Flat Rock – This is an entertaining and insightful musical story about female empowerment and breaking social barriers in a male-dominated business, spiced by much hit music.
King was a groundbreaking recording artist as a female and a singer-songwriter. The pianist is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a performer, and prolific songwriter with then-husband Gerry Goffin. They co-wrote a dozen top ten hits in 1961-66, among about 60 Billboard Hot 100 tunes that others recorded. She wrote the music. Struggling playwright Goffin handled lyrics.
Tapestry of Hits
Amazingly, once King wrote lyrics for her own album, her words were gripping. A full decade after emerging as a prolific songwriter, King wrote and performed Tapestry, one of pop music’s legendary albums. The 1971 album earned King three Grammys in 1972. Tapestry topped the Billboard 200 album chart for 15 straight weeks. That was the longest run for a female artist for 40 years.
King was the first female to win Album of the Year. Tapestry has a classic break-up song in melancholy, flowing Record of the Year “It’s Too Late.” It also features the definitive song about devoted friendship in tender Song of the Year “You’ve Got a Friend,” which earned James Taylor a male vocal Grammy. It also has gentle ballads “So Far Away” and “Beautiful,” rousing “Natural Woman” and punchy show-closer “I Feel the Earth Move.”
Prather sings these hits in a stronger, smoother voice than King had. “I used to hate the sound of my voice,” as “too hoarse,” King told CBS News. In Beautiful, self-doubting King considers herself too ordinary in voice and looks. But she is assured that listeners will relate to her.
Hitmaking Loco-Motion
The show’s crisp renditions of King-Goffin songs include The Drifters’ “Up on the Roof” (1962) and “Some Kind of Wonderful” (‘61), and the Shirelles’ “One Fine Day” (‘63) and chart-topping “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” (‘61). Director Amy Jones cleverly morphs such songs from King-Goffin creation to polished performance by Drifters or Shirelles quartets.
Goffin-King’s number one hits include Bobby Vee’s “Take Good Care of My Baby” in 1961, and “The Loco-Motion” for their housekeeper Eva Boyd (Little Eva) in 1962 then Grand Funk in 1974 (when launching a train-like procession dance).
Even the Beatles (“Chains,” 1963), Byrds (their “Mr. Tambourine Man” version, ’65) and Monkees (“Pleasant Valley Sunday,” ‘67) recorded King-Goffin songs.
“Will You Love Me Tomorrow” foreshadows the Goffin-King divorce in 1968. King remarried two years later. She moved from NYC to Laurel Canyon, Calif. Her career belatedly soared once she recorded her own songs.
Rival Songwriting Duos
The musical’s script follows King from old-fashioned and shy teen songwriter to dynamic solo star. Her mother tells her that “girls don’t write music; they teach it.” King was solely a songwriter when few females recording songs.
King, now 83, was born in 1942 as Carol Joan Klein. She grew up in Brooklyn. At 17, she married Goffin. They soon had two daughters. King kept working. The musical looks at juggling career and home challenges.
Matthew Christian ably portrays Goffin as a selfish, inconsiderate, callous, unhappy, and moody person deserving divorce. Goffin was allegedly bipolar. In “It’s Too Late,” “something inside has died.” It’s his devotion, then her love.
The script shrewdly contrasts King, who welcomes marriage and motherhood, and lyricist Cynthia Weil (Emily Grace Tucker) who fears it. Weil tells her songwriting partner Barry Mann (Conner John Gillooly) that if they marry, she fears Mann will pressure her to be a homemaker and give up her career. Tucker briskly plays brash Weil.
Gillooly is funny as worrisome, sarcastic Mann. Urging Weil to move in, he quips that even if “miserable” they’ll at least have sex. Another clever Beautiful line is how “love is the basis for hate.”
The musical includes Mann-Weil hits such as “On Broadway.”
Scott Treadway plays record producer Don Kirshner. He nurtures. But he connives. He fosters competition between his songwriters King-Goffin and Mann-Weil. He picks “the first one (song) I like” from them. He tells each couple they trail the other two, and face firing.
The original Beautiful earned several Tony Awards, and ran on Broadway in 2014-20.
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical runs through July 5. Tickets are $60-$80. For tickets, check https://purchase.flatrockplayhouse.org/overview/3870.