Based on King's life and music, Beautiful will first play a Sept. 24-Oct. 20 out-of-town premiere engagement at San Francisco's Curran Theatre. A Broadway run, scheduled to officially open Jan. 12, 2014, will follow.
Paul Blake and Sony/ATV Music Publishing are producing the musical that features a book by Academy Award nominee Douglas McGrath, who collaborated with Woody Allen on the screenplay for "Bullets Over Broadway." He also penned "Infamous" and "Emma."
Marc Bruni (Pipe Dream, Ordinary Days, Old Jews Telling Jokes) will stage the production with choreography by Josh Prince and musical direction by Jason Howland.
Tony Award nominee Jessie Mueller (Mystery of Edwin Drood, On a Clear Day, Nice Work If You Can Get It) will star as King. Set to appear as her Brill Building collaborators are Jake Epstein ("Degrassi," Spider-Man) as Gerry Goffin, Anika Larsen (Xanadu, Avenue Q) as Cynthia Weil and Jarrod Spector (Jersey Boys) as Barry Mann. The musical's score comprises songs King penned with Goffin, Mann and Weil.
Principal casting also includes Jeb Brown as producer/publisher Don Kirshner and Liz Larsen as King's mother, Genie Klein. The ensemble will feature Ashley Blanchet, E. Clayton Cornelious, Joshua Davis, Alysha Deslorieux, Kevin Duda, Carly Hughes, Sara King, Rebecca LaChance, Douglas Lyons, Chris Peluso, Gabrielle Reid, Arbender Robinson, Rashidra Scott, Sara Shepard, Antoine L. Smith and Melvin Tunstall.
The complete creative team includes Derek McLane (set design), Alejo Vietti (costume design), Peter Kaczorowski (lighting design), Brian Ronan (sound design), Charles G. LaPointe (wig and hair design), Steve Sidwell (orchestrations and music arrangements), Jason Howland (music supervision) and John Miller (music coordination).
"What's so great about this for me is that musicals were a major influence on my songwriting. In fact, when Gerry and I first met, we made a bargain that I would write music for the Broadway show he wanted to write if he wrote lyrics for my rock 'n roll songs. The songs took off, and the show idea never came to fruition. Now that our songs have merged with a Broadway show, we've come full circle," King said in a previous statement.
Here's how the creators bill the musical: "Long before she was Carole King, chart-topping music legend, she was Carol Klein, Brooklyn girl with passion and chutzpah. She fought her way into the record business as a teenager and, by the time she reached her twenties, had the husband of her dreams and a flourishing career writing hits for the biggest acts in rock 'n' roll. But it wasn't until her personal life began to crack that she finally managed to find her true voice. Beautiful tells the inspiring true story of King's remarkable rise to stardom, from being part of a hit songwriting team with her husband Gerry Goffin, to her relationship with fellow writers and best friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, to becoming one of the most successful solo acts in popular music history. Along the way, she made more than beautiful music, she wrote the soundtrack to a generation."
Visit Telecharge.com for tickets to Beautiful on Broadway. For tickets to the San Francisco engagement, click here.
Visit beautifulonbroadway.com.
