By JESSICA NEU
After a successful tribute performance to the incomparable Carole King, Ron Carter, President & Executive Director of the Strand Theater decided that Beautiful: The Carole King Musical would be an excellent choice for the company’s 2024-25 season. Beautiful tells the story of Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame singer-songwriter extraordinaire Carole King. From her years as a teenager growing up in Brooklyn trying to write a hit song to her sold-out performance at Carnegie Hall, Beautiful is an immersive look at King’s life and songwriting in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
Jeremy Czarniak directs an intimate rendition of this lauded musical. Starring Lori Marinacci as King and Samuel Brooks as her husband and collaborator Gerry Goffin, the Strand’s production of Beautiful lives up to its name. Marinacci introduces us to King as a square, awkward teenager who works tirelessly to sell one of her songs to Don Kirshner (Michael L. Marra), a record producer in Times Square. As she ventures from her home in Brooklyn into Manhattan, Marinacci is delightfully naïve, quirky, and adorably optimistic. Admittedly, King is a better composer than lyricist, so meeting Goffin, an aspiring playwright, became a match in both artistic and personal heaven. The couple marry after discovering that King is pregnant at only 17 years old.
Marinacci and Brooks take audiences through the highs and lows of their relationship and the pressure of becoming successful songwriters and staying at the top of the charts and ahead of the cultural zeitgeist. Marinacci shows how King worked to hone her craft but also yearned for personal time with Goffin and their daughter, Louise. Brooks, however, portrays an anxious, self-doubting, and, at times, unstable Goffin. This instability creates tension between Goffin and King, which Marinacci and Brooks deliver with convincing tension.
King and Goffin’s biggest songwriting competition and the foil to their volatile relationship are fellow writing team Cynthia Weil (Cait Crowley) and Barry Mann (Evan Krug). Crowley delivers a stylish, sophisticated Cynthia. Krug is a lovable hypochondriac driven to compose pieces as brilliant and successful King’s and Goffin’s collaborations. Crowley and Mann wrote such hits as “You’ve Lost That Love and Feeling,” and “On Broadway.” Early in their careers, these now classic songs battled King’s and Goffin’s “Take Good Care of My Baby” and “The Locomotion” for the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. Record producer Don Kirshner keeps both couples writing relentlessly for the top spot. Marra delivers a witty, kitschy performance whose presence adds a pleasing dimension to each scene.
Beautiful packs hit after hit in the 2-hour, 20-minute production. From tinkering on the piano at age 16 to belting on the anthem “(You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman,” Marinacci delivers a Broadway-quality performance that captures the nuance of King’s fascinating and trailblazing career. She harmonizes beautifully with Crowley, Krug, and Marra for an emotional rendition of “You’ve Got a Friend.” Brooks also shines vocally both in harmony and as a soloist. His plight for solitude in King’s “Up On The Roof” is a show highlight. “Up On The Roof” also highlights Chuck Ziegler’s creative set design. A permanent two-story unit frames the stage and allows for fluid transitions, subplots, and dimensional performances. A television screen affixed to the top of the proscenium also projects historic clips of artists such as The Drifters, The Shirelles, and Little Eva performing King’s/Goffin’s and Weil’s/Mann’s classic hits. The screen is also used to show a montage of King over the years as Marinacci remains perched upon her piano bench belting out some of King’s classics from her landmark 1971 album, Tapestry.
The company of Beautiful delivers a triumphant performance that provides space for King’s legacy to shine bright. Many of the iconic numbers prompted visceral reactions from audience members. Led by a fierce Marinacci, Beautiful reminds us of the power of songs that express our feelings yet say them simply and beautifully.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, at the Strand Theater in Zelienople, has rremaining performances June 12 (SOLD OUT), 13, 14 and 15, 2025. For times and tickets visit: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/1199255
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