There are two great Jukebox Musicals, Broadway Musicals where old songs are covered with either a new or a biographic story tagged on top. One is “Mamma Mia” which uses the Abba catalog in a romcom about love and paternity. The other is “Jersey Boys”, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons told on stage.
All the others have been more like “Motown” -disastrous cash-ins.
Add “Beautiful”, the story of Carole King’s early career, to the “Motown” list, with a difference: a star making turn by Jessie Mueller as the songwriter herself.The star of the “On A Clear Day You Can See Forever” revival last year Jessie is ready for her close up. Or so I hear. Since Jessie missed Friday night’s performance, all I can tell you is that while stand-in Rebecca LaChance was sweet enough, she couldn’t carry “Beautiful” and having watched it, I doubt very much Jessie can either. The Sondheim, owned by Bank of America, and run by Roundabout Theater, have changed a Broadway tradition where if the star is a no show the audience member can change their ticket for a later date. These guys say you have to call on the day of: you can’t make any future plans after paying a huge price for a lousy seat. This is typical, in the rude unpleasant, inhospitable 2014s where every show begins with a series of threats and unpleasantness and where I myself was forced to delete photographs OF AN EMPTY STAGE BEFORE THE SHOW STARTED. I snuck one any way but how pathetic.
The show wasn’t worth it.
“Beautiful” takes Carole from her home in Brooklyn in 1958, through the writing of first song for Don Kirshner at 1650 Broadway (the Brill Building) through her marriage to lyricist Gerry Goffin, hit songs for Bobby Vee, the Drifters, the Shirelles and others, her divorce from her philandering husband, move to Los Angeles, second solo album Tapestry, and triumphant return to New York with a legendary at Carnegie Hall.
What could go wrong, right?
1. The song performances are indifferent.
2. The book is a train wreck.
Apparently, the writer of the book Douglas McGrath couldn’t figure out how to fill 120 minutes minus at least 60 minutes in music with this story. How is this possible? Any hack on TV can fill hour after hour after hour with Police Procedurals, but McGrath can’t find the story here. It is a dreadful book, attempting to make up for the authors complete disinterest in his material. He pads it out with the story of fellow Brill Building denizens Cynthia Weill and Barry Mann -gifted songwriters no doubt but it is like they made a movie of “Bewitched” and gave half the screen time to the Kravitzs.
Nothing here has the ring of truth, the beautifulness of musical creation: Gerry has a break down and has to go on the roof to quiet his nerves and next thing they’ve written “Up On The Roof”. Yeah, that’s what happens. There isn’t one scene of them working on a song, struggling through the hard toil of creation of absolute masterpieces. The result is, except for an occasional song, a “Some Kind Of Wonderful” after Carole discovers she’s pregnant for instance, none of it has anything remotely close to the spark of the original. I happened top see the Drifters a couple of months ago, and pushing into their 70s, with members dead and replacements in place, you have my word that it was a million times better than the terrible and lame performance we got of “On Broadway” here.
The acting isn’t bad, Anika Larsen as Cynthia Weil, Jarrod Spektor as Barry Mann, Jake Epstein in the thankless task of Gerry Goffin. But I am not convinced at all that the Carole King as shown is the real deal: here is a question, why did she change her name from Klein to King? This was 1960, why didn’t she change her composing identity to Goffin-Goffin? King wasn’t who they say she was . This is the early story of King as told on Wikipedia:
“Born Carol Joan Klein in February 1942 to a Jewish family in Manhattan, her mother was a teacher and her father a firefighter. She grew up in Brooklyn, learning the piano when four years old and in 1950, when eight, appearing on The Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour with a school friend, performing “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake”. While at James Madison High School in the 1950s, Carol Klein changed her name to Carole King, formed a band called the Co-Sines, and made demo records with her friend Paul Simon for $25 a session. Her first official recording was the promotional single “The Right Girl” released by ABC-Paramount in 1958, which she wrote and sang to an arrangement by Don Costa. She attended Queens College, where she met Gerry Goffin, who was to become her song-writing partner. When she was 17, they married in a Jewish ceremony on Long Island in August 1959 after King had become pregnant with her first daughter, Louise. They left college and took daytime jobs, Goffin working as an assistant chemist and King as a secretary, while writing songs together in the evening at an office belonging to Don Kirshner’s Aldon Music at 1650 Broadway opposite the Brill Building.”
Why did McGrath not tell this story? Why have I stumbled into an episode of “the Dick Van Dyke Show” ?
Nothing in “Beautiful” works. Nothing at all. It is terrible and except for her daughter being the producer of this atrocity, I see no reason why Carole King would be associated with it. It is so bad it had me reassesing King, whose career went from 1958 – 1971, was hit and miss for another coupla years and has done nothing in decades.
I bet the negotiating with Sony/ATV Publishing was much more fun.
Grade: C-