Beautiful – The Carole King Musical continues at the Churchill Theatre, Bromley until 18 January and then tours until 29 August 2020.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Beautiful – The Carole King Musical tells the true, inspiring story of Carole King, an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent, and her remarkable rise to stardom. However, despite each performance depicting a coming of age narrative, this musical is certainly no newcomer. This second tour follows the show’s roaring success in the West End, a sell-out tour in 2017-18, all of which is tied up rather prettily with an Olivier, Tony and Grammy Award.
The best way to describe this show would be to position it somewhere in amongst Jersey Boys and Motown: The Musical. It’s a jukebox musical all about those jukebox classics, including ‘The Loco-Motion’, ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ and ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’. It is a show celebrating the kind of stuff you can only describe as ‘real music’, as an audience member did not hesitate to remind me mid-voluminous applause to Cameron Sharp’s (Barry Mann) performance of ‘We Gotta Get Out of This Place’.
And yet, although this type of musical is by no means unusual, it certainly does not feel repetitive. On the other hand, it’s a refreshing insight into the patchwork behind the songs that came to represent a new age.
The musical follows a quartet of songwriters and composers – Carole King (Daisy Wood-Davis), Gerry Goffin (Adam Gillian), Cynthia Weil (Laura Baldwin) and Barry Mann (Sharp) – their friendships, rivalry, careers and personal turmoil.
And so, it has been argued that perhaps calling this show The Carole King Musical is misleading, especially when considering that Goffin and King, in partnership, lie behind many of the hits. And yet, with King and Weil symbolising elements of second and third-wave feminism, highlighting the position of women within an industry dominated by men, this show most definitely owns the right to be described as The Carole King Musical and The Carole King Musical alone.
Despite it having a few less songs than Act I, it is in Act II that Wood-Davis truly encapsulates the role of King. She creates the star’s impressive and expressive vocals with ease, a success truly captured in her rendition of ‘(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman’.
A special mention is also due to Baldwin as King’s career rival and best friend Weil. She simply nails the role.
Beautiful – The Carole King Musical is an exploration into the world behind the rising mini-skirts, the smooth voices of The Shirelles and iconic Drifters’ moves. It is a voyage into the largely dark and concealed nuances of the music industry. And yet it is exactly in the metaphorical subtleties that the musical becomes a success.
Throughout the show there is nearly always a piano positioned somewhere on the stage, a humbling and joyous reminder that within a world of turmoil and chaos music will triumph.
Polly Sisley
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