BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL

BOOK BY DOUGLAS MCGRATH

WORDS AND MUSIC BY GERRY GOFFIN & CARLE KING, BARRY MANN & CYNTHIA WEIL

ASOLO REP, SARASOTA FLORIDA

2024

Directed by Shelley Butler

Music Direction by Angela Steiner

Choreographed by Banji Aborisade

Set Design: Reid Thompson

Costume Design: Alejo Vietti

Lighting Design: Alan Edwards

Sound Design: Alex Neumann

Hair and Wig Design: Roxann DeLuna

Photographs: Alan Edwards, Reid Thompson and Adrian Van Stee

Actors: Devin Archer, Aja SImone Baitey, Emma Flynn Bespolka, Landry Champlin, Cornelius Davis, Matt Dengler, Mathew Bryan Feld, Melvin Gray Jr, Maya Jacobson, Kianna Kelly-Futch, Julia Knitel, Torrey Linder, AJ Lockhart, Anne L. Nathan, Alyssa Enita Stanford, Andy Tighe, Ryan Vona, Tiana Willams

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Douglas McGrath’s musical biography of the life of songwriter and singer Carole King starts and ends during King’s iconic 1971 concert in this venue; and charts her life and remarkable career through a steady parade of pop hits penned by King and her partner Gerry Goffin, and by fellow songwrighting couple Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. For a scenic designer it is a relentless series of swift transitions from location to location and from book scene to musical number. Asolo Rep’s Mertz theater, a historic Scottish jewel-box theater transposed to a modern Florida building, was an excellent venue for this challenging assignment. The modern stage house, with updated fly systems, ample backstage storage and automation capabilities, as well as Asolo’s excellent technical expertise, strong scenic shop, and experienced backstage crew meant we were able to achieve an ambitious design. Knowing how swift the transitions needed to be, Director Shelley Butler and I started with a portal system. Upstage was a series of stairstepping platforms, leading to a back wall with hidden sliding doors - all with a subtle curve, mirroring the curved elements of the theater and of the cuved back wall of Carnegie Hall. This lower portion of this back wall could fly out to reveal a cyc and additional flown elements. Furniture items, freestanding doors and small scenic units entered and exited stage via an automated pallet system, which the hardworking crew was endlessly changing over backstage. We also took full advantage of the fly system; packing the pipes with scenic units that flew in and out. This allowed for fast and clean filmic transitions, allowing director and choreographer to keep focus on the performers and the storytelling. King’s iconic album - celebrated by the Carnegie concert - was called Tapestry; and I was inspired by her metaphors in this song “My life has been a tapestry/Of rich and royal hue/An everlasting vision/Of the ever-changing view/A wond'rous woven magic/In bits of blue and gold/A tapestry to feel and see/Impossible to hold.” This investigation led eventually to midcentury tweeds, woven in multicolors, which became the warm visual container which our show existed within. I also found a midcentury table design with brass inlay diagonal lines, which inspired the wood of the deck and the gold diagonal lines that criscrossed the set. The Asolo scenic team came up with a brilliant translucent paint finish that was painted on muslin that evoked the look I was going for. The translucent paint work meant that we could have backlit lighting elements imbedded in the set that only appeared when we wanted them. I also was inspired by the neon signs of midcentury Times Square - just blocks from where much of our story takes place. Neon elements became signs - including the neon question I wanted the audience to consider when they entered - but additionally were used to evoke windows and architecture. We wanted to have a “scoreboard” of sorts for the songwriting competition between King/Goffin and Mann/Weil, which took the form of a row of neon records that lit up whenever one of the couple would score a hit. It was important to me that we actually landed King in a space that felt like the real Carnegie Hall for the opening and closing; I designed a backer to evoke the familiar architecture of that storied stage which Asolo’s artisans achieved brilliantly. In addition Asolo was able to achieve to my desire to have a concert grand piano to match the famous Carnegie Steinway Model D; which was constructed by the prop artisans in Florida. It looked marvelous!