Book: Douglas McGrath
Music and Lyrics: Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil
Director: Nikolai Foster
The early 1970s had no self-respecting women’s Halls
of Residence not embracing the zeitgeist of an emerging female singer/songwriter renaissance without listening on repeat-play both Carly Simon’s No Secrets and Carole King’s Tapestry. The more esoterically minded found resonance with Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Meanwhile, across in male dorms, a more dispiriting tableau emerges wherein walls are postered with the ubiquitous tennis girl’s bottom and millionaire-in-waiting, Roger Daltrey, in full suede tassel swing at Woodstock.
From the timeless, perfect pop cadences ofThe Locomotionto soul diva divine Natural Born Woman,Carole King’s genius for poking pan-generational hearts and minds with a rhythm-stick wrapped in magic marks the two-hour passage on this stage tonight. The Beautiful title is informed by the life-affirming eponymous track from said Tapestry – ‘..where tears are just a lullaby/maybe love can end the madness/… you’re as beautiful as you feel’. King’s intensely, uniquely, autobiographical, heart-mugging sincerity opus described by James Taylor as –‘…songs for any occasion…built from the ground up with a simple, elegant architecture.’
Set principally in the studios of The Brill Building on Broadway – aka ‘The Hits Factory’ Beautiful charts a chronological narrative arc from King’s childhood precocity for nailing a melody to her eventual mantelpiece groaning weight of awards and lifetime achievement accolades. Molly-Grace Cutler’s immersion into the Carole King persona: teenage prodigy, possessed by melodies plucked from the rarefied air where only geniuses can breathe, is somewhat astonishing. The ingenue suggestion of Pre-Raphaelite red tresses, the ludicrous transition from piano-disciplined Mozart etudes to free-basing embryonic, melodic riffs forIt Might As Well Rain Until Septemberall taken in her stride. Likewise, the multi-instrumental ensemble cast employs a dynamic of interchangeable spontaneity and flair last seen at The Last Supper when the bill was presented.
Though King is the protagonist, her collaboration with lyricist/husband, Tom Milner’s muse-blessed, short-fused, adulterous, Gerry Goffin, lends further depth and expositional context. Sparring partners, hit-makers dynamic duo, Cynthia Weil (Seren Sandham-Davies’ debut entrance a super-steroids avalanche not seen since Donald O’Connor’s Make ’em Laughfrom Singing In The Rain) and rosy-cheeked Barry Mann (Jos Slovick) hypochondriac in residence, demonstrate their prodigious, inventive contribution to the Brill Building canon of pop classics, their On Broadway sublimely complementing King/Goffin’s Up On The Roof.
The set-piece routines, The Shirelles/Drifters/Righteous Brothers, are a choreographed and costume-riotous delight, and if they seem a tad cheesy, all the more to treasure: they were more innocent times notwithstanding a palliative to the Cold War paranoia consuming America. Though things begin to get a bit weird when (‘I don’t do songs for Sit-Coms!’) Goffin throws a curve-ball with Pleasant Valley Sunday,considered a throwaway for some scruffy, cheeky guys called The Monkees. As for the gauche babysitter turns Cinderella magically into Little Eva on roller-skates doing The Locomotion in neon-loud, Pop Art perfect micro-dress, the arrival of perfect three-minute effervescent, ephemera is the charts-trembling radio station new sensation. Meanwhile, some young lads in Liverpool are beginning to have ideas of their own. A show steeped in a bubbling crucible of teenage invention, genre-defining pop culture paradigm revolution. Does what it says on the label.
Runs Until 3 September 2022 and on tour
The Reviews Hub Score
Quintessential songs in the Key of Life.
