Some Broadway musicals are about characters than never existed in reality, and the cast members who create them onstage are working with a blank slate. It’s up to the actors to express to the audience how their characters act, how they talk and sing, and how they move. However, when the characters of a musical are real-life celebrities, re-creating a person can be difficult, especially onstage. The actor or actress portraying the celebrity has to correctly uphold a personality that the fans already know, but still put a memorable twist on them. Add to that challenge having to follow a Tony-winner who originated the role, and you’ve made it even more difficult to meet the audience’s expectations.
These are the challenges the two new female stars of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical have taken on, and Chilina Kennedy who joined the company recently in the title role of Carole and Jessica Keenan Wynn as Cynthia Weil are off to a grand start. I spent a few minutes with Jessica Keenan Wynn, and she shared her thoughts on her Beautiful role, which also happens to be her first Broadway experience (her first New York performance was Off-Broadway as Heather Chandler in the musical adaptation of Heathers ).
“Chilina and I both joined at the same time,” Wynn recalls. “We were able to establish a relationship on stage leading up to our debuts, which helped us trust in each other while new elements and energies swirled around us.” Wynn takes over the role of King’s friend and rival songwriter, Cynthia Weil. Weil was previously played by Anika Larsen, who is temporarily out for maternity leave. Larsen won a 2014 Tony for the role in Beautiful (Best Featured Actress in a Musical). Kennedy replaces Jessie Mueller as singer-songwriter Carole King, the role for which Mueller won the 2014 Drama Desk and Best Lead Actress in a Musical Tony Award.
An element of the show that could be seen as a challenge for the cast is fitting into the time period of Beautiful, which takes place in the 50’s and 60’s. Wynn grew up in Los Angeles, watching the classic MGM movies with her mother, and would listen to the oldies station, since it was “the only station that came in clear” when her car antenna broke. “‘So Far Away’ was the first Carole song that left me thirsty for more,” Wynn remembers of Carole King’s work. The song happens to be the opening number of the show. (Note: This is not Wynn’s first time in a 60’s-set musical; she performed in Hairspray at the Hollywood Bowl.)
When Wynn wasn’t onstage, she couldn’t expect to always be able to sit back and relax; she had to learn how to navigate the offstage areas in and be ready for her cues. Before officially stepping in as Weil, Wynn had the chance to “shadow” Larsen, taking note of her “traffic patterns and quick changes in action.” as she watched her from backstage. “She was instrumental in giving me a play by play as to what to expect before and after each scene,” Wynn says of shadowing Larsen, “including when the role had some down time, and when you had to jog a bit into your next scene change.”
Having seen Mueller and Larsen as the main female roles the first time I attended this show, I appreciate the new life Wynn and Kennedy breathe into their portrayals of Weil and King, respectively. Wynn’s Cynthia Weil is sassy, strong, and blunt, but her onstage chemistry with King, as well as hypochondriac writing partner and lover Barry Mann (original cast member Jarrod Spector) shows her sympathetic, supportive side. Kennedy’s Carole King is awkward and unsure of her future, sometimes second guessing herself, trying her best to please her unstable writing partner/husband Gerry Goffin (Scott J. Campbell) and boss Don Kirschner (Paul Anthony Stewart). This makes King come across as very relatable and human, and playing up the human element in a biographical show is crucial to break the image of the celebrity many people already are aware of. The actresses succeed in maintaining parts of their characters’ established real life and onstage personalities, yet still putting their own spin on them.
Wynn finds Cindy Weil “empowering, creating the soundtrack to an era,” and thinks of her as a very confident woman; you can see this interpretation play out onstage with how proud Wynn portrays her. According to Wynn, her method of playing Weil is to “capture [her] essence, not necessarily make a parody [of her] or be her….embody her.”
Wynn thinks Beautiful has been successful for over a year due to the audience’s “nostalgia.” She believes the music of the show, mostly comprised of King’s work (“Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow”, “Take Good Care of My Baby”, “You’ve Got a Friend”, etc) brings people back to another time. She presumes they hold onto the music as “a sort of soundtrack to their youth, as they were coming of age. I know I have soundtracks to my middle school, high school, and college years,” Wynn reminisces. “It pulls at the heartstrings and touches on a fond memory that perhaps hasn’t been embraced in a long time.”
Just as Wynn and Kennedy’s characters in Beautiful faced plenty of challenges throughout the course of the show’s plot, they themselves overcame the challenge that is being a new company member to a big Broadway show like Beautiful.