YOUR KIND OF MUSIC. YOUR KIND OF MUSICAL.
For five years, BEAUTIFUL, the Tony and Grammy Award-winning Carole King musical, has thrilled Broadway with the inspiring true story of one woman's remarkable journey from teenage songwriter to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
From the string of pop classics she wrote for the biggest acts in music to her own life-changing, chart-busting success with Tapestry, BEAUTIFUL takes you back to where it all began- and takes you on the ride of a lifetime.
Featuring over two dozen pop classics, including "You've Got a Friend," "One Fine Day," "Up on the Roof," "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," and "Natural Woman," this crowd-pleasing international phenomenon is filled with the songs you remember- and a story you'll never forget.
Unfortunately, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann are the secondary couple in Beautiful, a musical biography of Carole King that frequently pushes its central character aside for more interesting and entertaining moments played out by its skilled and talented supporting ensemble. It's no fault of top-billed star Jessie Mueller, who grabbed Broadway's attention for her jazzy stylings in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever and displayed crack comical chops in The Mystery of Edmund Drood, that her first original starring vehicle downplays her talents until the last half-hour or so of the evening, as she plays a young Brooklyn girl with ambition who grows into a woman who seems content to stay in the background and live an ordinary suburban married life until circumstances force her to find her own voice....Beautiful's central plot is more of a soapy, shorthand connect-the-dots between hit songs....By the time Mueller is allowed to vocally let loose on 'A Natural Woman' and wrap up the evening by wrapping her heart around the title tune, the genial inoffensiveness of the musical's creaky dramatics has denied her any chance of truly connecting the emotions of the songs to the character she's been playing all night, reducing the moments to merely chances to admire the artistry of a rising Broadway star being granted center stage. And for many, that'll be enough to make Beautiful a swell night out.
Watching Beautiful, the new jukebox musical celebrating the remarkable life and work of Carole King, you may not feel the earth move under your feet. But the new Broadway show emerges as a slick and joyous celebration of female empowerment. Like Jersey Boys, Beautiful features a smart, well-crafted, and often funny book (by Douglas McGrath) that cleverly threads together a memorable catalog of early rock hits such as 'Some Kind of Wonderful' and 'Take Good Care of My Baby.' It also boasts a winning central performance by Jessie Mueller as the shy Jewish girl from Brooklyn who only gradually comes into her own as a headlining voice of a generation... Beautiful fills the charisma vacuum with the substantial addition of King and Goffin's friendly songwriting rivals Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, played with megawatt scene-stealing abandon by Anika Larsen and Jarrod Spector...
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