It’s fitting that Kecia Lewis has had her most successful theater season while playing a mentor. The Broadway veteran portrays the formidable piano teacher Miss Liza Jane in “Hell’s Kitchen” who inspires the show’s young heroine to embrace music. Lewis now celebrating 40 years in the business is having a special spring.
FILE - Kecia Lewis attends the “Hell’s Kitchen” Broadway musical opening night performance at the Shubert Theatre on Saturday, April 20, 2024, in New York. The Broadway veteran — now celebrating 40 years in the business — portrays the formidable piano teacher Miss Liza Jane in “Hell’s Kitchen” who inspires the show’s young heroine to embrace music.
Lewis made her Broadway debut at 18 in the original company of “Dreamgirls” in the mid-1980s and went on to “The Gospel at Colonus” with Morgan Freeman, “Big River,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Once on This Island.” “I thought, no one will ever cast me in ‘The Sound of Music.’ And I got it. I was cast as the Mother Abbess. And that got me started,” she says.
Since her returns, Lewis’ roles have included Broadway — “The Drowsy Chaperone,” “Chicago,” “Leap of Faith,” “Cinderella” and “Children of a Lesser God” — and off-Broadway in “Mother Courage,” “The Skin of Our Teeth” and “Marie and Rosetta.” Her TV parts include “The Blacklist,” “Madam Secretary,” “Royal Pains” and “Blue Bloods.”Michael Greif, the director of “Hell’s Kitchen,” knew Lewis from their days working on “Big River” and thought she’d be perfect for Miss Liza Jane.
The show is set in Manhattan Plaza, an apartment complex in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan where Keys grew up and which offers affordable housing for people in the arts. It has a multipurpose space with a piano — the Ellington Room — where, in the musical, the heroine discovers Miss Liza Jane, an amalgamation of Keys’ mentors.
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