Jeff and Mary Kaye got us tickets to Geva’s “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” Just last week I had noticed new, brightly colored tables (with umbrellas) and chairs scattered around Washington Square Park so I suggested we meet there before the play and have dinner in the park. Peggi and I prepared sandwiches with the ingredients we had ordered from La Tienda and we made a salad from our garden greens. We brought along a bottle of Spanish Rioja and some plastic cups. Monica, next door, let us borrow four plastic plates. Mary Kaye made sorbet with strawberries from their garden. It was somewhere near ninety degrees downtown but the meal was dreamy.
“Beautiful” premiered in San Francisco in 2013 and made its Broadway debut in 2014. It has been produced around the world since and Sony just announced a biopic adaptation starring Daisy Edgar-Jones. The play is set mostly in the Brill Building in NYC, a song factory, where writers churned out hit after hit up until Dylan and rock groups started writing their own. And the story is told through two song writing couples who worked there, Carole King and Gerry Goffin and Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil.
We get to hear “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “He’s Sure the Boy I Love,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Up on the Roof,” “On Broadway,” “The Loco-Motion,” “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” “One Fine Da,” and “Walking in the Rain,” all of which were written by these couples. Of course Carol King goes solo at the end but they mercifully keep that period brief and the play finishes with “I Feel the Earth Move.” The performers, the band and the production were as good as the songs!
In the program the playwright, Douglas McGrath, talks about meeting the four songwriters to discuss his idea-“a musical about kids chasing out the old guard so they could create the new sound of rock and roll. Carole’s face lit up. I knew I had nailed it. She leaned forward to share her reaction. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is completely wrong!’ ‘What?’ I said, almost losing my balance even though I was seated. ‘We idolized Gershwin and Porter and Kem and Berlin,’ she explained. ‘We studied their music’ -Cynthia piped in, ‘I wanted to be Cole Porter.'”
The title of the play comes from a Carole King quote, “You know what’s so funny about life?” Sometimes it goes the way you want and sometimes it doesn’t. And sometimes when it doesn’t, you find something beautiful.”
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I was hoping it was good.