Theatre in Review: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (Stephen Sondheim Theatre)

	Jessie Mueller, Anika Larsen, Jake Epstein, Jarrod Spector. Photo: Joan Marcus

The really beautiful thing about the new show at the Sondheim is Jessie Mueller. Ever since she broke out of the revival of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, enlivening that deeply misguided production as a sassy '40s-era jazz songbird, she has gone from show to show, reinventing herself with remarkable dexterity. She demonstrated a remarkable range as a pensive Cinderella in Into the Woods at the Delacorte and trailing clouds of intrigue as a slinky Ceylonese enigma in The Mystery of Edwin Drood at the Roundabout. In Beautiful, about the salad days of singer-songwriter Carole King, she manages multiple transformations, morphing from spunky Brooklyn teenager to harried working mother and troubled wife, finally turning into the earth goddess diva pictured on the cover of Tapestry, the blockbuster album that secured King's place in the pop music firmament.

In addition to creating a surprisingly convincing character out of the most meager of material -- we'll get to that in a minute -- she nails the style of King's vocals, that nasal force of nature that can drive a solid backbeat before suddenly turning rich with regret. When the lights come up on Mueller, seated at a piano, leaning into the supremely melancholy ballad "So Far Away," the impersonation is, simply put, breathtaking. Based on what we've seen so far, there is very little that the lady can't do, and if we're lucky, she'll stick around for a season or ten, letting us get to know her better.

If she does, she might get a vehicle worthy of her talents. Beautiful isn't a terrible show, but it is a signal demonstration of the difficulties posed by the bio-musical genre. On the scale of achievement, it is less incisive than Jersey Boys, but miles above the embarrassingly self-administered hagiography that is Motown. (We'll draw a veil over Baby It's You!, about The Shirelles and their manager, Florence Greenberg, which lasted about as long as a typical 45 rpm recording.) Beautiful focuses roughly on the years 1958 - 70, tracing King's early success grinding out American Bandstand-worthy hits for the likes of The Drifters and The Shirelles; her troubled marriage to her collaborator Gerry Goffin; and her post-divorce emergence as a star in her own right. Structurally, it is your typical backstage weepie -- youthful ambition, surprise success, risky romance, and heartbreak followed by sadder-but-wiser stardom; it's Funny Girl, set to a beat you can dance to.

The first-night press jumped all over Douglas McGrath's book, calling it thin, superficial, and clichéd. All true, but really, what were the chances it might be otherwise? With most of its principal characters still living and with King's daughter, Sherry Kondor, acting as executive producer, it was never likely that Beautiful was going to be a trenchant analysis of King and Goffin's marriage. Indeed, the libretto sticks pretty much to the line put forth in King's memoir, A Natural Woman -- that they married too young and wanted different things out of life, with Goffin's personal demons (he was eventually diagnosed as bipolar, and was subjected to electroshock therapy) providing the coup de grâce to their life together. This is plausible as far as it goes, but we're left with a portrait of King as a saintly homebody, keeping a light burning in the window while Goffin runs amok in nightclubs, chasing girls and abusing substances. Goffin ends up the undisputed villain of the piece; Beautiful never stops to consider whether King might have contributed to her own unhappiness. (King has famously never seen Beautiful; she left an early reading at the midway point, having found even this rather lazy, one-note account to be too upsetting.)

In any case, the first act of Beautiful is divided against itself, trying to be both an engaging narrative and a hit parade of King-Goffin favorites. There's no time to explore why this nice girl was attracted to this obviously troubled young man, why they worked together so fruitfully for so long, or what part her own ambitions may have played in scuttling her dream of family life. Instead, most of the act consists of either King or Goffin announcing that a new song has been finished, cueing a performance of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "The Loco-Motion," and "Up on the Roof." They're easy on the ears, to be sure, and there's the added pleasure of "On Broadway" and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who, in old-fashioned musical comedy tradition, are the comic-relief lovers, trading wisecracks between kisses. They don't provide much relief: We get endless gags about Mann's hypochondria and Weil's need for independence, none of which amount to anything. It's lucky that Jake Epstein (Goffin), Jarrod Spector (Mann), and Anika Larsen (Weil) are such appealing performers that even the weakest scenes in Beautiful are easy to take, also thanks to the light touch of director Marc Bruni. There are also nice contributions from Jeb Brown as producer Don Kirshner and Liz Larsen as Carole's kvetching mother.

Beautiful begins to make an emotional claim on the audience in Act II as King's marriage falls apart and the songs begin to comment on the action of the play. A recording session for the song "Chains" alludes to Goffin's frustration with married life, and a cover of "Pleasant Valley Sunday" crystallizes his dissatisfaction with life in the suburbs, to say nothing of the fact that, at the moment that the counterculture is about to explode, he is writing lyrics for the Monkees. And when Mueller takes over with renditions of "It's Too Late," "Beautiful," "I Feel the Earth Move," and "A Natural Woman," the show becomes, however temporarily, a blissful experience. These songs haven't aged a day in 40-plus years, and, heard in the context of King's personal troubles, they become even more affecting.

In all other respects, Beautiful is thoroughly professional, starting with Josh Prince's musical staging, which captures the synchronized moves so popular with music groups of the '60s. Derek McLane's scenery, taking a cue from the script, depicts life at 1650 Broadway, where King and her friends worked, as a musical factory, creating a two-level warren of offices backed by a wall consisting of the kinds of acoustical treatments found in recording studios. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting is, typically for him, free of easy glitz and gimmicks, instead providing the kind of fine detail one sees more often in straight plays. Alejo Vietti's costumes show a solid grasp of changing styles across the decade; you can practically identify the year based on the wigs worn by Mueller and Larsen, designed by Charles G. LaPointe. Brian Ronan's sound design preserves the big sound of the era's pop hits, while guaranteeing their intelligibility.

Anyway, if Beautiful is only occasionally the powerful musical drama it might have been, you can take comfort in Jessie Mueller, who is the most skilled musical theatre actress to come our way since Kelli O'Hara. She's headed straight for the top. --David Barbour