For several reasons, Devon Perry didn’t need much onboarding to take on the lead role in Music Theatre Wichita’s “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.”
“I grew up on this stuff,” Perry said. “Part of the reason I knew how to play piano was that my mom gave me the ‘Tapestry’ songbook to play. I love this music.”
“Beautiful,” which opens this week, looks at the rise of King from an unknown behind-the-scenes songwriter of hits in the 1960s to her blockbuster career as a singer-songwriter.
For Perry, there’s a comfort factor.
“Because it was brought to me very young by someone I love, it feels like home in a way,” she said. “But I also think her music is so accessible and brilliant at the same time. It’s pop music, but at the same time people who don’t know her say, ‘Oh, she wrote that?’
“So much of the messaging is very universal, but when you look at the material a lot of what she wrote was ahead of her time. It feels good,” Perry added. “Honestly, you can tell when you play her songs you feel good in your fingers and that is just the best.”
The reason Perry was comfortable walking into the rehearsal hall at Century II was that this is the third time in two years that the Ohio native has played King – last year in central Missouri and in January at an Indianapolis dinner theater.
MTW’s “Beautiful” reunites Perry with director-choreographer Deidre Goodwin and actress Sarah Ellis, who plays fellow songwriter Cynthia Weil. They had identical duties in Missouri.
“It’s really nice to have the framework functioning back there,” Perry said. “I know the lines pretty well and that helps me from thinking about too many things. It’s really exciting to be back in the sandbox, because we’re working with different people.”
Goodwin, who returns to MTW after directing “Ragtime” last year, said recreating the experience with two of the lead actresses is “kind of fun.”
“For Devon and Sarah and myself we have a shorthand with our previous experience with the show,” she said. “But what’s fun is creating a new version within this world with these sets and this new environment. The benefit is to go a little faster because we have a shorthand, but not being stuck in the way it was before.”
Goodwin has also directed “Beautiful” at a theater in New Hampshire.
Ellis said the feeling is comfortable, yet different.
“As actors, we can never recreate the same things because we grow, and we change and it’s been a year and we as people have evolved,” she said. “We bring all these new experiences every time to get the material again and look at it fresh.”
Unlike her previous two renditions, Perry said, she will not be playing the piano live in the show but miming it.
“Because I’ve played it live two times, I know all of it by heart,” she said. “I’m really doing it; I’m just not making any sound.”
Perry said it is a unique situation to be playing the musical icon known for her own hits like “It’s Too Late,” “You’ve Got a Friend,” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” and “I Feel the Earth Move.”
“It’s different than anything I’ve done in playing someone who is so accessible online but is also still alive,” Perry said. “I think of that often, not because Carole King might see my version of playing her, but it’s kind of crazy to think about.”
It makes it a challenge as an actress, she said.
“It’s been an interesting journey for me to find the balance of not just doing an impersonation of this person but honoring what they are and the music they made and what they present as, while combining that with what feels authentically me and my approach to the role,” Perry said. “It’s tricky but it’s also magical.”
Ellis said she enjoyed digging into the real-life Weil, who wrote classics such as “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’,” “On Broadway,” “Make Your Own Kind of Music” and “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” with her husband, Barry Mann.
“As actors, we get to be historians,” Ellis said. “We explore a different time period and how they spoke, how they walked. Everything was different. It’s fun for us to drop ourselves into those worlds and really, really play. It’s fun to marry some of who they are to the lines themselves.”
David R. Gordon, who plays Mann, said he enjoyed exploring the relationship of the married songwriters.
“You can see their love story is theatrical,” he said. “On stage, it’s so easy to tell their story. It’s adorable, they’re so cute.”
Weil and Mann were best friends of King and her co-songwriter and husband, Gerry Goffin. The musical includes a mention that the four vacationed together because they didn’t want to have one couple come up with a hit record while the other was out of town.
Bronson Norris Murphy, who plays Goffin, “grew up around the music 100%,” but increased his love for it once he got the role
“My parents grew up around the age where it was super popular for them,” said Murphy, who played Gus in last year’s “Cats” for MTW. “But I got a new appreciation for it – the words, the poetry. Sometimes the words get forgotten and the melodies live on forever, but his words are really special.”
Music director Jesse Warkentin has had the same role in a half-dozen other productions of “Beautiful” in the past few years, and still has a passion for it, he said.
“This is historic music, so there’s a little bit of being true to and realizing we’re recreating and giving you a fresh version of a song the audience knows and has a memory about it,” he said.
Wichitans and MTW veterans Tim Robu, as producer Don Kirschner, and Karen Robu as King’s mother, Genie Klein, are among the cast.
Goodwin said several generations will be attracted to the score of “Beautiful,” because it’s music that never went away.
“Even if you don’t think you know their songs, everyone knows their music. It’s in our DNA,” she said. “You can’t believe the volume of beautiful, great, enduring music they created.
“This music is everywhere and it still stands up,” Goodwin added.
Artistic director Brian J. Marcum said there’s an MTW connection to the original Broadway run of “Beautiful,” which ran in New York from 2014 to 2019 and was nominated for seven Tony Awards, winning for best actress Jessie Mueller and best sound design.
The original production’s choreographer, Josh Prince, was in the resident ensemble of MTW in 1994 with Marcum.
“MTW has a web out there,” Marcum said.
Marcum said “Beautiful” was the perfect way to cap the #YearOfTheWoman theme for MTW, with all musicals featuring strong female leads.
“There’s so much joy in the room. It’s like having someone come in and wrap a warm blanket around you,” he said after early rehearsals. “Every show this year has been spectacular vocally and this adds to it. It’s been remarkable.”
‘BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL’
When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, Aug. 21-22; 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 23; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24; 2 and 7 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 25
Where: Century II concert hall, 225 W. Douglas
Tickets: $26-$81, from mtwichita.org, 316-265-3107 or the Century II box office
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