Beautiful - The Carole King Musical at Sheffield Lyceum is more than just a theatre show, it’s an education

You might know King for her masterpiece 1971 album Tapestry and songs I Feel the Earth Move, You’ve Got a Friend, or Natural Woman. But did you also know that, a decade earlier, King was just 18 years old when she composed the emotion-wrought standard Will You Love Me Tomorrow for The Shirelles?

Or that by the time she was 20 she was not just married (to her lyricist partner Gerry Goffin) and mother to a two-year-old, she was also the genius tunesmith behind hits from Some Kind of Wonderful and Up On The Roof by The Drifters to The Locomotion by Little Eva.

To say she was prolific is an understatement. The canon of work she created is unbelievable, much of the best and most emotionally honest of it at a breathtakingly prodigious young age.

Her breadth of musical styles is staggering. And her influence on rock and roll, pop and RnB is huge, continuing to be felt today. Kylie, Amy Winehouse and Taylor Swift have all covered her songs.

Needless to say it takes a formidable lead actress with serious star quality to take on the role of such an awe-inspiring icon, and Molly-Grace Cutler is exactly that woman. She is spellbinding.

The actor-musician from Grimsby (though you could believe Brooklyn) doesn’t just play the lead role, she inhabits it. She doesn’t just sing and act, she strums the guitar too, and plays the piano on every song - often, like King, standing up! Her voice isn’t exactly the same as King’s but it’s equally mesmerising and even more powerful. It’s a bravura performance from a 26-year-old who deserves to be a household name (and at the very least receive star billing on the posters and programmes - mystifyingly, her name is buried away in alphabetical order among those of the other cast).

The show, which has won Grammy, Tony and Olivier awards since its Broadway debut in 2014, begins and ends at King’s headlining 1971 concert at Carnegie Hall, and focuses on the years to then: her growing up, working as a hitmaker while still in school for manufactured acts at the Brill Building studios in Manhattan, and her professional and romantic pairing with talented but troubled wordsmith Gerry. Act two sees Carole overcome her shyness to break free on her own, wowing the world with the songs that tell her own story, not melodies for others.

Necessarily, due to the sheer volume of hits, it’s a jukebox musical with song after song in dizzying succession, sometimes at the expense of the plot.

Big topics like Carole’s teen pregnancy, and Gerry’s drug use and bipolar disorder, don’t get much time to be explored before another song strikes up, and the transitions between scenes are sometimes a little stilted.

But Cutler’s character development of King from gawky schoolgirl, pulling awkwardly on her cardigan, to confident free-flowing Natural Woman is convincingly done, and the acting is immersive. You really do believe you’re watching Carole King up there, and the scenes which steal the show are the emotion-filled solos, where King tries out her new songs (Will You Love Me Tomorrow and It’s Too Late in particular) and it feels like we are hearing them for the first time too.

The show is always best when it’s King/Cutler singing, rather than the groups and acts for whom her early songs were written. But it adds to the trip back in time to see The Shirelles, The Drifters, Little Eva and The Righteous Brothers performing in spangled 60s costumes and with choreographed routines. (You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ was penned by Carole and Gerry’s songwriting rivals and friends Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann, who make an irresitible double act played by sassy Seren Sandham-Davies and adorable Jos Slovick.)

Even if you’re not consciously a Carole King fan, there will be more songs you know in the show than you’ll realise. And you’ll definitely come away wanting to know more.

The show really is some kind of wonderful, and shines the spotlight on a true genius whose work deserves to be celebrated - and introduced to a new generation of music-lovers.