ON STAGE
What: Beautiful: The Carole King Musical
Where: Royal Theatre, 805 Broughton St.
When: Friday through Sunday, Jan. 31-Feb. 2
Tickets: $114.75-$125 from the Royal McPherson box office, by phone at 250-386-6121, or online from rmts.bc.ca
Kennedy Caughell has been in the middle of a whirlwind since September, when she stepped into the role of singer-songwriter Carole King in the hit Broadway musical based on the star’s storybook life.
Beautiful: The Carole King Musical stops in Victoria for five hotly anticipated performances beginning Friday, giving local audiences an up-close look at the 2014 hit that has become one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history. That the five performances are nearly sold out says something about the enduring music of King.
“These are songs that were the background of people’s lives for an entire generation,” Caughell said during a recent Beautiful tour stop in Yakima, Washington. “The music she wrote for others, and eventually herself, influenced a lot of pop music through to today. A lot of her songs are still relevant.”
Beautiful, which won two Tony Awards, spends the first act chronicling the personal and professional lives of King, her husband and lyricist partner, Gerry Goffin, and their best friends, songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
It tackles King and Goffin’s divorce in the second act, which soars when the book by Douglas McGrath heads into hit-song territory and the creation of Tapestry, King’s star-making second studio album.
The album remains one of the biggest success stories in music, having sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. It turned King into a household name in 1971 and a symbol of female empowerment, providing Caughell with one of the more complex characters she has ever played.
It also counts as Caughell’s first time playing a real-life character who is still alive. “It is scary,” the Oklahoma-bred, New York-based singer-actor said with a laugh, recalling the first time she met King in person at a Beautiful performance.
“There’s a pressure that I feel to uphold her mantle with truth. It’s my job to pay homage to what she lived through. She definitely went through adversity — from a young age, too. She was a go-getter who succeeded simply because she had the blind confidence of: ‘Why not me?’ ”
King began her career with Goffin writing songs such as Will You Love Me Tomorrow and One Fine Day for others to sing. When she took control of her own career as a solo artist, songs such as I Feel the Earth Move and (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman became signatures among the 118 pop hits she wrote or co-wrote that made it onto the Billboard charts.
Beautiful, with a cast and orchestra of 32 actors and musicians, provides ample evidence of her talent.
Caughell said the audience can often be heard gasping in delight when the hit parade begins. “That bonds the audience together. And then the story, that people may or may not know, they become incredibly invested. When they react, it bonds the audience together with me, so at the end, we are all in it together.”
Beautiful also provides some insight into the person behind the songs, Caughell said. A domestic-abuse survivor, King has become a source of inspiration for several generations of women.
In November, when Taylor Swift was set to accept the artist of the decade award during the 2019 American Music Awards, it was King she asked to present the award.
“The show peeks inside her private life a little bit and you can see the adversity she had to overcome,” Caughell said. “But what I love about Carole King is the courage it took to stand up for injustice. It takes another kind of courage to be able to forgive somebody, and to be kind when someone is mean, without sacrificing your self-respect. Now, when she walks into a room, she lights up the room. It’s almost like she’s from another world of joy.”
