West End and Broadway smash-hit Beautiful - The Carole King Musical will light up theatres in Sheffield and Nottingham

The musical stars Molly Grace-Cutler, whose previous credits include The Worst WItch and Girls Don’t Play Guitars as Carole, and Tom Milner (Waterloo Road, Holby City) as Carole’s husband Gerry.

West End star Elaine Paige described the show as: “One of the most amazing catalogues of pop music ever written. It was beautiful,” while The Guardian’s review commented:

“A tapestry of greatest hits.”

Beautiful – The Carole King Musical Carole King will visit Sheffield Lyceum from September 6 to 10 and Nottingham Theatre Royal from October to October 8, 2022.

The show takes audiences on a journey through the life of an ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent. Carole King clawed her way into the music business as a teenager and sold her first hit, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, when she was 17. Three years later she was married to Gerry Goffin with whom she developed a successful song-writing partnership creating hits for top names including Aretha Franklin, The Shirelles, The Drifters and The Monkees,

Carole’s legendary compositions include You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, Take Good Care of my Baby, You’ve Got a Friend, So Far Away, It Might As Well Rain Until September, Up On the Roof, and Locomotion.

The musical documents Carole and Gerry’s close friendship and good-natured rivalry with fellow writers Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann. Songs such as like You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling, On Broadway and Uptown, written by Mann and Weil, also feature in the show.

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A year after Carole and Gerry penned Pleasant Valley Sunday, which gave The Monkees a top three hit, the couple divorced and Carole moved to Laurel Canyon.

Her big break came when she met artist and lyricist Toni Stern in Los Angeles in 1971, where they write the number one hit It’s Too Late.

That same year Carole released her album Tapestry which topped the Billboard chart for 15 weeks, stayed in the charts for almost six years and has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.. Tapestry won four Grammy Awards – best album of the year, best female pop vocal performance, record of the year and song of the year.

The original Broadway production of Beautiful – The Carole King Musica lwon a Tony Award for Jessie Mueller who scooped best leading actress in a musical in 2014. The original London production won two Laurence Olivier Awards in 2015 when leading lady Katie Brayben was named best actress in a musical and Lorna Want was honoured with best supporting actress in a musical for her performance as Cynthia Weil.

This year’s production of the musical is directed by Nikolai Foster for Curve Theatre and is based on the book by Douglas McGrath.

Tickets for Sheffield cost from £15, book online at www.sheffieldtheatres.co.uk or call 0114 249 6000. Tickets for Nottingham cost from £21, go to www.trch.co.uk or call 0115 989 5555.