By SHARON EBERSON
Pittsburgh CLO’s 80th summer season opener, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, rides the unstoppable wave of musical standards by one of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, according to a recent New York Times poll, in a production as finely tuned as any National Tour, especially in its sparkling Carole.
For Beautiful to get it right, you have to start with a Carole you believe in, and Pittsburgh CLO gets it very right with Kyra Kennedy, supported by an accomplished troupe of mostly local performers and musicians.
From the moment Kennedy begins to sing, “So far away …” to open the show now at the Benedum Center, we can settle into the distinctive Carole King cadence, and know we are in good hands. It’s a role Kennedy has played before to raves, and she has the singer-songwriter-storyteller down to a science, without sacrificing an ounce of emotional depth.
of “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” (Image: Archie Carpenter)
In the Tony-nominated book by Douglas McGrath, the music fits the narrative of King’s life with Gerry Goffin (Dylan S. Wallach). It is told in flashback, from Carole’s 1971, post-Tapestry Carnegie Hall concert, then from age 16 forward. That’s how old she was when she sold her first song and met her soon-to-be husband and songwriting partner, Goffin. By age 28, she was a divorced mother of two, and had produced a portfolio for the ages.
All the people in Carole’s orbit live large loud lives, from her mother to her boss to her best friends. She is the quiet in the storm, except when it comes to her music.
When her Brooklyn-accented, cigarette-smoking single mother (laughter magnet Christine Laitta) delivers the key line, “Girls aren’t songwriters. They’re teachers!,” Carole doesn’t flinch, and sets off on her journey to stardom.
At Queens College, freshman Carole, who had skipped two grades, meets handsome junior Gerry Goffin, and they quickly become a writing and romantic team, producing hit after hit — Some Kind of Wonderful, Up on The Roof, Will You Love Me Tomorrow and The Loco-Motion. It is striking to witness a white teenager writing for some of the great Black groups of the 1960s, including The Drifters and The Shirelles, realized onstage by a typically talented Pittsburgh CLO summer ensemble, directed and choreographed by Dan Knechtges. Along with the backup dancers’ moves, it seems no sequin or chiffon or metallic fabric was spared in resurrecting the look of those groups that gave rise to the girl and boy bands of today.
A standout number for the ensemble is The Loco-Motion, a 1962 hit for Little Eva (Bree S. Taylor), emerging from her role as the King-Goffin babysitter.
The lifetime lived in the dozen years represented by the story includes Goffin’s mental health issues, his distress as a tortured artist and would-be playwright, and his affairs with singers Janelle Woods (Cadence Gates), who introduced the song “One Fine Day,” and Marilyn Wald (Marina Brazendale).
As Goffin, Wallach, a Carnegie Mellon alum who played the role during Beautiful’s National Tour, is obviously not cut out to be a young father and husband. He tries at first, “doing the right thing” when Carole becomes pregnant at 16. Wallach’s bad-boy charisma makes it easy to fall in and out of love with him as an audience, even as the Carole of the musical never wavers. When finally she sings, “It’s too late / Though we really did try to make it,” you can’t help but be squarely in her corner.
Besides the couple at its core, Beautiful gives us a bit of a candy-coated insight into the Manhattan music factory at 1650 Broadway (not the famed Brill Building, but very close), with recording guru Don Kirshner (J. Alex Noble) as a savvy and benevolent business man, who always knows what’s trending.
Rivals and close friends are the songwriting team of composer/hypochondriac Barry Mann (Barrett Riggins) and lyricist/feminist Cynthia Weil (Lee Harrington), the real-life writers of songs such as “On Broadway,” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling.” Noble, Harrington and Riggins keep things light, as the King-Goffin mood steadily darkens.
There are other hands in the music of the day, of course, and Phil Specter gets a mention, but this is Carole King’s story, and these are the main players, along with Laitta’s cynical Genie Klein.
Young Carole Klein, nee King, is shown as adept at playing Bach as she was writing doo-wop, determined and undeterred in music, understated in life, and that’s the King who Kennedy conveys throughout.
The dozen musicians of the Pittsburgh CLO orchestra, led by music director Catie Brown, with Brown and Camille Villalpando Rolla on keyboards, deliver a rich accompaniment to both the group numbers, and backing Kennedy on an 11th-hour rendition of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.”
King wrote that song, about being a woman in love, with Goffin. In the show, she is hesitant about including it on “Tapestry” — no mention that it had been a hit for Aretha Franklin, but in context, and with Kennedy’s soulful vocals, it’s a stunner.
The 12 years covered in Beautiful are not only a reminder of Carole King’s contribution to the American Pop/Rock Songbook, but of a talent that has defied the passage of time. She wrote songs that span generations, from Murphy Brown’s anthem of motherhood to The Gilmore Girls theme, and swept the major categories at the 1972 Grammy Awards.
How beautiful, indeed, to experience those songs placed in the context of their times, from the songwriting “factory” of the mid-1960s, when vinyl and radio ruled, to King’s emergence as a superstar singer-songwriter.
Don’t run for the Benedum exits on this one, because the full cast keeps going, along with the opening night crowd that joined in for a rousing “I Feel the Earth Move.”
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Beautiful, The Carole King Musical is at the Benedum Center, Downtown, through June 28, 2026. Tickets and “More Than A Show” events: https://www.pittsburghclo.org/shows/beautiful-the-carole-king-musical1
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