Beautiful play chicago

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If the recently dead Funny Girl revival ever gets resurrected, producers should look no further than the stage of the Stephen Sondheim Theatre for their Fanny Brice.

There they will find all the humor and verve and musicality they could want in Jessie Mueller, who steps up from supporting roles in her two previous Broadway outings to the huge and scary job of carrying a show. In Beautiful: The Carole King Musical (as it is awkwardly and not quite accurately called) she makes her success look easy, playing the title character almost better than the famously stage-frightened singer-songwriter ever played herself.

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Without slavish vocal imitation, Mueller is completely believable as King when she sings, catching both her sexy huskiness and the idiosyncratic way she adjusts the placement of her voice syllable by syllable. The result, regardless of its Kingliness, is thrilling and true — but it’s not just a vocal performance.

Fr