Carole King musical opens in Tampa

No matter what city "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical" travels to, Liam Tobin said, he sees a similar reaction from audiences.

"You can see the people in the audience saying 'Oh, I didn't know they wrote 'Up on the Roof' or 'Do the Locomotion,' " Tobin said. "Their eyes light up."

Tobin plays Gerry Goffin, King's husband and the lyricist on many of her most popular songs, in the Broadway hit that's now touring the country. The tour stops at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa for seven performances beginning Tuesday.

If Tobin were in the audience instead of on stage, he'd probably have the same reaction.

"My mom had the 'Tapestry' album, like everyone else," he said. "But I didn't know that much about Carole's life."

The show centers around the years King and Goffin worked created an uncountable number of the biggest hits of the era: "One Fine Day," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," "On Broadway," "Pleasant Valley Sunday" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman."

"It's kind of a rags-to-riches story," Tobin said. "It starts in 1959, when Carole and Gerry first met, and takes you up to 1971, when Carole recorded 'Tapestry.' "

"Tapestry," of course, was King's solo album that is still one of the biggest-selling albums of all time, and turned her into a major recording artist in addition to an already legendary songwriter.

Goffin, Tobin said, was a complex a contradictory man, who made his fame and fortune largely through writing introspective lyrics from a woman's point of view, but had a troubled relationship with his wife.

"That was the thing about Gerry," Tobin said. "He could tap into what women were feeling, but he could be abusive. And then he started doing drugs and that eventually led to mental illness."

"Beautiful" has been a huge hit on Broadway, where it's been running after more than two years. It was nominated for seven Tony Awards in 2014 and won two.

"It's a juke box musical, but in a way it's an anti-juke box musical," he said. "It's not even a musical, technically."

The songs, he explains, don't advance the story or become part of the plot, but they do comment on the lives of Goffin and King, and of songwriters Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, who also figure prominently in the story.

"It's more like, we've written this song, and here's the Platters to sing it," Tobin said. "But the songs tend to kind of fit what is going on with in their lives and parallel what's happening in the story."

Details: April 26-May 1, Morsani Hall at the Straz Center for the Performing Arts, 1010 N. MacInnes Place, Tampa. Show times: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Tickets: $70-$155 plus service charge. Information: 813-229-7827, strazcenter.org.

Marty Clear, features writer/columnist, can be reached at 941-708-7919. Follow twitter.com/martinclear.

This story was originally published April 22, 2016 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Carole King musical opens in Tampa ."