Perspectives on BEAUTIFUL - THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL

First aired: May 10, 2014.
Theater Talk focuses on Broadway's Beautiful - The Carole King Musical. First up, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, the husband/wife songwriting team whose early careers in the Sixties are also portrayed in this new show, join co-hosts Michael Riedel and Susan Haskins at the piano to discuss how they came together to write some of the great standards of pop music, a few of which Mann then performs. Next, actress Jessie Mueller discusses playing songwriter Carole King in one of the great performances of the season.

[@annacampbell3809]

OMG Jessie: "In all her hair and radiance" XD I'm dying!

[@DamienSlattery68]

This was an excellent episode.

[@jeannestraussjs]

That was Awesome♡♡♡

[@cynthiamoore8591]

Carole King is amazing.

[@cbranalli]

19:39 Michael Riedel wonders why Jessie Mueller doesn't seem to need to give a classic Big-Brassy-Ethel-Merman-type Broadway Musical performance - as is usually required to engage the audience emotionally. the answer to his question - in my opinion - is perfectly obvious - namely - this is *no classic Broadway Musical !* the Ethel Mermans of old-school Broadway were in the business of delivering (quasi-operatic) theater-idiom songs to a (quasi-operatic) theater audience - songs which would (hopefully) migrate into the popular idiom - if and when they were covered by popular artists - ie the classic Broadway-to-Pop trajectory. this performance - by contrast - is made up of songs on a diametrically opposed - Popular-to-Broadway - trajectory. these songs already come pre-packaged - as it were - in the audience's preferred (popular) idiom - the performers merely immersing the audience in the nostalgia and backstory of music known and loved for decades - no operatic bombast required or desired - thank you very much.