“Beautiful” offers more than “One Fine Day” at Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.
Both the Broadway and national tour versions of the Carole King musical were well oiled, smooth machines, with Swiss clock-style automation used to fluidly move furniture, props and even performers onstage and off.
But at Chanhassen, which is putting on one of the first regional productions of this jukebox musical that sketches the life of an insecure Brooklynite who became a pop icon, the scenery is changed by the actors.
As staged by the father-daughter duo of Michael Brindisi and Cat Brindisi-Darrow and headlined by the stellar Monet Sabel, the production is human-powered in other ways.
The directors have crafted many fine and moving dramatic moments that go deeper into the mental state of King herself but especially of her husband, Gerry Goffin. And the beautifully rendered music is transporting.
Here are 10 things that make this production worth the trip:
10. The Brindisis bring a jeweler’s eye to the show, with a directorial vision that alternates pathos- and heart-evoking drama with surprising comedy before all the emotions are released in song. When we’re hearing the teenybopper hit “Oh Carol” on the radio, for example, Sam Stoll’s Neil Sedaka comes to life out of nowhere. Michael Gruber’s Don Kirshner, the legendary music industry executive, similarly pops up to push the action forward while eliciting laughs. And Kim Kivens, as Carole’s mother, maximizes the humor of her character’s few lines.
9. While Barbara Potinga’s period costumes and the wigs track a stylistic evolution from the square, buttoned up ‘50s to the bell-bottom ‘70s, the design team has stripped away much of the set that could get in the way of telling the story of a simple Brooklyn teen who dreams of a career in songwriting, gets pregnant at 16, marries her baby father-cum-songwriting partner Goffin.
