Beautiful – The Carole King Musical
Book by Douglas McGraith, words and music by Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil
Directed by Nikolai Foster
A Curve, Royal Bath and Mayflower Southampton co-production
At Curve: 28 Feb – 12 March and then touring
“a fabulous, musical production”
At just 16 years old New Yorker Carole King and precociously sells her first song to music publisher Donnie Krishner. She has no aspirations to be a singer and is happy putting music to her often unfulfilling lyrics. Then she meets lyricist Gerry Goffin and they start to collaborate, in all sorts of ways. Inevitably Carol falls pregnant and Gerry ‘does the decent thing’ and marries her. While slaving away at Krishner’s 1650 Broadway music factory the pair of songwriters come across another aspiring couple of composers, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Immediately there is friction and competition as they battle for publishing kudos in the Billboard Chart. This spurs both couples on creatively. However the pressure of work spills over into their private life and Goffin strays, eventually splitting up the marriage.
The entire show is dependant on the actress playing Carol King and here Molly-Grace Cutler more than steps up to the plate as an accomplished singer and pianist. In fact all the cast play at least one instrument as well as sing. As Gerry Goffin Tom Milner is an accomplished rock musician having toured in, amongst other shows, American Idiot. While there are plenty of laughs throughout it is Seren Sandham-Davies’ Cynthia Weil and Jos Slovick as Barry Mann who have the main comedy moments.
While this is Carole King’s story there are plenty of songs that are not by her which add context to the era. There is great choral backup by The Shirelles (Naeomi Alade, Amenal El-Kindy and Louise Francis) and The Drifters (Kemi Clarke, Myles Miller & Kevin Yates).
The set is, as is by now a signature Curve feature, magnificently lit by Ben Cracknell and designed by Frankie Bradshaw.
This is a fabulous, musical production telling the story of Carole King’s early career. You will recognise lots of her songs but will also be surprised by the ones she wrote but never sang.
Once again Curve has been chosen to kick start a national tour, only this time with the added prestige of our very own resident director at the helm.
Beautiful runs at Curve til 12 March and then tours round the country.
https://beautifulmusical.co.uk/
Curve https://www.curveonline.co.uk/
http://ptheatre.blogspot.co.uk/
