You’re beautiful (not the James Blunt song … )

This next post takes us back to January 2018, which is when I went to see the Carole King musical ‘Beautiful’ with my lovely Mum, our awesome friend Phyl and her cousin, Carolyn, at His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen. ‘Beautiful’ tells the life story of the extremely talented and six-time Grammy winner, Carole King (born 1942 in New York), up until she released the album ‘Tapestry’ in 1971. (Interestingly, the brand-new Apple music documentary series, ‘1971: The year that music changed everything’, has an episode that includes Carole King and ‘Tapestry’.) This is another jukebox musical (detecting a bit of a theme with the last couple of posts) featuring songs written by Carole King, including music from ‘Tapestry’, which is one of my all-time favourite albums even though it was 29 years old when I was born. The musical features songs such as ‘You’ve got a friend’, ‘It’s too late’, ‘Will you still love me tomorrow?’ and ‘Beautiful’. TV fans might be interested to know that even though it’s not in the musical, her song ‘Where you lead’, which is also from ‘Tapestry’, was actually the theme song for the show ‘Gilmore Girls’. 

 The musical ‘Beautiful’ depicts Carole writing the songs with her husband, Gerry Goffin (they were married 1959-68), as well as giving a sense of her friendships and writing style. The show also references her life as a mother and looks at the groups and artists (such as the Drifters and the Shirelles) who performed the songs she wrote before ‘Tapestry’ and took them into the charts. It explores her personal life and relationships and, for example, we hear how Neil Sedaka briefly dated a very young Carole King and wrote the song ‘Oh, Carole’ about her (which she responded to with her own song ‘Oh! Neil!’). ‘Tapestry’ (now 50 years old!) came out three years after her divorce from Gerry Goffin, was a huge hit and stayed in the American charts for over six years, proving her incredible talent and versatility as a songwriter and performer. 

 Despite taking place over a number of years, the same actress plays Carole right the way through the show. In the production that we saw, she was portrayed by a very talented actress and singer named Bronté Barbé, who was a finalist in the 2010 BBC programme ‘Over the rainbow’, which was looking to cast the role of Dorothy in an Andrew Lloyd Webber revival. Again, TV fans might be interested to know that in 2018, Melissa Benoist, who played Marley in ‘Glee’ and Kara in ‘Supergirl’, played Carole King on Broadway and some of Carole King’s songs were covered in a season six episode of ‘Glee’. 

When it came to creating the musical ‘Beautiful’, Carole King was initially a bit reluctant about the idea of some aspects of her work and personal life being turned into a show. However, with encouragement from family and friends, she became involved in the development of the musical and found it to be quite a powerful, emotional experience. By all accounts, she’s a humble, modest person but she’s accomplished a lot and has so much to be proud of as she started writing songs in her teens and ‘Tapestry’ came out before she was thirty. Now almost eighty, King famously performed in London’s Hyde Park as recently as 2016. 

It’s a bit of a shorter post this time but thank you for reading. The songs on ‘Tapestry’ truly are catchy, thought-provoking and wonderful. I also love the messages about the power of friendship, being who you truly are and voicing how you feel. Another strong message of the show concerns noticing the beauty all around you and sometimes even picking up on the beauty in yourself that everyone else sees (but you may not). This is such an important theme for all generations (I’m a Gen Z, apparently, what are you?) and particularly for anyone, like me, who has a health condition or other reason to feel insecure. As the titular song says ‘you’re beautiful as you feel.’ It can be hard to feel beautiful or 'enough' at times (I probably know this as much as anyone) but everyone has so much talent, beauty and worth.

Queen of the dancefloor

 

For this next post, I’ll be looking at two shows that I happened to see at the end of 2016/start of 2017 (programmes above). The first was a professional production of ‘Strictly Ballroom’ and the second an amateur production of ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert’. There's often an assumption that amateur shows aren't as good as professional ones and in my experience that definitely hasn't always been the case. This time I’ll also be considering the experience of live theatre and the immediacy of it (yes, I still miss it!) and what it means to people as well as the feelings it can evoke and the kind of unexpected things that can happen.

