We know this is going to be a mother-daughter love-and-let-go story, as Jersey (Shoshana Bean, warm and pyrotechnic) tries to keep Ali fed and safe. Although race isn’t explicitly an issue between them, Jersey is white and Ali biracial, and Ali (Maleah Joi Moon in a sensational debut) will gradually be drawn away from her mother’s suffocation by the broader group of people she encounters.

One is the classical pianist, Miss Liza Jane (the magisterial Kecia Lewis), who will demand that Ali take lessons from her – even though Keys actually started studying at age 7, not 17. And on the street, under the thrill of the 2003 hit “You Don’t Know My Name,” Ali will flirt with a bucket drummer named Knuck (Chris Lee, sweet as pie), even though he’s in his mid-20s. He will resist at first.

And so, over the course of eleven songs, the first act does the work of ambitious first acts everywhere: expanding the show’s horizons into the larger world in which the action takes place (not a fair world for young black New Yorkers) and deepening our knowledge . knowledge of the main characters through conflict. Humor, too: Diaz — whose hilarious professional wrestling performance, “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize — saves the story from too much seriousness. Also credit Greif, whose steady management of tone and tension coaxes drama out of a story that could easily have been too intimate.

Together with Keys, they also solve many of the jukebox problems, or at least slow them down. By keeping a very narrow focus on just a few weeks in Ali’s life, “Hell’s Kitchen” chooses the possibility of dramatic depth over career highlights. There’s not much concealment, either: Keys seems very willing to present her ambitious role as a hormonal teenager immune to common sense — and Moon, 21, is precocious and fearless in delivering that complex portrait.

Most importantly, Keys’ songs, even hits like “Fallin’,” “If I Ain’t Got You” and “No One,” fit into the story (and into the mouths of various characters) without too much fluff. If they don’t, the situation is effectively acknowledged. When Ali finally spends the night with Knuck – right on time, just before the various storylines merge into a terrible event at the end of the first act – Ali’s girlfriend Tiny (Vanessa Ferguson) is miffed, as this would be an unapologetically female-centric story. “The world is hers because she has a husband now?” she complains, interrupting the 2012 banger “Girl on Fire,” here repurposed as an upbeat “I’m on top of the world” song. “Is that what we’re doing?”

Unfortunately, “is that what we do?” is how I felt the moment the second act started. As if its creators no longer had time for finesse — even though Keys and Diaz have been working on Hell’s Kitchen for more than a decade — its humor spills over into readings as the story, especially Jersey’s, becomes hazy. Her tense relationship with Ali’s father, here a jazz pianist but in reality a flight attendant, shows the characteristic signs of dramaturgical whiplash. (On the other hand, he’s played by Brandon Victor Dixon, a human aphrodisiac, vocal and otherwise.) An argument between Jersey and Miss Liza Jane feels similarly contrived, until it’s resolved in an obvious pathos twist. And despite Bean’s skill, Jersey’s love for her daughter, the heart of the show, is lost in the attempt to complicate it.

The songs of the second act follow suit; it’s no coincidence that the three new ones Keys wrote for the production, all good, top the show. And while well-structured musicals typically feature far fewer songs in the second half than the first to make way for the complexity of plot resolution, here there are no fewer than fourteen, ending indulgently, if inevitably, with the New York anthem “Empire State of Mind’ from 2009. .” The result is that “Hell’s Kitchen” almost becomes what it tried to avoid in the beginning: a hit dump.

But because those hits are hits for a reason, they are still listened to with pleasure. The singing, arrangements and orchestrations (by various hands including Adam Blackstone, Tom Kitt, Dominic Follacaro and Keys himself) are exciting, if strangely uneven in Gareth Owen’s sound design. The fire escape sets (by Robert Brill), expressive projections (by Peter Nigrini), saturated lighting (by Natasha Katz) and often hilarious costumes (by Dede Ayite) are all Broadway-ready.

I hope “Hell’s Kitchen” will be too. Of course, many musicals make the transition without ever solving their problems in the first act, let alone their second. That would be a shame here. Though not perfectly told, Ali’s discovery that art is love, with or without the man, is too rich not to reach a wider audience, and a million more girls on fire.

The kitchen of hell
Through January 14 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheatre.org. Playing time: 2 hours and 30 minutes.

PITTSFORD, NY — Bryson DeChambeau walked onto his last green in the first round of the 2023 PGA Championship on Thursday, and the humble gallery that awaited him remained silent. DeChambeau led the event and was on his way to an outstanding 18-hole score, his best at a U.S. major championship in three years. And yet the 200 or so silent fans by the green stared at him as if they were watching a museum exhibit.

