After months of rejecting their invitations, Carole King finally finds the will — and the childcare — to meet up with some songwriter friends at a Greenwich Village club. They convince her to play a song on The Bitter End’s now-iconic stage. She tentatively agrees, but she doesn’t want to perform any of her old songs, the hits the backing band already knows. She has a new song. King sits at the piano and begins to play the first notes of “It’s Too Late.”
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical employs this kind of dramatic irony again and again, showcasing the songwriting talents of King and her contemporaries to an audience that knows the profound and lasting power each song has attained. For those who may be more familiar with King’s career as a recording artist, Beautiful demonstrates her less visible but important influence on American popular music in the decade preceding her first solo album. The show celebrates the Tin Pan Alley era of songwriting and the impressive creative output of the four songwriters at the story’s core: King, her then-husband Gerry Goffin, and friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. It captures a moment in which pop songwriting was an insular and highly professionalized industry and hints at the singer-songwriter shift that King would later navigate so successfully.
Virginia Repertory Theatre’s production of Beautiful brings joyful energy to these well-loved standards and pop hits of the 1960s. Stage-framing lights in striking bright colors, gorgeous costumes, and individual touches by an excellent ensemble cast create a true spectacle and represent the fun and glamor of performers like the Shirelles and the Drifters. It’s satisfying to watch the songs transform from half-finished melodies in Carole and Gerry’s office to lush arrangements performed by the era’s most popular recording artists, and the show pokes fun at the music industry while remaining deferential to the skill and savvy of the writers and performers. The stage design and blocking make these numbers seem exciting and abundant without overwhelming the eye. Though all the vocal performances are strong, these group sequences stand out as a particularly effective representation of the time and place in which King joined the music industry.
Because Beautiful focuses on Carole King’s early career, it emphasizes her development of self-confidence over time, culminating in King’s decision to leave New York and record her own songs on Tapestry after separating from Goffin. Grey Garrett gives a wonderful, expressive performance as Carole King. She conveys the challenges of King’s life and marriage while imbuing the character with pride and talent that practically glows from within. Garrett develops a thoughtful and complete interpretation of King through her enthusiastic countenance and nervous body language. The supporting cast ably builds an image of the surrounding community in New York while introducing characters that are compelling in their own right. As Carole’s mother, Genie Klein, Jan Guarino is particularly sharp and funny, with excellent timing. Katie Goffman stands out as Cynthia Weil, a character that is consistently both warm and ambitious and whose friendship with Carole feels authentic and vital through the strength of her performance. These personalities are all reinforced in creative and entertaining ways by the production’s smart costuming and hair design.
Parts of Beautiful surprised me. I didn’t anticipate how much time it spends with Gerry Goffin and how little time it spends with Tapestry. In some ways, the musical feels like a prequel to the Carole King story I know best — her life in Laurel Canyon, her symbolic and cultural importance as an independent, divorced, successful, brilliant woman in public life. So while Beautiful feels more like a snapshot than an attempt to tell a complete Carole King story, it’s funny, breezy, and captures the essence of the Tin Pan Alley songwriting environment where King’s career began. Virginia Rep’s production is great entertainment for fans of King and of 1960s pop music, producing a celebratory atmosphere for audiences to enjoy and reflect on dozens of iconic songs they know and love, and to consider them in a new light.
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical runs through August 6 at Virginia Rep’s November Theatre. Recommended for eleven and up. Visit va-rep.org/ for tickets and more information.