 Up first is a stage production of ‘Strictly Ballroom’, which I saw with my parents and Grandma at the Leeds Playhouse in December 2016 when we were in Yorkshire for New Year and family birthdays. We saw it in between Christmas and New Year, which is usually a confusing time where people might not know which day is it etc but after this past year, I think we’ve probably all become more used to that feeling all year round. ‘Strictly Ballroom’ is a musical adaptation of the Australian 1992 Baz Luhrmann comedy film of the same name which was based on a short play by Luhrmann and which parodies certain aspects of the competitive ballroom dancing world in the 1980s (a world Luhrmann knew from his own experiences). For instance, the leads and main couple, Fran and Scott, try out different styles of dance, including the Paso Doble that they are perhaps best known for, and learn important lessons about taking chances, stepping out on your own, being who you truly are and that there’s more to life than winning and competitions. For instance, when Scott meets Fran’s family, they teach him that ‘a life lived in fear is a life half lived’ and that’s something that I found quite powerful and that stuck with me. After the run in Leeds, ‘Strictly Ballroom’ was performed on stage in the West End in 2018 and was due to tour in the UK in 2020 under the direction of ‘Strictly Come Dancing’ judge, Craig Revel Horwood, but was postponed due to Covid-19. The musical mainly features pre-existing songs, such as ‘Love is in the air’ and ‘Time after Time’, which appear in the movie and stage musical.

During the production of ‘Strictly Ballroom’ that we saw (on 29th December 2016), one of the significant things that happened was that Sam Lips, the actor who was playing Scott, fell ill in the first act and Dale White, one of the understudies, played Scott for the rest of the show (there are two understudies listed in the programme and I'm fairly sure it was Dale but feel free to correct me if that's wrong.) This reminded us how live it really was and that almost anything can happen during live performances. For instance, we didn’t know what was happening at first or if everyone was ok or if the show would go on or if it was a technical issue.* Much like Sam, who played Scott for the first half, Dale did a brilliant job, especially as it was such short notice and the whole cast was excellent. Whilst I’m sure it was a horrible night for the lead who was unwell, for the audience it added a whole wild level of excitement and relief as the show DID go on and was amazing. We clapped till our hands were sore for the hero of the night - the understudy! It was like being in a musical, never mind watching one.

I saw our next show, an amateur production of ‘Priscilla Queen of the Desert’, at the Whitehall Theatre in Dundee the day before my 17^th birthday in 2017 with my Mum and our fab friend, Phyl. In fact, much like ‘Strictly Ballroom’, ‘Priscilla’ is also a jukebox musical that is based on a 1994 Australian movie with 1970s/1980s music that was written and directed by Stephan Elliott. The show (written by Elliott and Allan Scott) includes famous songs such as ‘I’ve never been to me’, ‘I will survive’, ‘Don’t leave me this way’ and many more. However, while there are similarities between the two shows, ‘Priscilla’ is more of a road movie about the Australian landscape with friendship as a major theme, whereas familial pressures and expectations and the romantic relationship between Fran and Scott are quite crucial for the plot in ‘Strictly Ballroom’. The production of ‘Priscilla’ that we saw was performed by the Downfield Musical Society and featured at least one familiar face - Kenny Christie, playing Bernadette, had often been choreographer and director for shows I had taken part in for The Song Shop in Montrose. I knew he was super talented (he had been in a few shows with The Song Shop too) and while there were some...slightly questionable aspects and moments in the show, the whole cast did such a brilliant job as they're very talented.  You wouldn't see better on a West End stage (and with the added challenge of drunken banter from the audience too - a couple of women a few rows in front of us were asked to leave...). The costumes (from Utopia Costumes in Forfar) in ‘Priscilla’ were absolutely incredible too (and there were so many of them and some of them were so huge!) and the visuals were extremely eye-catching and memorable. We hadn’t known what to expect going in (I hadn’t seen the film at that point) but it was certainly a night to remember and it proves that amateur and local productions can be just as good as professional shows partly because many people who perform in local theatre groups are talented enough to be professional performers.

I know it’s been a hard year for fans of shows and live theatre and for anyone involved in the performing arts or creative world but we will have theatres and performances and shows again as live theatre really is so special and deserves to be loved and appreciated as there truly is nothing quite like it.

*This actually did temporarily pause a production of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ that I saw with friends at the same theatre three years after seeing ‘Strictly Ballroom’.