Carole King’s BEAUTIFUL: A Songwriter’s Triumph
Sarah Shepard as Carole King
Review: Beautiful, A Carole King Musical at the Kennedy Center
By Lauren Woods
Carole King’s 1971 Tapestry album cover is an iconic image, with King sitting by the window of her California home, her cat, light shining in, bare feet and unfussy hair, the look of a woman deeply comfortable with herself. The album’s songs include pop hits like “Natural Woman,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” “It’s Too Late,” “So Far Away,” and others well known to millions of Americans. Tapestry, her second studio album, was the number one album in the country for 15 weeks straight and touched people while the Vietnam War was raging, anti-war demonstrations were taking place, and feminism was taking off. Those years were a turning point in America and King’s life. Before that, she was Carol Klein, a Brooklyn girl unknown in the music world who just wanted to write and sell songs.
Four Friends. (l to r) Sara Sheperd, Sara King, Ryan Farnsworth and James D. Gish.
The production of BEAUTIFUL – The Carole King Musical at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts tells King’s story, beginning in the 1950s and all the way to Carole King’s rise to singer-songwriter fame. The musical is touring at the Kennedy Center now through January 2.
A vibrant, funny Sara Sheperd plays Carol King. Her mother worries about her, as a teenager, going to Times Square, but she’s determined to do it and sells her first song. Married young, King’s husband is a charming lyricist, Gerry Goffin, played by James Gish. The two began writing songs on staff in the storied Brill Building just off Times Square, famous for its offices and studios where songwriters and producers worked, particularly in the 1960s. As a successful couple, raising two kids and writing the top pop songs in the country, King and Goffin seem to have it all.
The Drifters 2. (l to r) Torrey Linder, Edwin Bates, Ben Toomer and Isaiah Bailey.
The first act is fun, even if the songwriting comes off a little too easily. King and Goffin churn out songs for the likes of the Drifters, the Shirelles, the Righteous Brothers, and others. Highlights include well-known hits like “Take Good Care of My Baby,” “The Locomotion,” “One Fine Day,” and “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” Deepening the sense of place within the Brill Building, we meet friends, and rival songwriters in the talented and headstrong Cynthia Weil played by Sara King, and lively hypochondriac Barry Mann played by Ryan Farnsworth, the real-life songwriting duo who wrote hits including “On Broadway,” “Walking in the Rain,” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.” Famed music producer and talent manager Don Kirshner, played by Matt Loehr, is a particular delight, a caricatured, comedically haughty, and shallow manager doling out musical judgments and interested above all in-market success.
1650 Broadway. (l to r) Matt Loehr, James D. Gish, Sara Sheperd, Ryan Farnsworth and Sara King.
If everything had gone easily for King and Goffin, they might have continued living together happily and churning out music for other performers behind the scenes. But personal and professional pressures proved too much for the couple. For one, in the sixties, more and more performers started writing their songs, leaving songwriters with fewer acts to write for. Besides that, King experienced her upheaval around the same time, a life change portrayed in the musical in a poignant moment right before the intermission.
The Shirelles. (l to r) Jamary A. Gil, Sarah Sigman, Rosharra Francis and Danielle Herbert.
After closing for a year and a half in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Kennedy Center has been open again since September, and audiences can, once again, watch shows with proof of COVID vaccine (photo proof allowed).
What works in BEAUTIFUL, besides the musical performances, is Carole King’s personal story of triumph as a songwriter, mother, and independent woman. It’s entertaining when the set on stage, with guitars in the background, turns pink and electric blue when the actors play piano when the songs we know so well take off and take America by storm. It’s equally fun to see the little song factory and the personalities who made those songs happen.
But I wanted to see the personal and professional struggles hit more, to make the characters feel less like songwriters churning out easy hits and a little more complex. Carole King, after all, is famous for her intimate, heartfelt, and revealing songs. It’s, therefore, a little disappointing when the playwriting doesn’t allow that humanity to come fully through into a three-dimensional character who grapples more with the greater changes in her life.
There were also characters I would have liked to see more of had the playwriting been different. Janelle Woods, played by Rosharra Francis, is one who comes to mind. Her vibrant voice and dancing made me want to see more of her, particularly given her role in a critical plot point. Doing so might have widened the insular songwriting world slightly to include more stage time from other performers, particularly performers of color
Walking in the Rain. Ryan Farnsworth and Sara King.
While BEAUTIFUL is not a deep dive into the psyche of King and her fellow songwriters, it’s a fun story of personal transformation and the ability of one woman’s songwriting to resonate for millions, particularly as King finally moves from the East Coast to California, finds her voice, and begins performing her songs.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of Tapestry’s release, an apt time for the musical. It was a strong, well-acted, well-produced performance. The audience laughed a lot, and many were cheering and dancing at the end. Beautiful is a lighthearted musical about the changing music industry, upturned lives, and overcoming personal struggles. When Sheperd performed the title song, tossed her head back, and smiled, with the lyrics, You’ve got to get up every morning with a smile on your face, the audience was swaying, a man on my left was whooping, and there were many smiles on faces after the curtain went down.
The run time of Beautiful is two hours and thirty minutes, including intermission. You can purchase tickets at the Kennedy Center for performances through January 2 here.
Lauren D. Woods is a Washington, DC-based writer. Her essays, articles, and fiction have appeared in the Antioch Review, Wasafiri, Hobart, The Forge Literary Magazine, Lit Hub, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She tweets @Ladiwoods1.