Beautiful

With a sharp script, some good performances, and great singing, The Helpmann award-winning Carole King musical Beautiful opened last night at QPAC’s Lyric Theatre on the last leg of its Australian tour. Playing like a Warner Bros or MGM bio-pic of the fifties, the exact tone writer Douglas McGrath claimed he was going for, this jukebox musical of King’s hits which include “So Far Away”, “Natural Woman” and “You’ve Got a Friend”, wisely also includes other pop songs of the period by Neil Sedaka, Jerry Lieber, Mike Stoller, Gene Vincent, Bobby Darin and Frankie Lymon, which give the song-stack variety.

Full of funny and sardonic one-liners (not surprising with McGrath a former alumni of TVs Saturday Night Live), King’s life has been white-washed to the extent that none of her dirty laundry is on display. She comes across as almost virginal whereas her husband and writing partner Gerry Goffin is shown to be a serial cheater with his acid addiction alluded to in one line. It’s not the strongest jukebox musical ever written but it is infectiously likeable.

Esther Hannaford is perfect as King. She doesn’t exactly channel the performer’s style, but manages to inflect the songs with King’s intonation. She well and truly deserved her recent Best Actor Helpmann award. Josh Piterman is a believable manic-depressive as Gerry Goffin but gets little chance to show-off his magnificent tenor.

Music theatre virgin Mat Verevis makes an auspicious debut as Barry Mann, one half of the rival pop-song writing team of Mann and Weill. He puts a cheeky spin on the character’s flirting, and totally nails the vocals knocking “We Gotta Get Outa This Place” out of the ballpark. Lucy Maunder, as Cynthia Weill, brought a touch of spunk and a nice brittle attitude to a role that in the 60s could have been written for Our Miss Brooks’ Eve Arden. Mike McLeish impressed as music publisher Don Kirshner and with Jason Arrow sang up a storm as the Righteous Brothers on “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”, while Anne Wood was a formidable presence as King’s mother Genie Klein.

Daniel Edmonds’ band articulates the music-charts with punch, while Josh Prince’s dance moves are executed with precision.

It’s a carbon copy of the Broadway and London original and having seen the London production I found this version superior and far more enjoyable. But it’s Hannaford’s show. She is warm, she is vulnerable, she is magnificent

Peter Pinne

Images: Esther Hannaford (as Carole King) – Photo by Joan Marcus, and Josh Piterman, Mat Verevis, Lucy Maunder and Esther Hannaford as Carole King in Beautiful The Carole King Musical. Photo by Ben Symons.