You're 'Beautiful': Audience eats up Opera House's rendition of 'The Carole King Musical'

You know the songs, from poppy classics like "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" to such timeless soft-rock anthems as "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman."

But there's always a story behind the song(s), and Wilmington's Opera House Theatre Co. does a bang-up job of telling those stories with its production of "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," which recounts the life and work of songwriting legend Carole King. The show runs at Thalian Hall through Sunday, July 28 .

Under the direction of Justin Smith, "Beautiful" is a tight, well-staged show with strong production values, including Debbie Scheu's sharp and colorful costumes, David Castaneda's cascading light design and music director Brian Whitted's on-time band, which delivers crack renditions of some two-dozen well-known pop tunes.

The audience I saw the show with on Sunday afternoon ate it up. (At the start of intermission, the woman sitting next to me asked her friend, "I thought you told me this was local? Are you sure it isn't a touring show?")

Most are familiar with the songs from King's 1971 solo album "Tapestry," but some still don't know that, with her former husband, Gerry Goffin, she co-wrote some of the most famous songs of the 1960s for such chart-topping acts as The Shirelles and The Drifters. Even The Beatles covered the Goffin-King rocker "Chains."

This allows "Beautiful" to be a bit heftier than most other jukebox musicals as it gets into the meaty, messy partnership between two artists who probably married too young. Goffin and King wrote so many songs that some are perhaps included out of obligation, leading to a couple of segments that feel perfunctory when tunes are jarringly introduced out of nowhere.

That's more of a quibble, though, because "Beautiful" — a reference to making something lovely and lasting out of life's letdowns — is rarely less than compelling. The musical both isolates the deeply emotional, stripped-down origins of songs like "Up on the Roof" while also taking them to the next level with Broadway-style flash.

As Carole King, Charlotte singer Lindsey Schroeder has a gorgeous voice, even as it carries more of a slick, musical theater sheen when compared to the earthy charm of King's own vocals. Partly due to how the show is written, and partly to Schroeder's understated performance, King barely feels like the main character in her own musical in the first act.

That may be by design, as King started her career as a talented young woman content to be in the shadow of her husband before finding her voice as a solo artist in her early 30s. Accordingly, Schroeder's performance comes into its own in Act Two, eliciting chills with the song "Too Late" and evoking emotion during fraught scenes with Mathis Turner, who plays the talented and driven but unstable Goffin.

Turner, who usually plays the hunky dreamboat or the macho villain, gets to stretch his acting muscles as Goffin, whose infidelity and emotional issues threaten his marriage to King. When Turner steps on stage unexpectedly late in the show, some in the the audience literally hissed, a testament to his portrayal of a man who often behaved like a dirtbag.

The show sets up a pair of foils to Goffin and King in the form of songwriting duo Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, with whom they were both friendly and competitive. Kendra Goehring is in firecracker form as Weil, while Berry plays effectively against type as hypochondriac Mann, hamming it up during an intentionally overdone version of "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling" and rocking it out during "We Gotta Get Outta This Place."

Zach Hanner turns in a strong performance as music exec Don Kirschner, who helps guide the couples' careers, and Holli Saperstein provides comic relief as King's chain-smoking, piano-playing mother.

We also get to see performances by some of the groups King wrote for, and Barbara Mootoo kills it as both the lead singer of The Shirelles and as Little Eva, singer of Goffin-King hit "The Locomotion," which comes with some wildly energetic choreography by Brooklyne Williamson.

Former Wilmington standout Tracy Byrd returns to the Thalian stage as part of the group Legacy, which does a super-suave portrayal of singing group The Drifters. ( Legacy will perform a full show as The Drifters at Thalian Hall on Tuesday, July 23 .)

All in all, "The Carole King Musical" is a crowd-pleasing blend of nostalgia and relatable story line. "Beautiful," indeed.

Want to go?

• What: "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical," with book by Douglas McGrath, music and lyrics by Gerry Goffin, Carole King, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Presented by Opera House Theatre Co .
• When: 7:30 p.m. July 24-27, 2 p.m. July 25 and 27-28
• Where: Thalian Hall, 310 Chestnut St., Wilmington
• Info and tickets: 910-632-2285 or ThalianHall.org

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: You're 'Beautiful': Audience eats up Opera House's rendition of 'The Carole King Musical'