Desmond Sean Ellington as Davis and Maya Drake as Ali in the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ Hell’s Kitchen. Photo by Marc J Franklin.

It can’t be easy playing the bad guy opposite a vivacious 17-year-old in a musical about her coming of age. The better your portrayal, the more likely people will give you the cold shoulder at the stage door or cast a sideways glance at the grocery store. Not that the character Davis in Alicia Keys’ musical Hell’s Kitchen — book by Kristoffer Diaz — is a villain, exactly. But, as an absent father who is not so good at dadding but deft at disappointing, Davis is a complicated soul.

“He’s incredibly flawed,” actor Desmond Sean Ellington said on a video call not mincing words about the man he’s playing in the first national tour of the 13-time Tony-nominated show (it won two). Although relatively new to a Broadway career, Ellington had zero qualms about taking on the role. “I’m like, yes, give me the flawed character. Give me the one that people don’t quite like.”

While Hell’s Kitchen is a daughter-mother love story between the teenaged Ali (Maya Drake) and her single mom, Jersey (Kennedy Caughell), Davis is a force in the saga. “We figured out who [Davis] was pretty fast,” librettist Diaz recalled about the making of Keys’ semi-autobiographical take on life with her mother in a Manhattan apartment complex full of artists in the 1990s.

“He’s that dad who is a wonderful, charismatic pleasure to be around — when he’s around — but he’s not around. It was kind of easy to put a finger on that. But then figuring out, how do you make him lovable, understandable, hate-able? You want him to be all those things.” It helped that the creative team of Keys, Diaz, and director Michael Greif had actor Brandon Victor Dixon, who came in early in the show’s development at New York’s Public Theatre.

“What was great in having that character was you could create all these other folks in relationship to him,” said Diaz. “Figuring out who Ali was in relationship to him, who Jersey was in relationship to him. Why Ali is drawn to some of the people she’s drawn to, based on her relationship with her dad.”

Along the way to nuancing Davis, they gave him four emotionally tender songs — in a show with no shortage of beauties thanks to Keys’ ample discography. Davis charms in “Not Even the King.” He sings one of Keys’ most recognizable hits, “Fallin,’” which would have seemed like a no-brainer ballad for Ali to sing. Consider his surprisingly swinging rendition a contrapuntal coup.

But Ellington believes that it’s “If I Ain’t Got You” that captures his character’s beauty and his failings best. A working musician, Davis begins playing the piano and singing the song he wrote for Ali when she was a child. He enlists her to join in by pretending to forget the lyrics.

“Of course, the song is already incredible, but it’s being reimagined as me trying to really show up for Ali in the way that I know how to. It was a lullaby type of thing and I’m trying to get back in her good graces, right? When I’m able to sing my thoughts and sing my heart, I nail it because I can get through and get my point across. So, we have this beautiful build up, this beautiful daddy-daughter moment.” — Desmond Sean Ellington, Actor

And then, well, Davis reverts to the unreliable man Ali fears. And the audience, well, they think to themselves, “him again,” said Ellington.

If Ellington so understands the assignment, it may be because he knows the dynamic intimately. “My parents divorced when I was like 12, 13,” he said. “I remember what was to not have my dad there anymore. For him to say, ‘Yeah, I’m come through. I’m going to do this.’ And then it not happen. So, I know what it’s like to be on the receiving end.”

Many years later, Ellington and his father — who retired from the Army — had conversations. “Just two men talking, and I realized, ‘Oh, you didn’t know what you were doing. You’re 20, 30, with three kids.’ I can’t imagine, I don’t even have a pup,” Ellington said, with a laugh. “Listening to this man speak of his experience at that time and what he was dealing with and going through, to hear it differently. He was just a human being doing the best that he knew. And so being able to take that perspective as Davis, knowing that he really does love his daughter and knowing his priorities are just completely out of whack.”

Playing Davis “is a great responsibility for me,” said Ellington. Then he added with a smile, “and then, of course, knowing that I’m nothing like that.” So, what about that post-show shade Davis seems to invite?  “This is when I know that as an actor, I’ve done my job,” he said. “The great thing about this musical is that it’s not a fairy tale. We deal with some stuff.”

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) NewsCenter is the organization’s editorial platform for stories, announcements, interviews, and coverage of theatre and cultural programming in Colorado. We are committed to producing accurate, trustworthy, clearly sourced journalism that reflects our mission and serves our community.