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Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
3rd May 2022 - 7th May 2022
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A brand new production of the Award Winning West End and Broadway show, Beautiful – The Carole King Musical, comes to Malvern Theatres.
Long before she was Carole King, the chart-topping music legend, she was an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent.
She fought her way into the record business as a teenager and sold her first hit, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, when she was just seventeen. By the time she reached her twenties she had the husband of her dreams and a flourishing career writing hits for the biggest acts in rock ‘n’ roll from Aretha Franklin to The Monkees, The Drifters, to The Shirelles. But it wasn’t until her personal life began to crack that she finally managed to find her true voice.
Beautiful tells the inspiring true story of King’s remarkable rise to stardom, from being part of a hit songwriting team with her husband Gerry Goffin, to her relationship with fellow writers and best friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, to becoming one of the most successful solo acts in popular music history.
Along the way, she wrote the soundtrack to a generation, with countless classics such as You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, Take Good Care of my Baby, You’ve Got a Friend, So Far Away, It Might As Well Rain Until September, Up on the Roof, and Locomotion.
Book by Douglas McGrath
Words and Music by Gerry Goffin & Carole King, Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil
Music by arrangement with SONY/ATV Music Publishing
Originally produced on Broadway and in London by Paul Blake, SONY/ATV Music Publishing & Mike Bosner
Age guidance: 10+
Contains strobe lighting and haze effects
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Event Reviews
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Linda
An absolutely fantastic show. Such a multi-talented cast who deserve the 5 star review. Thank you for bringing this show to our beautiful Malvern Theatres. Thank you to everyone involved both front and back stage. A fantastic production.
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Tony
Great energy from these multi talented performers- some terrific renditions of these old favourites. Molly-Grace was fabulous as Carole King (with a better voice!). I was blown away by her voice and overall performance. She was ably supported by Tom Milner as Gerry Goffin and special mention for Dan de Cruz as the on stage musical director; his two numbers were sung beautifully. The audience were really engaged right through to the rousing finale numbers leaving them buzzing with excitement- top marks for this production
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Mary
I was grinning like a Cheshire Cat, from ear to ear right from the very beginning. Not just the songs that Carole King made famous. There were the Drifters, Monkees and even an Animals song and many many more. You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman was sung with so much feeling. A couple of the songs made me cry and there was the Walker brothers classic, You've Lost That Loving Feeling. Possibly the best musical I have ever seen, what a story, what songs and what a performance by the whole cast. Loved it ,loved it!
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Jeremy
Just outstanding entertainment for all - what a setlist! The audience lapped it up. Really fantastic cast - felt as if it was as good for them as it was for the audience.
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John
The best performance I've seen for many years. Multi-talented cast with all the skills, musicians, actors and the enthusiasm to bring the audience to a crescendo. I will be seeing the show again as soon as possible
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The View From The Stalls
Who would have thought that a musical about Carole King would start with a cute rendition of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?
This one does, because it really goes back to the start of this singer/songwriter's impeccable career. In the early days when she jettisoned Bach to write her own songs as a teenager, this is where she first met and completely fell for her writing partner and future husband Gerry Goffin - a partnership that would flourish and inevitably ultimately flounder, but not before the duo had written some of the most famous and covered songs of the 20th century.
The show starts with one of Carole's gently and emotive solo songs, So Far Away, before the story takes us through a fantastic catalogue of hits, many of which were, in the early days, created specifically at the request of music boss Donnie Kirshner (played here by Garry Robson) for a particular artist, such as Will You Still Love Me for The Shirelles. However, they weren't alone in producing great songs - they were in competition for the Number 1 slot with friends Cynthia Weil (Seren Sandham-Davies) and Barry Mann (Jos Slovick) who did on one occasion win out with You've lost that loving feeling, a hit for the Righteous Brothers.
