Beautiful opens and closes the same way – a woman, a spotlight, a piano. And a voice. A thunderously rich voice reaching straight to the heart and pulling on every string. Carole King has that voice. As her avatar, actor Leslie McDonel channels King’s strength and fragility of soul. The sound of it reverberates throughout the musical. Yeah, there might be snippets from other songwriters, performances from guy and girl groups aplenty, but the strong thread of King’s style weaves Beautiful’s own tapestry into something glorious.
Oh, are you “not familiar” with Carole King’s oeuvre? Wrong. You absolutely know more Carole King songs than you’d think. If you somehow missed out on crooning “(You Make Me Feel) Like a Natural Woman” into a hairbrush as a youth, ZACH’s powerhouse cast is more than able to make you a manic fan by the end of the show.
Beautiful is essentially a jukebox musical, but King’s range extends way past what the average joe would think of with her repertoire. Before her breakout album, Tapestry, King spent her late teens and 20s working as a music factory songwriter, alongside her lyricist husband Gerry Goffin (bombastically played by Hayden Stanes). Epic pop groups like the Drifters and the Shirelles owed some of their greatest bops to Goffin and King. These songs – like “Up on the Roof” and the heartrending “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” – still endure as timeless melodies. Beautiful tracks King’s rise, her friendship/rivalry with fellow writer team Barry Mann (Logan Foster) and Cynthia Weil (Sara Burke), and the storminess of her relationship with Goffin. The story itself is fine, a summarized history told through one-note characterization and an assortment of cheesy jokes held together through song. But those songs! They more than justify the cost of a ticket.
I never saw Mamma Mia! on Broadway, but I heard tales of dancing in the aisles and wild sing-alongs. The Carole King crowd isn’t quite as raucous – even “The Locomotion” failed to get a dance train going, despite singer Tatyana Smith’s best efforts – but the ZACH audience during my showing lapped up the Sixties anthems with wild enthusiasm. There were hoots. There were hollers. There were even boos and hisses when a certain villain came onstage. Through it all, the music and the cast’s high-octane vocals filled the space with electricity.
Through it all, the music and the cast’s high-octane vocals filled the space with electricity.
The pop perfection of the first act, where a songwriting competition gave plenty of room for group performances, provided an exhilarating spotlight on how a tune progresses from a single piano in a room to orchestrated and choreographed perfection. Watching the creation of songs like “On Broadway” (Mann and Weil) and “One Fine Day” (Goffin and King) from pitch to performance made the final products that much sweeter. The fact that each one could be introduced and presented in three minutes or less? Even more impressive. The group numbers by the gorgeous girls (Smith, Helena Laing, Cameron Thomas, and McKenlee Wilson) and glamorous guys (Desmond Newson, Kenny Williams, Russell J. Scott, and Tyler Wesley) created their own atmospheric systems with tight harmonies and smooth solo spotlights. There’s a particular pleasure in perfectly synchronized voice. These singers delivered that in spades, giving me goosebumps with the power of their song.
There’s a slight momentum dip in the second act, when the action moves away from songwriting competitions and into melodrama. It mirrors the musical turbulence shifting from dance jams to the purer Sixties rock sound. But again, the show works to center King and her piano. When McDonel embraces the strength of her own performance and moves into the tragic beauty of King’s Tapestry album, we still follow that voice, that hypnotic, soulful sound. She sings, and we do feel the earth move under our feet – or perhaps it’s just the irresistible toe-tapping melodies. Either way, Beautiful is guaranteed to impress.
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
Through Sept. 22
This article appears in August 16 • 2024.
