With the Tony nominations out, and the big winners predictable — “Matilda,” “Pippin,” “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” — Broadway’s busy putting together the new slate of shows for the fall.
First out of the gate will be “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.” It’s on the fast track, with a San Francisco tryout at the Curran Theatre in September and New York previews starting in December at, most likely, a Nederlander theater.
The musical has been in the works for two years. It generated good buzz at a 2011 workshop, which King attended with her friends songwriters Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann.
Director Marc Bruni (he was Kathleen Marshall’s assistant) and book writer Douglas McGrath (co-writer of Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway”) are still polishing the show under the watchful eye of Sherry Goffin Kondor, King’s daughter and manager.
“It keeps getting better and better,” says a source.
The autobiographical musical tells the story of how King (originally Carole Klein) got her start at the Brill Building and met and fell in love with her first writing partner, Gerry Goffin. “Beautiful” deals with the birth of their daughter and their painful divorce. The breakup plunged King into despair, but she emerged to write her greatest album, “Tapestry.”
The score makes use of all the King classics — “So Far Away,” “It’s Too Late,” “You’ve Got a Friend.”
A highlight is when King sings “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” to her baby daughter right after Goffin announces that he’s leaving.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house at the reading, where King herself, a source said, “wept like a baby.”
If they get this one right, it could be a mellow “Jersey Boys.”
William Ivey Long, the chairman of the American Theater Wing and one of Broadway’s leading costume designers, e-mailed me concerning my column last week about the Tony honor for “The Lost Colony,” the long-running historical pageant on Roanoke Island, NC. Actors’ Equity is having a hissy fit because the show uses non-union performers, and I took a few shots at it myself.
Long, who is the show’s production designer, writes:
What you got right is that each summer since 1937, “‘pasty white boys” are painted up to become 16th-century Native Americans. What you must have slept through in your American Theater History class is that:
* In 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green opened [the show] . . . on the exact site of the first English settlement in the New World.
* That President Franklin Delano Roosevelt attended the show and declared it a hit.
* That the professional/amateur template was established with a handful of Broadway actors and 100 other performers from local colleges.
* That Al Hirschfeld sketched the production in 1938 for the New York Times.
* That Andy Griffith carried a spear in the show in 1947.
* That Steve Kazee [who won the Tony last year for “Once”] was still in college when he was in the choir in 1997.
* That for 21 years, Broadway’s Joe Layton directed and choreographed the production, attracting performances by guest artists Colleen Dewhurst and George Grizzard. Joe was especially proud to have discovered Terrence Mann, who began as an Indian dancer. Terrence is nominated [his third time] for a Tony this season for “Pippin.”
* That in 2006 Lynn Redgrave played Queen Elizabeth I.
* That I myself will begin my own 43rd season with the show; grew up working alongside my family there; and I hope to continue passing on my enthusiasm and excitement for a labor of love.
Ever patiently and fondly, William Ivey Long.
Thanks for your response, Mr. Chairman.
Will I still get good seats at the Tonys?