With the entire cast responsible for playing the music live on stage, everyone in the audience will have their favourites. Up on the roof? The Locomotion? Take Good Care of my Baby? They are all there and more. The second half is notable for two things: the marital issues which led to divorce and the desire for Carole to move away to Los Angeles with her children which sparks the idea for having her own songs sung by herself. The result: her seminal 1971 album Tapestry with its evocative cover of her looking out of her Laurel Canyon house, her cat at her feet. The last few songs in the show are testament to the power of this album and her independence - You've Got A Friend, A Natural Woman and Beautiful, with the final encore of I Feel The Earth Move having the audience on their feet for a great ovation to a great show. Throughout the show, the two leads Molly-Grace Cutler and Tom Milner effortlessly and accurately reproduce bring to life not just the songs but the story behind them.
This is the story of a songstress whose importance and impact cannot be underestimated. One who we can be very grateful for disregarding the advice of her mother to become a teacher, because "the music business isn't for women". And although Geffin died in 2014, a year after the show opened in San Francisco, their legacy to the musical world is truly immense and this show highlights it, well, beautifully.
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Richard Edmonds
Once again the theatre was crammed to the limit. Three events were
happening, in, variously the Forum Theatre, the cinema and the main house.
Is anybody else doing work of this kind, and of such high quality?
I very much doubt it--at the risk of repeating myself, I can only say once again
that it is about time somebody proposed a knighthood for Nic Lloyd, this#
wonderful theatres imaginative director, who has saved so many souls from
desperation and despair over the last couple of years.
Knighthoods are given away these days like Smarties, frequently they are rewards for
favours proffered within therewards system which comes with cronyism. Here is a man
who has given so much to his community not to mention
numerous acting companies who have passed across Malvern's various stages.
Maybe BoJo will see this impassioned plea for an honour to be given to a man who
deserves it---we can only hope.
Carole King writes songs which are charming cheer-ups. By the 1960s, radio shows were losing
out to multi TV, and everyone had a gogglebox in their living rooms, which meant the singer
had a face at last. Connie Francis, the Everly Brothers,the Beatles and dozens more. They were
demi-gods of pop, and the public (at least the people who went in for pop) idolised them.
Carole King ( Molly Grace Cutler in tremendous voice) followed a pattern and trod a well-trodden
path to success, urged on by the traditonal American mamma much like Barbra Streisand, eventually composing
hit standards along with her future husband, guitarist Gerry Goffin. (nicely acted by Tom Milner)
who she meets in (you've guessed it) a recording studio.
They are all here these colourful characters, along with the bands they composed for.in this swift,
well-acted musical, mostly set in a drab recording studio, where stardom in the disc world is apparently established as swiftly as one plucks a guitar string.
When Oscar Hammerstein created the musical "Oklahoma!", he encompassed a whole state and way of
life in an emergent young America, every song, every dance structure took that story forward. That musical remains a miracleand set a standard.
King and Goffin created single melodies rather than stories, melodies band shows which which gradually gained fame in the pop charts,.
One's reaction to their music is vastly different depending on one's taste. Nevertheless, certain songs have a delightful conversational
aspect, it is as though these two American songwriters are to be talking to you personally."Up On The Roof" is a case in point
John Denver could do this conversational thing, and so could Judy Collins--a singer I have listened to for many years--
a woman who was a total triumph at this particular form of intimate poetic lyricism set within a song.
The production has lots of high octane numbers, and the story involves the King-Goffin break-up which always comes
along with pop supernovas. Tina and Ike, Denver himself amongst others. Pop singers always seem to lose their marital equanimity
when the big bucks roll in. And yet, when you think about it, it's nothing new, after all isn't that what happened to Shakespeare and
Anne Hathaway.Sometimes a career in the spotlight may need new brakes pads as the momentum increasesand a crash poses a hazard.
And at the end of the evening, I could not help thinking of the sheer magic of Judi Dench giving us Sondheim's
brilliant top class hit song "Where Are The Clowns" from "A Little Night Music"---a performance in songspiel which seemed to refresh
a quiet corner of the soul.You won't find that here.
