“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” takes audiences on the journey of a teen songwriter who became a global superstar. It’s told through her songs, as well as through her relationships — romantic and professional.
The Highland Park Players are presenting the Tony and Grammy award-winning musical from July 17-26 at the McGrath Performing Arts Center, 3461 Illinois Road, in Wilmette. Performances are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, and 2 p.m. Sundays and July 25. For reservations, visit highlandparkplayers.org.
Anna Marie Abbate, who stars as Carole King, said she wanted to play this role because of “Carole King’s beautiful music and her story. I started reading the Carole King ‘A Natural Woman’ memoir, and her journey and her life were incredible.”
Abbate also saw the production at a couple of the larger theaters in Chicago and said, “I fell in love with the story.”
The actor said that she is a long-time Carole King fan.
“I really wanted to do this show,” Abbate said, adding, “I didn’t know how much she had written prior to seeing the show.”
“That wasn’t necessarily my decade that I grew up with,” she said. “But thanks to my mom and my dad, I had a large spectrum of different types of music in our household, and she was definitely one of them.”
Abbate’s favorite songs in the show include “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” “They wrote that for the Shirelles,” Abbate noted. “I feel everyone can relate to that song. We’ve all been through our own type of heartbreak.”
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Of course, they had to include something from King’s “Tapestry” album in the musical, so “There’s a little taste of that in there,” she said.
Other favorites include “I Feel the Earth Move” and the title song “Beautiful.”
Abbate will be accompanying herself on the piano, which she called “A definite extra challenge for me.”
Another challenge Abbate cited is having to age in the show. “In this show, we meet Carole at 16; then you see her throughout her young adult life,” she said. “By the end of the show, you see her at 28, 29 years old, getting ready to perform at Carnegie Hall. You’re seeing her not only as a composer but as a recording artist as well.”
Director Catherine Davis is an equally enthusiastic Carole King fan. Ask for a few of her favorite songs in the show and you get a list of almost all of them.
That list includes “Beautiful,” “I Feel the Earth Move,” “Locomotion,” “One Fine Day,” and “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”
“I love the music,” Davis said. “I literally grew up with Carole King. I’m astounded by how many other groups did her music. It’s poetry to music.”
“Also, as a director,” she said, “I like to have interesting characters. I really like the fact that these are real people with real issues. It was so interesting to delve into it — and everything was online.”
Davis said that this production of “Beautiful” is going to be distinctive because, “We have really examined the characters. You can tell that these people are fleshed out and real people. The characters live in this production.”
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.