{"id":2111,"date":"2024-07-09T01:23:32","date_gmt":"2024-07-09T01:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/"},"modified":"2024-07-09T01:23:32","modified_gmt":"2024-07-09T01:23:32","slug":"review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/","title":{"rendered":"Review | Carole King musical is enjoyable, if not earth-moving"},"content":{"rendered":"


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There\u2019s a contradiction at the center of \u201cBeautiful: The Carole King Musical,\u201d a buoyant and enjoyable if not particularly curious dramatization of roughly the first dozen years of the groundbreaking singer-songwriter\u2019s career that opened at Olney Theatre Center on Saturday night: By making its narrative spine King\u2019s evolution from teenage Brill Building hitmaker to Earth-moving solo singer-songwriter, the show asks us to buy for 2.4 of its 2.5 hours that its subject is insecure about performing in public. This was true of King, early in her career. It just isn\u2019t, you know. Believable<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Not in the context of a musical, anyway. Natalie Weiss, a popular YouTuber\/TikToker and vocal coach<\/a>, embodies the nascent star in Olney\u2019s production with more warmth than depth, but she\u2019s got it where it counts: in the pipes. The only time I didn\u2019t believe her was when she was protesting, as the show repeatedly requires King to protest, that she\u2019d rather write songs for others than have people watch her perform them herself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It would be unfair to expect an actor to fill in the psychological blanks left by Douglas McGrath\u2019s book, which has the reverential tenor of an authorized biography throughout its first act and becomes downright hagiographical in its too-hurried second. But anyone who\u2019s read \u201cA Natural Woman,\u201d the memoir King published in 2012 \u2014 a year before \u201cBeautiful\u201d had its world premiere at San Francisco\u2019s Curran Theatre \u2014 will recognize that Weiss\u2019s inviting characterization isn\u2019t far removed from the way the self-effacing King describes herself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While King\u2019s gifts as a composer were evident from the moment she sold her first song to publisher Don Kirshner at the age of 16, it wasn\u2019t until her late 20s \u2014 after she\u2019d divorced her philandering husband and songwriting partner Gerry Goffin and lit out for the leafy Los Angeles hamlet of Laurel Canyon \u2014 that she came fully into her own with \u201cTapestry,\u201d the Grammy Award-winning, mega-selling 1971 album that remains her most singular creation. King\u2019s headlining debut at Carnegie Hall that summer serves as the climax to \u201cBeautiful,\u201d which derives what little dramatic tension it achieves from two sources: King\u2019s losing battle to persuade creatively and sexually restless Goffin (a nimble Michael Perrie Jr.) to embrace monogamous domesticity, and the songwriting team\u2019s friendly rivalry with another prolific pair of hitmakers and romantic partners, Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann (Nikki Mirza and Calvin McCullough, respectively).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The caffeinated tempo of Olney\u2019s crowd-pleasing production is often an asset: When director Amy Anders Corcoran smash-cuts from King and Goffin working through their demo of \u201cSome Kind of Wonderful\u201d in Kirshner\u2019s office to the Drifters performing the released version in their bedazzled blue tuxedos, we feel what a rush it must have been for a pair of still-wet-behind-the ears artists to have their songs performed on TV and radio, and in clubs that King, at least, was not yet old enough to get into. At the same time, you feel some sympathy for the four guys who look and sound so smooth as the Drifters, who like many members of the large company don\u2019t even get to speak lines of dialogue.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Weiss\u2019s relentlessly plucky King gets some tonal ballast from Donna Migliaccio\u2019s saturnine take on Genie Klein, the songwriter\u2019s less-than-encouraging mother, and especially from Bobby Smith\u2019s lovably gruff Kirshner, who has an ability to recognize a hit when he hears one, even if it\u2019s not always aligned with his personal taste.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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McGrath\u2019s narrative impatience becomes harder to overlook in the second act, which speedwalks through King\u2019s decision to leave Goffin, and the East Coast, so we can get to the \u201cTapestry\u201d numbers. James Taylor, who became a lifelong friend to King after her move west and encouraged her to perform isn\u2019t mentioned at all, while Kurt Boehm\u2019s scene in a terrible wig as producer Lou Adler \u2014 nudging King to put aside the painful memories of her marriage and record her own take of \u201c(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman\u201d a Goffin\/King\/Jerry Wexler song that had already been a Top 10 hit for Aretha Franklin \u2014 is so brief it borders on parody.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But again, the story is not the reason \u201cBeautiful\u201d has become a reliable seat-filler. We\u2019re here to hear these ancient-but-ageless chart-toppers \u2014 King\/Goffin\u2019s \u201cWill You Still Love Me Tomorrow?\u201d recorded by the Shirelles; Mann\/Weil\u2019s \u201cYou\u2019ve Lost That Lovin\u2019 Feeling,\u201d recorded by the Righteous Brothers, plus two dozen others \u2014 performed by energetic singers. I can cling to my generally low regard for jukebox musicals while admitting this policy is sort of snobbish and nonsensical, especially when I find myself cheerfully nodding along to songs I didn\u2019t even know I knew. After all, how many of the new musicals that have arrived since \u201cBeautiful\u201d can boast songs as undeniable as these classics?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As Saint Stephen Sondheim once put it, \u201cDamn few.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Beautiful: The Carole King Musical<\/b><\/i>, through Aug. 25 at Olney Theatre Center in Olney, Md. Two hours, 30 minutes, including one intermission. <\/i>olneytheatre.org<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n


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There\u2019s a contradiction at the center of \u201cBeautiful: The Carole King Musical,\u201d a buoyant and enjoyable if not particularly curious dramatization of roughly the first dozen years of the groundbreaking singer-songwriter\u2019s career that opened at Olney Theatre Center on Saturday night: By making its narrative spine King\u2019s evolution from teenage Brill Building hitmaker to Earth-moving…<\/p>\n

Read More “Review | Carole King musical is enjoyable, if not earth-moving”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/V4PO35CWHNDJFAAPCZH4SQINII_size-normalized.jpg&w=1440","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"yoast_head":"\nReview | Carole King musical is enjoyable, if not earth-moving - Breaking News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review | Carole King musical is enjoyable, if not earth-moving\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There\u2019s a contradiction at the center of \u201cBeautiful: The Carole King Musical,\u201d a buoyant and enjoyable if not particularly curious dramatization of roughly the first dozen years of the groundbreaking singer-songwriter\u2019s career that opened at Olney Theatre Center on Saturday night: By making its narrative spine King\u2019s evolution from teenage Brill Building hitmaker to Earth-moving...Read More “Review | Carole King musical is enjoyable, if not earth-moving” »\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Breaking News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-07-09T01:23:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/V4PO35CWHNDJFAAPCZH4SQINII_size-normalized.jpg&w=1440\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-apps\/imrs.php?src=https:\/\/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/V4PO35CWHNDJFAAPCZH4SQINII_size-normalized.jpg&w=1440\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/8b364f5cc7fbc8705a888e63db8c026a\"},\"headline\":\"Review | Carole King musical is enjoyable, if not earth-moving\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-07-09T01:23:32+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2024-07-09T01:23:32+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/\"},\"wordCount\":866,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Entertainment\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/#respond\"]}],\"copyrightYear\":\"2024\",\"copyrightHolder\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/#organization\"}},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/ventil.rs\/blog\/entertainment\/review-carole-king-musical-is-enjoyable-if-not-earth-moving\/\",\"name\":\"Review | Carole King musical is enjoyable, if not earth-moving - 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