YOUR KIND OF MUSIC. YOUR KIND OF MUSICAL.
For five years, BEAUTIFUL, the Tony and Grammy Award-winning Carole King musical, has thrilled Broadway with the inspiring true story of one woman's remarkable journey from teenage songwriter to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
From the string of pop classics she wrote for the biggest acts in music to her own life-changing, chart-busting success with Tapestry, BEAUTIFUL takes you back to where it all began- and takes you on the ride of a lifetime.
Featuring over two dozen pop classics, including "You've Got a Friend," "One Fine Day," "Up on the Roof," "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," and "Natural Woman," this crowd-pleasing international phenomenon is filled with the songs you remember- and a story you'll never forget.
Everything in Beautiful sounds better on Jessie Mueller. Or, for that matter, on Jake Epstein as Goffin, Jarrod Spector as Mann, and Anika Larsen as Weil. To the extent the show remains bizarrely enjoyable despite its essential hackishness, it's this central quartet of performers who make it happen. (The musical arrangements by Steve Sidwell are also good - and bonus points for hiring Dillon Kondor, King's grandson, on guitar.) Of course, there are the songs themselves, which excuse many faults. At one point we hear an actor playing Neil Sedaka sing his 1959 hit 'Oh! Carol,' supposedly written in heartbreak over King, whom he'd dated. 'It's a song, not a deposition,' King tells her worried mother. Beautiful is no deposition, god knows; there's virtually nothing true in it. But at its best, and only then, it's a song.
Unfortunately, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann are the secondary couple in Beautiful, a musical biography of Carole King that frequently pushes its central character aside for more interesting and entertaining moments played out by its skilled and talented supporting ensemble. It's no fault of top-billed star Jessie Mueller, who grabbed Broadway's attention for her jazzy stylings in On A Clear Day You Can See Forever and displayed crack comical chops in The Mystery of Edmund Drood, that her first original starring vehicle downplays her talents until the last half-hour or so of the evening, as she plays a young Brooklyn girl with ambition who grows into a woman who seems content to stay in the background and live an ordinary suburban married life until circumstances force her to find her own voice....Beautiful's central plot is more of a soapy, shorthand connect-the-dots between hit songs....By the time Mueller is allowed to vocally let loose on 'A Natural Woman' and wrap up the evening by wrapping her heart around the title tune, the genial inoffensiveness of the musical's creaky dramatics has denied her any chance of truly connecting the emotions of the songs to the character she's been playing all night, reducing the moments to merely chances to admire the artistry of a rising Broadway star being granted center stage. And for many, that'll be enough to make Beautiful a swell night out.
2014 | Broadway |
Original Broadway Production Broadway |
West End |
West End West End |
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2015 | US Tour |
First National Tour US Tour |
Year | Ceremony | Category | Nominee |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical | Jessie Mueller |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Book of a Musical | Douglas McGrath |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical | Anika Larsen |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Musical | Beautiful: The Carole King Musical |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Orchestrations | Steve Sidwell |
2014 | Drama Desk Awards | Outstanding Sound Design in a Musical | Brian Ronan |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Distinguished Performance Award | Jessie Mueller |
2014 | Drama League Awards | Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Musical | Beautiful: The Carole King Musical |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Actress in a Musical | Jessie Mueller |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical | Jarrod Spector |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical | Anika Larsen |
2014 | Outer Critics Circle Awards | Outstanding New Broadway Musical | Beautiful: The Carole King Musical |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Book of a Musical | Douglas McGrath |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Good Productions |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Brunish & Trinchero |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Roger Faxon |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Larry Magid |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Kit Seidel |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Lawrence S. Toppall |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Fakston Productions/Mary Solomon |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | William Court Cohen |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | John Gore |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | BarLor Productions |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Matthew C. Blank |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Tim Hogue |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Joel Hyatt |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Marianne Mills |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Michael J. Moritz, Jr. |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | StylesFour Productions |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Patty Baker |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Orin Wolf |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Terry Schnuck |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Elaine Krauss |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Mike Bosner |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Richard A. Smith |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Jeffrey A. Sine |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Harriet N. Leve |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Sony/ATV Music Publishing |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Paul Blake |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Musical | Beautiful: The Carole King Musical |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Orchestrations | Steve Sidwell |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical | Jarrod Spector |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical | Anika Larsen |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical | Jessie Mueller |
2014 | Tony Awards | Best Sound Design of a Musical | Brian Ronan |
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