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.
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...
...as designed by Derek McLane (sets), Alejo Vietti (costumes) and Peter Kaczorowski (lighting), 'Beautiful' nods so often to Michael Bennett's original production of 'Dreamgirls' that it starts to resemble a bobblehead doll. Originality is clearly not this show's strong suit. With one very important exception. That's Ms. Mueller, a Broadway star in waiting for several years, who here steps confidently into the V.I.P. room of musical headliners...Much of what makes Ms. Mueller's performance so touching is its projection of a lack of confidence. There's a humility to Ms. Mueller's Carole, part of whom wants only to be a good Jewish wife and mother, preferably in the suburbs. She plays ego-boosting, self-effacing geisha to Mr. Epstein's philandering, mentally unstable Gerry....Modesty is not the usual stuff of Broadway showstoppers. And if 'Beautiful' never acquires the flashy momentum of 'Jersey Boys,' it may come in part from the deferential gentleness of its heroine. But when Ms. Mueller sings the show's title song - sitting at a keyboard in, of course, Carnegie for the production's finale - she delivers something you don't expect from a jukebox musical. That's a complex, revitalizing portrait of how a very familiar song came into existence, and of the real, conflicted person within the reluctant star
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