This is where DeChambeau got into golf. Even at the end of a sparkling performance, the fans were curious, but nevertheless hesitant to reward him with too much affection.

Three years ago, he was celebrated and hailed as the game’s next revolutionary, someone who would inspire a new generation to swing as hard as possible with every shot. It was the road to his record victory at the 2020 US Open. He promoted an intense training regimen and a radical diet. His supporters were young and rough.

Then followed a long string of uninspiring results, a defection from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf, and more ineffectual play that left him a relative afterthought. Once fourth in the world rankings, DeChambeau started Thursday in 214th place.

But the DeChambeau attacking Oak Hill Country Club’s demanding East Course on the first lap was completely different, at least for a day. He was still powerful off the tee, often beating his playing companions Jason Day and Keegan Bradley by 40 yards. He stepped onto his final green and led the tournament on a day when most players were slogging and swearing under their breaths.

Faced with a 15-yard birdie putt, DeChambeau hit his golf ball to within inches of the hole. The watching fans finally gave in and applauded politely.

An onlooker who appeared to be in his 50s – not the usual demographic for a Bryson die-hard – yelled, “Come on, Bryson!” Come on buddy!”

With a four-under-par 66, Bryson left the lot smiling and with a jump in his step that seemed more than a reflection of the roughly 35 pounds he’s shed from his once bulky body.

He stopped to sign a kid’s golf ball, punched a handful of fans and ran off to the scoring marquee and then long meetings with reporters and television interviewers.

All the while, DeChambeau was grinning, even as he said repeatedly, “It’s been a tough last four or five years.”

It’s a question mark for a golfer who has had a stellar win at the US Open since 2018, six wins on the PGA Tour and 31 top-10 finishes. In that stretch, he earned more than $23 million on the PGA Tour.

But DeChambeau would elaborate on his thoughts on what has happened since 2018.

To begin with, he had consumed about 5,000 calories a day and “eaten a lot of things that set your body on fire.” He now eats about 2,900 calories a day.

He also had a hand injury, which he says has healed.

“Obviously it wasn’t fun getting a hand injury and then learning how to play golf again with a new hand,” said DeChambeau.

There were dark days as his breakdown and ailments continued.

“Emotions definitely fluctuated pretty high and pretty low — thinking I’ve got something and it fails and goes back and forth,” he said. “It’s humble.”

He continued, “I’ll say there’s been times when it’s been like, man, I don’t know if this is all worth it.”

DeChambeau was notorious for hitting balls on practice courts at PGA Tour events well past dusk, batting away under lights that lit only him. He now seems ambivalent about working those long hours.

“You’ll see me over there at the shooting range,” he said. “That’s something I don’t want to do. I don’t want to be out all night.”

But DeChambeau feels like he’s discovered something now, or in his words Thursday, “Trending in the good direction.”

When asked if he was closer to the end of his journey to find or regain his swing, he replied, “The end of it, for sure. I just want to be stable right now. I’m tired of changing, of trying different things.”

But what about the predictions that he might be able to do 400-meter rides? DeChambeau shook his head.

“Yes, I could go a step further,” he said. ‘Can I try to get a little stronger? Certainly. But I’m not going all out. It was a fun experiment, but I definitely want to play good golf now.”

And, as he said, he’s still long enough.

One good round at Oak Hill doesn’t undo many months of ineffective play, but what next for DeChambeau?

“Golf is a strange animal,” he replied. “But I feel like I’m going in the right direction. Playing like I did today, of course, makes it easier to feel that way.”

DeChambeau was still smiling. Two and three years ago he smiled easily and often.

“Maybe it can all change tomorrow; it’s golf,” he said. “But I don’t think it will happen.”

PHILADELPHIA — James Harden of the 76ers was on his way to Wells Fargo Center Sunday morning when he received a text message from his coach, Doc Rivers, containing a link to a gospel song, “You Know My Name” by Tasha Cobbs Leonard. It was the first time Rivers had sent Harden a song. His curiosity was aroused.

“I say to my homies, ‘Let’s play the song,'” Harden recalled, adding, “I let the whole song play, and I was like, ‘Okay, it must be some kind of good juju in this song.’ ”

Of course it wasn’t random text. The basketball universe had spent about 36 hours dissecting Harden’s poor play in the past two games of the 76ers’ Eastern Conference semifinals against the Boston Celtics. The purpose of sending the song, Rivers said, was to remind Harden of his identity.

“James had to get himself back,” Rivers said.

