ALT brings singer-songwriter Carole King to life with 'Beautiful'

Feel the earth move as Albuquerque Little Theatre brings “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” to its stage.

The production features some of King’s most beloved songs, including “So Far Away,” “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “Natural Woman” and “You’ve Got a Friend,” while tracing the singer’s evolution from a shy 16-year-old songwriter to a Grammy-winning solo artist.

“Beautiful” also follows King’s rocky relationship with her musical collaborator and first husband, Gerry Goffin, as well as her many collaborations with Black artists during the Civil Rights era.

Director Celena Cox said she took a “history nerd” approach to the script, doing extensive research to ensure that her production would “honor the music” and portray the real-life musicians as accurately as possible.

“What was important to me was honoring all of the stories that are being told. Because it isn’t just Carole’s story. She’s the story we’re focusing on, but there’s also Gerry’s story. He struggles with mental illness and substance abuse throughout the show,” Cox said. “And then there’s the stories of The Drifters and The Shirelles and Little Eva. The Shirelles aren’t as well known as The Supremes, and The Drifters aren’t as well known as The Temptations, who became very popular in the later ’60s and early-’70s. But these are the acts that set the groundwork for those groups.”

One of the things that surprised Cox most in her research was learning “just how shy of a person Carole really is at heart.”

“She didn’t want to be a solo act. She just wanted to raise her kids in the suburbs and write her music. She’s such an icon of rock now that it’s hard to square that, but what she really wanted, more than anything, was a quiet, sedate life,” Cox said. “The actress Anna Wilson has been doing a really beautiful job exploring that side of Carole, and that side of herself, as well.”

In addition to directing, Cox is an experienced intimacy coordinator, which she said helped in this production.

“I did chemistry building between her (Wilson) and Jason Roman, who’s my Gerry Goffin, and they both really leaned into it. They have not held themselves back at all,” she said.

Although the relationship between King and Goffin was often “really difficult,” Cox said she didn’t want Goffin to come off as a one-dimensional villain in the story of King’s life.

“Jason’s sensitivity and the thoroughness that he’s approaching Gerry Goffin’s mental illness in the show is really beautiful,” Cox said.

The set of “Beautiful” is a two-level structure that’s meant to evoke New York City’s Brill Building, which was considered the center of the American music industry in the 1960s. For Cox, the set becomes a character in its own right.

“It takes up the entire stage,” Cox said. “We wanted that sense of everything being close and chaotic and full, to create this sense that you’re in Manhattan with these artists.”

Cox has directed many musicals and operas over the years, and she has developed some effective techniques for helping singers connect emotionally with the music.

“My voice teacher in grad school made us monologue all of our songs before we could perform them as singers,” Cox said. “That really forces a singer to connect with the text, and to connect with the emotional journey of the text – to put the music aside for a minute and just focus on lyrics. That’s something that I talked about with my actors, and that we worked on.”

“That’s the first step. The second step is really thinking about the music that’s being played. Sometimes it can feel like, oh, we’re just repeating the same phrase over and over just because they needed to fill time. But, no, there’s always a reason to repeat a phrase. There’s always a reason for an embellishment,” Cox said. “Finding those reasons in the context of the music, and in the context of the emotional journey of the song, is really important.”

ALT brings singer-songwriter Carole King to life with 'Beautiful'