Musical Review - Beautiful: The Carole King Musical

About the show:

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical is a jukebox musical with a book by Douglas McGrath that tells the story of the early life and career of Carole King, using songs that she wrote, often together with Gerry Goffin, and other contemporary songs by Barry Mann, Cynthia Weil, Phil Spector and others.

The original production of Beautiful received its world premiere at the Curran Theatre, San Francisco, in October 2013, with direction by Marc Bruni and choreography by Josh Prince, and starring Jessie Mueller and Jake Epstein as Carole King and Gerry Goffin, respectively. It made its Broadway debut at the Stephen Sondheim Theatre in January 2014. A West End production starring Katie Brayben as Carole began in February 2015. A U.S. tour launched in September 2015.

More information on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beautiful:_The_Carole_King_Musical

My opinion: 

I'd like to start this musical review with a question I got from the woman sitting next to me during the show: "Do you even know these songs, you look so young?!"

Well my answer: "Yes, I do! I love music, I love musical theatre and these songs are wonderful."

And now, before I properly start talking about the show, I have to say one more thing. When it got dark and the music dtarted I got really emotional. I had to think back to Chess, I was on stage just about 2 weeks ago and the moment before the dhow starts is always exciting. It all reminded me of my own experience and made me miss it again.

Beautiful tells the story of Carole King, her journey into writing music and becoming a singer. On the way we meet her husband Gerry Goffin and also another composer's couple: Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. They write songs for different groups, always trying to become the new number one hit. There are different ensembles performing the songs and then there is also plenty of storyline about their lives. The marriage of Carole and Gerry plays a big role.

The songs of this musical are actually what makes it so great! The music is amazing!!! I had difficulties warming up to Cassidy Janson, who played Carole, she is a fab actress and that really came across. Her singing kind of bothered me and I never that I would say that about someone on the west end. She pressed too much for me and it had a "out of the nose sound". She sounded good in the high passages, using "kopfstimme". She might be a belter and yes the nose thing could come from the american accent, but I just didn't like it.
The guy playing Gerry was cute and had a lovely voice.
The ones I adored and loved were Lorna Want and Ian McIntosh, who portrayed Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. They had great chemistry on stage, did a fab job acting wise and had wonderful voices.

All the ensemble numbers were great as well. The show has some funny elements, which is really refreshing and I even had to cry when they sang "You've Got a Friend", it's also one of my fave songs ever.

Beautiful is definitely a show worth seeing, there are different kinds of music styles, funny moments and a lot of emotions!!!

Sky’s Musical Corner – Reflection on CHESS

If you have read the performance post on Tuesday you know that CHESS is over and yes I’m still sad. It’s like you fall into a little hole, not knowing what to do with your life besides work. Of course that’s not true, because I read and blog and do other things, but during the days right after the derniere I always feel a bit melancholic.

CHESS was an amazing experience! I enjoyed every minute of it, even though it was exhausting at times, especially the get in week. Read about it HERE.

I fell in love with the music of the musical once more and I still can’t believe I was lucky enough to sing some of them and perform them on stage. It was once again time to learn all these movements and lyrics by heart and it wasn’t a challenge for me at all. I guess you get used to it and I would advise anyone to just sing and go through the song as often as you can and then suddenly it’s there.

Working with the cast has been an absolute pleasure, there are some wonderful people I got to know and rehearsals have been so much fun. Spending time with them backstage and after the show is just fab, I will miss them!

The audience has been great and I loved hearing all the feedback from friends, colleagues, family and people I don’t even know. When you hear thing like “Next sop London” or “it was like a broadway” show it seems surreal, but at the same time we all felt so honoured.

