Kaylee Harwood stars in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical

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All Kaylee Harwood has ever wanted to do is make beautiful music.

“I have been singing since I can talk and dancing since I can walk. I was an artist before I knew I wanted to be one,” says Harwood, who headlines Stage West’s production of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, with previews beginning April 19 and its official opening April 26.

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This is a role Harwood first sang in 2017 when she joined the national tour of Beautiful that took her to 40 U.S. cities and six Canadian cities, including Calgary at Jubilee in the fall of 2018. She did a second national tour and most recently headlined the Arts Club production of Beautiful in Vancouver last year.

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“I will continue doing this musical as long as people ask me to, because I am in love with Carole’s spirit and I love the experience of how the audience reacts to the show. They are very excited about their music and their story. Even in a theater as big as the Jubilee, I could hear the cries of recognition and love when people heard certain songs.”

Beautiful follows King’s career from when she was 17 and wrote Will You Love Me Tomorrow, which gave the Shirelles their big hit, making them the first African-American girl group to reach number one in North America. The musical ends with Carole recording her album Tapestry which would become, and remains, her biggest personal hit. It is here that Harwood sings You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, one of King’s signature songs.

The musical also includes songs King wrote for other artists such as Up On The Roof and On Broadway by The Drifters, The Locomotion by Little Eva, You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling by The Righteous Brothers, Walking in the Rain by the Ronettes and The animals we have to get out of this place. It also includes songs like You’ve Got a Friend, It’s Too Late, I Feel the Earth Move and Beautiful, with which he topped the charts.

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“What makes Carole such an incredible songwriter is that she is able to distill a feeling or an emotion,” says Harwood. “His ideas of her are complex musically and lyrically, but the true power of her is in connecting with her on a visceral level. These are universal feelings and emotions, which is why people react to her songs.”

The musical looks at King’s tumultuous relationship with her first husband, Gerry Goffin. It also discusses her rivalry with the writing team of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann.

“With the song It’s Too Late, we see Carole starting a new chapter in her life. She has the independence of it. It’s a moment in the musical that I always love to achieve. As a performer, Carole always puts everything she can into the moment. She’s five feet tall, but when she sings she’s a giant,” says Harwood, who met King after one of his shows in Los Angeles.

“She sang on stage with us and joined us later. She talked about what she calls gang love. She told us that she always recognizes her musicians because without them there is no magic. She told me that she should do the same thing on stage, not only with the actual band, but with the actors who play my musicians. Carole is not a diva, so there is no room for someone who plays her to be.”

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Like King, Harwood’s career began as a teenager.

“I was 18 and got the lead role in a (Vancouver) community theater production of Cinderella. I grew up attending ballet, opera, and musical theater performances, but had never acted myself. Being in Cinderella changed all that. “I knew instantly that this was what I wanted to do and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that people could make a living acting.”

From that small production of Cinderella, Harwood found herself performing in Stratford and Broadway, and eventually found Beautiful, the musical she never tires of sharing with audiences.

There are special prices for preview performances of Stage West’s Beautiful, which runs April 19-25.

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