‘People are fans of Carole without even knowing it’
A celebration of the prolific singer-songwriter behind hits for some of the biggest names in rock ‘n’ roll is coming to Bath. JEFFREY DAVIES chats to Molly-grace Cutler and Tom Milner, who are starring in Beautiful – The Carole King Musical
SHE wrote the soundtrack to a generation. 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 are just some of the many iconic songs written and performed by American chart-topping legend Carole King.
“An ordinary girl with an extraordinary talent”, who produced “one of the most amazing catalogues of pop music ever written” are two of the plaudits she has received.
Fighting her way into the record business as a teenager, she sold her first hit, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, when she was just 17. By the time she reached her twenties she had “the husband of her dreams” and a flourishing career writing songs for the biggest acts in rock ‘n’ roll. From Aretha Franklin to The Monkees; The Drifters to The Shirelles. But it wasn’t until her personal life began to crack that she finally managed to find her true voice.
The new production of Beautiful – The Carole King Musical takes to the stage in the West Country next week telling the true and inspiring story of Carole King’s remarkable rise to stardom. From selling her first song while she was at school and having a baby at 18; to being part of a hit song-writing team with her husband Gerry Goffin; to her relationship with fellow writers and best friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann; to becoming one of the most successful solo acts in popular music history.
A Broadway and West End smash hit, West Country audiences are in for a treat, I remarked to Molly-grace Cutler, who plays Carole King.
“Oh yes. Carole’s music is legendary. She had such a huge following and fan base. Everyone knows her music because it’s always been around. I don’t think people realise just how much she actually wrote. I think people are fans without even knowing it, which I think is the beauty of this show,” a very friendly Grimsby-born Mollygrace told me enthusiastically.
Acting and singing the role of the iconic star, who is now 80, must be something of a challenge, I suggested.
“Completely. You want to do her justice. What I think is so nice about our version of the Carole King story is we could pay homage to her and to all the real people in the show but with our own creative licence. We weren’t trying to do impressions. Our version definitely created our own personal homages to these people. You want to pay utmost respect to them because they are still alive mostly. And you want to do them proud. As for acting and singing in the same show, that’s what we’re trained to do, Jeffrey. It’s technique. It takes a lot of fitness and brain power to be able to do everything at once. It’s what we do,” Molly-grace replied.
Molly-grace is a 2020 Olivieraward winner in The Worst Witch UK tour and the West End. Her other theatre credits include Girls Don’t Play Guitars, We’ll Live and Die in These Towns, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, Beauty and the Beast and Oxy and The Morons. Her television credits include Timewasters.
She said that she had always been a fan of the great songstress Carole and her music.
“I have been since I was tiny. My grandparents gave me the Tapestry vinyl when I was quite young. I didn’t know much about Carole King herself until I got older; then I realised I’d been listening to her music my entire life. Many people don’t realise just how many other artists she wrote for.
“The reason she did what she did and why she wrote those songs for others is she wanted the respect of those artists for the way she wrote her songs. She wasn’t doing it for fame; she was writing them for the people she adored. People like The Shirelles and The Drifters. In their prime, Carole and Gerry were a great team writing incredible music together,” Molly-grace said, adding that A Natural Woman was probably her favourite song in the show because it was such an empowering number which everyone enjoyed.
As well as being highly successful, Carole has also had some not so good times. But she was a strong, resolute woman nevertheless, I remarked.
“Incredibly strong. Incredibly determined. She was not afraid of doing what she wanted to do and what she wanted to achieve. She just knew she was capable of producing these amazing songs for people. She was very, very
She wanted the respect of those artists for the way she wrote her songs. She wasn’t doing it for fame; she was writing them for the people she adored. People like The Shirelles and The Drifters. Molly-grace Cutler on Carole King
driven,” Molly-grace said.
Appearing on stage with Molly-grace is Yorkshire-born Tom Milner, who plays Carole King’s husband and songwriting partner Gerry Goffin.
“Although the musical was certainly a big success before the pandemic, it’s now become a real feel-good show to bring audiences back to the theatre,” a most friendly Tom told me. “When we sing our final song we look out at the audience – we can only see the first four rows – and what we see is people with either beaming smiles on their faces or crying with elation because they needed this feel-good moment so much. They needed to hear these good songs and they needed to feel good what with all of the other awful things going on in the world at the moment. This show gives people a real buzz.”
And Carole King’s catalogue of work is just phenomenal, he added.
“It really is amazing. Even for me when I had to learn the part I actually didn’t realise just how much she did. You knew that she wrote certain very good songs, of course, but you didn’t realise just how much she wrote for other people within the music industry at that time as well. The other amazing thing about Carole King is that she was
happy to be under the radar and to write songs for other people and make them successful as well at the same time. It’s incredible, it really is.
“The wonderful thing about our director Nikolai Foster is during the audition stages we had to write our own dialogue for our own characters. He wanted us to put our stamp on it as well, even though we are playing someone who has lived. He wanted us to put into it what we thought Gerry or Carole or any of the other characters were like. As actors, you can be a bit trapped when you’re playing someone else. However, he wanted us to give our representation of the characters as well, which was great.”
Tom went on: “I play Gerry Goffin but I also play each instrument in the show as well because this is obviously an actor-musician version of the show. It is the first version of this particular show that has actually happened. So in this one we are acting and then picking up an instrument and playing the songs as well, which is amazing,” Tom said, his sheer enthusiasm for the show clearly evident.
A husband and wife partnership as well as a formidable and highly successful song-writing team, was Carole King and Gerry Goffin’s dual relationship a challenging one? Did the duo gel together well?
“Yeah. If you dive into the lyrics that Gerry wrote they were quite sad. They were quite depressing. He obviously had issues in life. But Carole’s music was really uplifting and bright. Some people probably would have said that wouldn’t have worked but obviously it did. And it became so very successful; I think that’s why it was successful. They were two different people. Carole’s music and Gerry writing delivers.”
How does Tom, whose wife was a pupil at Monkton Combe School in Bath, rate the legendary couple’s collaborative musical output in the annals of popular music history? “They are at the top of the game. In terms of modern-day writers, who would they be up against today? If they were still writing now, in the way they used to, they’d be in the charts and we’d be hearing number ones still,” he said assuredly.
“Their music is a mix. The earlier stuff was for The Drifters and performers like that. They were also writing for The Beatles then. Gerry was never happy to just be a writer of number one records though; he wanted more and more and more and was always trying to adapt the music and create a new sound, which is risky because people very often want to hear the same sound on the next album.” Originally from West Yorkshire, Tom is well-known for playing series regular Paul Langley in the BBC drama Waterloo Road. His other television and film credits include Josh in Starlings, Ben Eddon in Holby City, Carl Marr in Doctors, Ollie Matthews in Barking and Stoner in Plastic The Movie.
His stage credits include American Idiot, We’ll Live and Die in These Towns, Waterbabies, and Soho Cinders. His pantomime credits include Prince Charming in Cinderella, Dick in Dick Whittington, Jack in Jack and the Beanstalk, Buttons in Cinderella and Prince Valiant in Sleeping Beauty. Tom was also a contestant on The Voice and is a regular guest artist with The Barricade Boys.
Earlier this year Carole King celebrated her 80th birthday and while she now spends her days on her Idaho ranch, the singersongwriter is still going strong. Last year she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a performer and she has recently written a new song with Jennifer Hudson and Jamie Hartman for the upcoming Aretha Franklin biopic Respect.
■ Beautiful – The Carole King Musical is playing the Theatre Royal Bath from March 17 to 26. Tickets can be booked on 01225 448844 or online at www.theatreroyal.org.uk