(upbeat music) - Pioneer Theater Company is presenting the much anticipated production of "Beautiful: The Carole King Musical."

And artistic director, Karen Azenberg, is here to tell us about it.

Hi, Karen, welcome, welcome.

I'm so glad you're doing this.

- It's such a fun, wonderful story.

And the music is iconic.

There's so many songs you don't even realize she wrote.

- [Mary] Oh, wow, wow.

- Because she wrote for The Drifters and the Shirells and the Chiffons.

She wrote a song for the Monkeys and the Beatles.

So there's sort of all these old hits that you're like, she wrote that?

(Mary laughing) So it's like one surprise after another.

- Oh, that's great.

I just am so excited for this one.

So it follows her whole trajectory to stardom.

- Yeah, but it takes place over only 13 years.

And she played Carnegie Hall, which is the beginning and end of the show, when she was 29.

- [Mary] Wow.

- And she started professionally when she was 16.

- Wow.

- So it's crazy.

It's all crazy and exciting.

- So those are the years we get to see in this.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Okay, and talk about the cast for this.

- They're so wonderful.

They're so wonderful.

We've been in rehearsal for a week, so I really got to know them already.

And they're wildly talented, really lovely.

And they sing like nobody's business.

- All right.

And okay, who plays Carol King?

- Sarah Shepherd plays Carol King.

She's wonderful.

She actually has played it before on the national tour, and she is terrific.

She is terrific.

Anthony Sagaria is Gerry Goffin.

Stephen Christopher Anthony is Barry Mann, and Lee Harrington is Cynthia Weil.

And that's like the big four.

- All right, okay, wonderful.

Well, looking forward to this one.

And thank you for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- And if you'd like to know more about Pioneer Theater Company's "Beautiful", the Carol King musical, it runs February 14th through March 1st.

Go to pioneertheatre.org.

Pioneertheatre, re, .org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact".

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