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Beautiful—the Carole King Musical! 
It might have taken four guys from Belleville, NJ, to  make Jersey Boys but only one woman from Brooklyn for Beautiful—the Carole King Musical! 
Sarah Bockel as Carole King opens the show (where it will also end) sitting at the piano for her debut concert at Carnegie Hall.  The story skips back and forth between her home in Brooklyn to her job in Manhattan to her dream house in the suburbs to a recording studio in Los Angeles, with  a fine cast of characters from Dylan S. Wallach who plays her first husband Gerry Goffin, to their best and most competative song writing friends —Alison Whitehurst as Cynthia Weil and Jacob Heimer as Barry Mann.  All this under the watchful eyes of James Clow as Don Kirshner and Suzanne Grodner as Carole’s  mother Genie Klein.  
 This  jukebox musical/broadway hits all the right nostalgic spots. Against eye-popping lights, the  multi-talented company of singer-dancers  move and grove as  the Drifters, The Shirelles, and the Righteous Brothers.
And yes, Carole did date Neil Sedeka in high school and Little Eva was her and Gerry’s babysitter for their kids. Gerry’s other woman, Janelle Woods, is a composite fictional character.

Beautiful—the Carole King Musicale is a treasury of vibrant sounds of over 50 years from a most gifted musician.  It’s one show that  like her recordings,  that  you might want to hear it all again.

AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE, WASHINGTON DC, TO DECEMBER 30, 2018

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