Photo by Joan Marcus

With a recorded 100% house capacity for the week ending 11th September 2016, it is clear that this bio-musical is showing absolutely no signs of slowing down and it will be feeling the earth move on Broadway for a long time to come!

On 3rd July Carole King played her first concert in the UK for over 25 years, performing the entirety of her classic "Tapestry" album in London's Hyde Park in front of over 65,000 fans. There aren't many albums that have had such a global impact in music history and not many that alone warrant the making of a Broadway musical. Released in 1971 with hits such as "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," "It's Too Late," "You've Got a Friend," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?," "I Feel the Earth Move," and "Beautiful," the album "Tapestry" earned Carole King four Grammy Awards, including "Album of the Year." In the United States alone it has sold over 10 million copies, receiving a 10x platinum certification. Naturally, folks want to learn about how this album came to be and about the woman's life, responsible for it.

The beauty of Beautiful is its simplicity and authenticity. It depicts Carole's life - warts and all. The musical does not shy away from the hardships she endured in her relationship with Gerry Goffin and there is an interesting angle explored in terms of her friendship and song-writing rivalry with Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. This also opens the musical to a wider back catalogue of hits outside of King's own collection, including Weil and Mann's "On Broadway" (performed by The Drifters) and "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" (performed by The Righteous Brothers). Appearances by The Shirelles and Little Eva also add a spice of variety to Act I.

Beautiful, is of course a wonderful showcase for those popular hits, but it is also the show that put Jessie Mueller firmly on the Broadway map as a certified headliner. She went on to pick up the Tony Award for "Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical" in 2014 and I feel that the production benefited as much from her, in terms of establishing its credibility, as Jessie's career did from starring in it.

Having never performed on the Broadway stage together, it will be great to see what sort of chemistry current leading lady Chilina Kennedy and the returning Jake Epstein can muster up together. Let's hope that Happy Days will indeed be here again!

Click here for tickets to Beautiful: The Carole King Musical for performances through to 8 January 2017 at Broadway's Stephen Sondheim Theatre.

- by Tom Millward