For this production I was responsible for social media, especially Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is not a big thing in Switzerland, unless someone has a blog or does photography. I started posting rehearsal pictures, promoted our website, articles and much more. At one point one of the cast members came up to help me and we created the section HUMANS of CHESS, where we interviewed the cast members and introduced them day after day on Facebook. In between there were the other posts as well. It got to a point, where I got a bit fed up with the whole thing though. Our Chess Facebook site has less like than our theatre group’s facebook site, but the Chess site, got many more views, which was a good sign for me, people didn’t see it that way though. They thing because I have 4000 twitter followers or because they share everything on their Facebook site, people here should do the same. It took me a long time to get that many followers and I’m sorry if I’m not spaming my friends with a cast member everyday. I agree that the feature was a great idea, but it got a bit one-sided towards the end and my other posts were way more successful. All in all, I think this was the hardest part of the production for me, because nobody sees the work you actually do and working with people who have a different opinion is not always easy. All in all I can say that I learned a lot through this experience.

I don’t want to let this spoil the whole thing though. CHESS was such a wonderful production and experience and I wouldn’t want to miss it for the world. 

Sky’s Musical Corner – Backstage during CHESS

Being backstage of a show is always great fun and of course it also was this time.

It all started when we arrived at the theatre, time for make-up and warm-ups. We did our make-up at home, because we live so close to the theatre.

Everyone is getting ready, getting into their costumes and maybe eating something in between. After the warm-up and the sound check it’s soon time for the performance and of course it gets exciting at this point. We are gathered in the wings of the stage, ready to go on to the stage. This time we were able to wait on stage, because the curtains were in. And then there is the moment when the screen lifts and it all starts.

The moments when you’re actually not on stage or so much fun. Being backstage, hanging out with the cast is so funny. I remember a moment during sound of music, where we stood in the wings and actually had a bet going on how long Maria and Captain VonTrapp would kiss, so we always timed it on our phones. It’s moments like this that make the experience of being part of a production like this even more special.

Now, here are my favourite moments of CHESS backstage:

Goofing around on stage before the sound check, with Dani (our Freddy), Lilian (one of our dancers), Jennifer (we started together in the group), Dai (our Anatoly, my mum and some others. It’s the jokes about hair or about other thing that make you feel relaxed.

Being in the wings and backstage means getting to watch the show from there. I tried to see the show from every possible angle, there is so much to see. We sing as well, of course not loud, we just move our lips and over do the acting, I think I know all the songs by heart now. During the rocky songs it’s just great to dance backstage, we always have funny choreographies going on.

Getting changed in the dressing room is actually my least favourite part. First of all, there are too many people in the dressing room and having a microphone makes the changing a bit tricky. We still had some funny moments then. One evening we were talking about teaching and then one ask how many teachers there are in the room, it was actually more then half, we couldn’t stop laughing.

So I love hanging around in the wings or behind the stage, I even got myself some jobs of helping with costume changes. In that way nobody can say I’m not allowed backstage. Everyone seems to have their place behind the stage and it works.

When I’m not behind the stage, I’m in the kitchen right next to it, where there is coffee and food, especially cookies. Jennifer had to hide them, because they were gone so fast. It’s a great space to talk to people and find out more about them, we talk about anything and it’s great fun.

The sound check is funny, because people sing all kinds of songs, but some of them are just showing off, which is not fun. They think they are the best and they have to share it with everyone. The sound check is not a competition, really!

Being backstage also permits you to really listen to the singing and the orchestra, so you do realise every single mistake and just hope the audience doesn’t hear it.

We had video projects this time, you can’t see everything from the wings, but it’s still very impressive. We even found some mistakes on them. Saturday spelt like this: Sataurday.

In one song I’m the flower girl. I have to quickly throw over a scarf and get my flowers, they always get caught in my scarf somehow though. I swear that during every performance part of the flowers just landed on the floor or in caught in the scarf.

Watching the drunken Russians during Soviet Machine is the funniest thing ever! I always watching someone else every night and the way the act and sing was just hilarious!!!

I could go on here, but then we would be here for a really long time! Let me just say this: the backstage experience of a musical is full of surprises and fun.