Strong Week for Broadway's Carole King Show, Still in Previews The Carole King songlist in "Beautiful," the new Broadway musical about Ms. King's early years as a singer, has been drawing strong numbers of fans and others in the show's first weeks of preview performances. The production had its best ticket sales yet last week, grossing $814,141 for eight performances, or 80 percent of the maximum possible amount, according to box-office data released on Monday by the Broadway League. "Beautiful" starring Tony Award nominee Jessie Mueller as Ms. King, received good notices during its tryout run in San Francisco this fall; the musical has an opening night on Broadway of Jan. 12, when New York theater critics will weigh in. Another new musical based on a songwriter, "A Night With Janis Joplin," has been selling far more modestly than "Beautiful," with the Joplin bio-show grossing $393,840 last week. By far the most successful new jukebox show on Broadway, "Motown: the Musical," set a record at its box office last week, meanwhile, grossing $1,563,294. Most other Broadway musicals and plays experienced the fall-off at box offices that typically happens in the week after Thanksgiving, a holiday period that was unusually lucrative for shows this year. Over all Broadway productions grossed a total of $27.9 million last week, compared with $22.2 million for the comparable post-Thanksgiving week in 2012.