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I picked this “jukebox” musical for my second show on this trip. Not that I wouldn’t enjoy one of the “big” long-running musicals, but that would feel less of a special “only in NYC” event. Although the show is billed as the Carol King story (and does, indeed, revolve around her as the emotional focus), it covers the braided lives of two songwriting couples--Carol King & Gerry Goffin and Cynthia Weil & Barry Mann--whose early careers as covered in the show spanned and illustrated the pop music evolution of the “long ’60s” from teeny-bopper song factories in New York to the LA rock industry. The book does a seamless dual job of tracing the characters’ personal and professional lives while setting up the musical numbers. And the songs--with only minor artificial tweaking of chronology--similarly illustrate popular and familiar highlights of their careers while commenting on the tensions and triumphs of their creators.
The show is fast-paced, with sets and backdrops being mechanically swept on and off around the performers (I'm guessing some sort of track mechanism in the stage?) and near-magical quick costume changes. Jessie Mueller, as King, nails the transition from wide-eyed teenager to mature professional and manages the difficult task of portraying an untrained voice. The musical numbers provide condensed snapshots of the hits in their iconic performances. Only two of the songs didn’t work for me musically. While the singers on “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” were fine, the instrumentation completely overwhelmed the performance to a painful decibel level. And the final, namesake song “Beautiful” (final, not counting the curtain-call performance) was so vocally over-wrought that I couldn’t make out the lyrics at all. (It didn’t help that it’s the one song in the show that I couldn’t have sung along with from memory.) Those points aside, it was a gorgeous feel-good performance (if one may say that of a personal story that works through a fair amount of pain to get to triumph). Not, I would guess, destined to be a great classic, but solidly entertaining.
The show is fast-paced, with sets and backdrops being mechanically swept on and off around the performers (I'm guessing some sort of track mechanism in the stage?) and near-magical quick costume changes. Jessie Mueller, as King, nails the transition from wide-eyed teenager to mature professional and manages the difficult task of portraying an untrained voice. The musical numbers provide condensed snapshots of the hits in their iconic performances. Only two of the songs didn’t work for me musically. While the singers on “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” were fine, the instrumentation completely overwhelmed the performance to a painful decibel level. And the final, namesake song “Beautiful” (final, not counting the curtain-call performance) was so vocally over-wrought that I couldn’t make out the lyrics at all. (It didn’t help that it’s the one song in the show that I couldn’t have sung along with from memory.) Those points aside, it was a gorgeous feel-good performance (if one may say that of a personal story that works through a fair amount of pain to get to triumph). Not, I would guess, destined to be a great classic, but solidly entertaining.
