Broadway-bound Carole King bio truly is Beautiful

You know that Beautiful: The Carole King Musical has worked its musical biography magic when, during the curtain calls, the extraordinary Jessie Mueller takes her bow, you feel like you're applauding an actor for her superb performance as King and you feel like you're acknowledging King herself and all of the remarkable work she has contributed over the last five decades.

King herself is nowhere to be found in the creation of this Broadway-bound enterprise except where it really counts: in the music. The story that book writer Douglas McGrath and director Marc Bruni are telling springs out of King's early start in the songwriting business and her emergence as a seminal singer-songwriter of the 1970s, but the show is really a tribute to the craft of songwriting.