Truth in Beauty, Beauty in Truth

Biopics pose a unique challenge for their performers — how to capture the essence of their character while preserving something of themselves. But for Esther Hannaford, star of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, it’s all in a day’s work. Cassie Tongue meets the singer.

Playing a real-life person on stage is tricky. Mimicry and imitation doesn’t hold up in front of a live audience; they need to get a glimpse of your soul. But you also have to honour the essence of the icon, and bring something of their truth to life. To balance those factors and still connect with the audience is a tall order indeed.

But to Esther Hannaford, currently starring as Carole King in Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, that’s an average day at the office. Hannaford has received rave reviews and both Sydney Theatre Award and Helpmann nominations for marrying her old-soul, open-hearted performing style with King’s wisdom and warmth, bringing the story of King, the woman behind the music, to life.

Now Beautiful is coming to Brisbane, following smash hit seasons in Sydney and Melbourne. King wrote, of course, (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman and Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow, but the musical contains a lot of her earlier work as part of a songwriting team with Gerry Goffin, who would become her husband. The duo wrote for The Drifters (Some Kind Of Wonderful), Little Eva (Locomotion) and Bobby Vee (Take Good Care Of My Baby) long before King, separated from Goffin, ever recorded her own hits.

“I think the play is a really great, inspiring female story about a girl finding her own voice without a man,” Hannaford says.

And she has loved playing in that positive, female-led space, though there are moments where she admits she’s struggled — like when King fights against what she deserves, turning a blind eye from her husband’s poor behaviour for the sake of keeping her family together.

“I found it hard to sit in the spot — ‘why doesn’t she just leave, what’s happening there’, you know? But as a woman asked to sit in on another woman’s perspective, she came from a really dysfunctional background. Her parents were getting back together — getting together, getting back together — from the age of seven until she moved out. And so she was just like, ‘If I could just have that solid home-base — the picture perfect thing — then everything’s going to be ok.’”

Her determination, her confidence is something that I find inspiring. Not that I’m not determined, but I think sometimes the confidence... I can be hard on myself. I’ve learnt that from her, I guess.”

Hannaford found compassion and understanding for King in another way — through her own experiences making music. Hannaford recorded an EP The Great Egret, in 2015, in which she wrote — and cowrote — all four haunting, yearning tracks. Hannaford could immediately relate to the sit-and-wait of mining for inspiration, but what struck her the most about King was her work ethic, which never flagged — even as she raised two children and ran her 1970s household.

“Her determination, her confidence is something that I find inspiring. Not that I’m not determined, but I think sometimes the confidence... I can be hard on myself. I’ve learnt that from her, I guess.”

Playing King has even gotten Hannaford to start writing again. “I released my EP and I’ve written before that, but I just wanted to do that really for me — it was sort of a selfish thing, really — but I’m coming back to it now. The thing that I take from her music is the simplicity of it. I’m always like layering, layering, heaps of vocals and heaps of instruments and I love that kind of music too, which is kind of overwhelming when you put it in your earphones.

“But there’s something about her songwriting which I think has stood the test of time and it will never not be classic because it’s very simple. She had a real, great sixthsense for that simplicity, creating something beautiful and simple. I mean, gosh, I’m certainly no Carole King, but that’s something that’s opened my mind up a bit.”

But for now, in Brisbane, she is Carole King, or at least the perfect woman to play her: one that sees beauty in simplicity, compassion in struggle, and inspiration in women she admires.

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical plays from 13 Jul at QPAC