Beautiful: The Carole King Musical opened last week at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco. This was, in a way, a return home: the musical premiered in San Francisco in 2013 and went on to become a hit on Broadway, where it won two Tony Awards for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical and Best Sound Design in a Musical. The Broadway production garnered nominations in seven categories, including Best Musical. In 2013 the Broadway cast recording was the Grammy Award winner for Best Musical Theater Album.
The awards are not without reason, for the musical is full of lively renditions of the iconic songs that exemplified the popular music of the ’60s. If you didn’t know before, you will know after the curtain rings down how many of those songs were written by King with her lyricist husband Gerry Goffin. Songs such as, “Some Kind of Wonderful,” “On Broadway,” “The Locomotion” and “Chains,” along with songs that later became identified more with King, after her switch from songwriter to performer: “So Far Away,” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow,” “It’s Too Late” and “You’ve Got a Friend.”
Strung between the songs is the story of King’s early career, from the moment she decides to bring a song she wrote to producer Donny Kirschner at The Brill Building in Manhattan, the home of mainstream popular music and one of the most prestigious names in music at the time, to the moment she leaves her first husband and embarks on her career as a performer as well as composer. It is a testament to King’s talent that she begins her life as a professional composer at the age of 16. Her success as a performer is sealed with the album Tapestry, which is a collection of the hit works that she had written up until the time it was produced in 1971, when she was 29.
Although this was also clearly a time of great stress and emotional pain for King, as well as career success, playwright Douglas McGrath keeps the story light, moving through events quickly and providing a fair number of one-liners to keep the audience smiling. The stress, the competition, Kirschner’s manipulations, Goffin’s infidelities and narcissism, all dissolve in a wave of audience nostalgia for a musical era that distilled and embodied the emotional lives of its teenage listeners.
Abby Mueller, the sister of Jessie Mueller who played the role in the original cast, does a skillful and energetic interpretation of the young Carole King. And Liam Tobin is a likeable version of Gerry Goffin, almost convincing in his anxiety over his artistic and sexual integrity; his is a hard role to play. Becky Gulsvid and Ben Fankhauser, in their roles as Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, are foils to King and Goffin. They are the young lyricist/composer team that are their closest competitors, turning out hits such as “He’s Sure the Boy I Love” and “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling.”
A host of singers play the groups of the time: The Shirelles, The Drifters, The Righteous Brothers, Little Eva. All of these singers effectively reproduced the singular singers of the era, and although the current practice in musicals of amplifying singers tended to give everyone a slightly brassy, belter vocal quality, our wistful reminiscence for the music of the era, softened that difference.
The scenic design was by Derek McLane, with costumes by Alejo Vietti and lighting by Peter Kaczorowski. The award-winning sound design was by Brian Ronan. Conductor and keyboardist Susan Draus ably led the 14-instrumentalist band.
– Jaime Robles
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical continues at the Orpheum through September 18. For tickets and information, visit www.shnsf.com.
Photo: L to r: Abby Mueller as Carole King, with Becky Gulsvig (Cynthia Weil), Ben Fankhauser (Barry Mann) and Liam Tobin (Gerry Goffin), in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical at the Orpheum in San Francisco. Photo by Joan Maurcus.