Sure enough, with 19 seconds left in overtime on Sunday afternoon, Harden sank a baseline 3-pointer that propelled the 76ers to a 116-115 win and tied the best-of-seven series at 2-2 . Harden was brilliant in Game 4, finishing with 42 points, 9 assists, 8 rebounds and 4 steals.

“Honestly,” said Harden, “today was a hit or miss.”

The 76ers have been a staple of the NBA playoffs for the past six seasons, playing in the conference semifinals five times. But those second round runs are where the road tends to end for them. The last time they made the conference finals was in 2001, when Allen Iverson led them past the Milwaukee Bucks to the NBA Finals. (The 76ers ended up losing to the Los Angeles Lakers in five games.)

The collective patience of the people of Philadelphia seems to be running out. Before Game 3, when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver presented 76ers center Joel Embiid with his first Most Valuable Player Award, it was the fulfillment — on at least one level — of the franchise’s dust-covered team-building blueprint, known as the Process . Without going into too much of the messy details, it involved the team playing terrible basketball for several seasons while amassing a slew of top picks, one of which they used to select Embiid from the University of Kansas.

Of course, the challenge for the 76ers is that the process was never about winning individual accolades, although those are nice. Players like Embiid and Harden, as well as Rivers and Daryl Morey, the team’s president of basketball operations, are now mandated to compete for a championship. Embiid is 29. The 76ers traded for Harden last season. Before Game 4, Rivers was asked about his team’s urgency.

“Do I really have to answer that question?” he said laughing. “You worked on that question for 48 hours and that’s what you came up with? Whatever high is, I assume it is high.”

Harden delivered. Early in the first quarter, he made a straight line to the basket and scored on a runner, playfully knocking the ball off his head after it fell through the hoop. It was a sign that more fireworks were to come.

It wasn’t easy at all. The 76ers gave up a 16-point lead in the third quarter. Embiid finished with 34 points and 13 rebounds, but struggled from the field, shooting 11 of 26. And Jayson Tatum scored 22 of his 24 points after halftime, nearly leading the Celtics to a landslide comeback victory. Instead, Harden took on the burden for the 76ers.

“I’m always a competitor,” he said. “I always want to win.”

During the regular season, Harden operated as a facilitator, averaging 10.7 assists per game. He was neither the scoring nor the 3-point shooting machine he was in a former basketball career with the Houston Rockets. Instead, he formed a powerful partnership with Embiid, the team’s centripetal force. Not for nothing, everything and everyone revolved around Embiid, including Harden.

Game 1 of the 76ers’ series with the Celtics upset that balance in a strange and unexpected way. Embiid had sprained his right knee late in the first round and was sidelined, meaning Harden apparently felt obligated to board his personal time machine and travel back to his gluttonous, ball-dominating days with the Rockets. He set fire to the Celtics, scoring 45 points while shooting 7 of 14 from 3-point range to lead the 76ers to a narrow victory.

Embiid was back in the lineup for Games 2 and 3, and suddenly Harden seemed almost too aware of his teammate’s presence, too passive and reverent. It hardly helped that Jaylen Brown bonded with Harden for a long time. In those two losses, Harden shot a combined 5 of 28 from the field and 2 of 13 from 3-point range. Game 3 on Friday was particularly gruesome. Harden routinely passed open shots. When he launched a three-pointer early in the fourth quarter, he barely grazed the front of the rim. More than a few fans expressed their displeasure.

“I think with everyone, if you don’t take pictures, sometimes you hesitate,” Rivers said.

For his part, Harden defended his shot selection, telling reporters, “I’m pretty good at basketball instincts. I know when to score. I know when to pass, so I’m pretty sure a lot of the game was good.”

On Saturday, the 76ers had a long filming session at their practice facility. Rivers identified clips from Game 3 in which he felt the 76ers needed to play with more pace, in which the Celtics outsmarted them on rebounds and loose balls, and in which his players displayed poor body language. The Celtics, who advanced to the NBA Finals last season and renewed their own title aspirations, are behaving differently.

“I think yesterday the movie told us what we should be,” Rivers said, “that they’re going to run, that we’re going to make a mistake. It’s not going well, and just keep playing.”

On Sunday, the 76ers made a lot of mistakes. Their attack stopped in the fourth quarter. They stopped moving and settled for hard shots. However, Harden has playoff experience and he said he was also inspired by it the presence of John Hao, a student who survived the fatal shooting at Michigan State University in February. Harden and Hao connected via FaceTime.

Late in regulation, Harden’s runner over Al Horford of the Celtics tied the game, 107–107. And in overtime, Harden engineered a key theft while defending Marcus Smart. He proved to be a calming influence on his teammates.

He also found himself with the ball in his hands when it mattered most. He knew who he was.