By Alex Biese
OCEAN TOWNSHIP – Carole King’s songs have provided the soundtrack to countless lives. What’s so canny about “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” is that it uses these same songs to tell the story of King’s own life.
The Tony-winning hit is on stage through April 6 at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center in the Deal Park section of Ocean Township under the direction and choreography of Luis Salgado.
King’s is a story so rich, so intertwined with the very fabric of American popular culture, that if it weren’t true, someone would have to write it. The show’s book by Douglas McGrath follows King from a teenage aspiring songwriter from Brooklyn in 1958 through her relationship with lyricist Gerry Goffin that resulted in dozens of hit singles, a marriage and a pair of daughters, the dissolution of that marriage and King’s emergence as an iconic singer/songwriter with the release of the Grammy-winning “Tapestry” LP in 1971.
Kyra Kennedy, of the first national tour of “Waitress,” stars as King, reprising the role following her turn at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn. Kennedy’s work feels lived-in and natural. She lets viewers in on King’s personal and professional evolution and has at least one show-stopping number in each act: depicting the creation of “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” in Act One and, a few years later in Act Two, the unveiling of “It’s Too Late.”
Kennedy is surrounded by a terrific supporting cast. Aidan C. Cole delivers in the complex role of Goffin, Seth Eliser and Allie Siebold are steadily charming as fellow songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and Reed Campbell steals many a scene as New York music scene impresario Don Kirshner.
The creative team does top-shelf work, with costume designer Johanna Pan and wig designer Destinee Steele in particular helping to subtly and effectively convey the passage of time and changing culture through aesthetic choices that feel grounded and authentic.
Throughout it all, there’s the music, more than a decades’ worth of hits, that score the action wonderfully. For example, when Goffin pulls a writing all-nighter, the results awaiting King the next morning are, appropriately, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow.” And when King and Goffin move out to the suburbs – namely West Orange – in an attempt to save their marriage, there’s “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” followed not so subtly by Mann unveiling his and Weil’s new song, “We Gotta Get Out of This Place.”
It’s a jukebox musical, telling the story of a woman responsible for filling many a jukebox.
Ultimately, 13 years isn’t a terribly long time, but McGrath’s book and Salgado’s smart direction drive home just how important those years were to King and to the country as a whole. King started as someone who worked to support others, her writing providing hits to artists from The Shirelles (“Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” 1961) to The Drifters (“Up On The Roof,” 1962) to The Monkees (“Pleasant Valley Sunday,” 1967).
Likewise, as “Beautiful” makes clear, starting in her late teens and through her 20s King’s personal life was largely defined by her relationship to Goffin. But, as King strikes out on her own, it’s just in time for her life and career to sync up with the booming West Coast troubadour scene of the early 1970s she soon found herself a cornerstone of.
If you take away the two Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions, the Grammys and the decades of critical and audience acclaim, how many people share King’s story? She married young, restarted her life as a single mother and, as they say, found herself. It’s a journey that King shared with millions in songs like “So Far Away,” “You’ve Got a Friend” and “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” and has been shared all over again on countless world stages in the decade-plus since “Beautiful” opened on Broadway in 2014.
It’s all summed up in a poignant exchange between King and Nick, a fellow musician, in “Beautiful”: “Who wants to hear a normal person sing?” King asks, to which Nick replies, “Other normal people.”
“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” runs through April 6 at the Axelrod Performing Arts Center, 100 Grant Ave., Ocean Township. For tickets, $52 to $74 for adults and $32 for students, and more information, visit axelrodartscenter.com.
The article originally appeared in the March 20 – 26, 2025 print edition of The Two River Times.
