Now on its second UK tour following a hugely successful West End run from 2015 – 2017 and a five year engagement on Broadway, the opening night of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical proves as warm, witty and joyous as ever it was.

Charting the start of her career from a spirited teen determined to crack the songwriting world with It Might As Well Rain Until September and culminating in her success with her multi Grammy award winning album Tapestry, this jukebox musical is packed to the brim with some of King’s most beloved gems, as she deals with the pressure of fame, juggles career and motherhood, the joy of friendship with fellow writer’s Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann (whose music also features), and her relationship with husband and songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin.

Our leading lady, Daisy Wood-Davis is incredibly charismatic and likeable as Carole King; she does a glorious job of demonstrating Carole’s developing maturity, both in age and as an artist with beautifully nuanced changes in her expression and body language, as well as her tone and vocal quality. Her singing is an absolute delight and the ease with which she approaches songs such as Beautiful and Natural Woman is quite extraordinary.

There’s a complexity to Adam Gillian’s Gerry Goffin that I found really striking compared to other iterations of the character I’ve seen, frustrated and flawed as he struggles he feels weighed down by his marriage and the pressure to not “chase the sound”, but make it. It means Gerry can often feel quite cold and closed off, but that makes expression of himself through his lyrics more potent, and he and Wood-Davis play off each other very well.

Carole & Gerry’s best friends and fellow songwriter’s Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann are played to regular scene stealing perfection by Laura Baldwin and Cameron Sharp, their relationship brimming with humour and often the light relief in contrast to King and Goffin’s central storyline. That being said, the humour is consistently well judged and subtle in the hands of these actors and so too in the hands of director Marc Bruni: all of them know how to play comedy with a deft, light touch. There’s also a brilliant turn from Oliver Boot as music mogul Donnie Kirshner, who brings warmth and charm to the role by the bucketload!

As a production, this new tour feels incredibly slick: the Drifters and the Shirelle’s dance their way through some beautifully stylised choreography by Josh Prince, the scenic design (Derek McLane) shifts seamlessly from one location to the next, and the lighting by Peter Kaczorowski and costumes by Alejo Vietti are wonderfully atmospheric and change subtly depending on the mood or time period. Such a polished piece deserves an talented ensemble to further elevate it, and we certainly have that here: their energy, enthusiasm and love for the show is abundantly clear and easy to be swept along with; I must give a special mention to Jordan Fox and Grant McConvey, whose performance as the Righteous Brothers brought the house to riotous applause.

A jukebox musical boasting some incredible tunes and at its heart a story about empowerment, it’ll be really hard to leave this show without a smile on your face.

Beautiful runs at Wales Millennium Centre until 14th March, before continuing on tour