There is something wonderfully unexpected about A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical. You arrive anticipating the songs, and what songs they are, but leave feeling as though you have been allowed to peek behind the curtain at the man who wrote them.
After a successful Broadway run from December 2022 to June 2024, A Beautiful Noise has now arrived at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre for its Australian premiere, led by Will Swenson, who originated the role of Neil Diamond on Broadway.
As someone who has been lucky enough to see Neil Diamond live in Australia three times, I expected the music to be the emotional draw for me. What I hadn’t expected was just how intimate this telling of his life would feel.
Rather than beginning with the swagger and sparkle of a superstar at the height of his fame, the musical introduces us to an older, retired Diamond, played beautifully by Terence Crawford, reluctantly sitting in a therapist’s office. He is there largely at the urging of his third wife, Katie, who has found him increasingly difficult to live with since retirement.
It proves to be an inspired way to tell his story.
The therapist, played with warmth and restraint by Monica Sayers, gradually draws Diamond into examining the lyrics collected in his songbook. What begins as resistance slowly becomes revelation as individual songs open doors into his past, taking us from the painfully shy young songwriter from Brooklyn through his extraordinary rise to international stardom.
And in the process, familiar lyrics begin to sound different.
Again and again, themes of isolation, longing and loneliness emerge, not simply as clever songwriting, but as something deeply embedded in Diamond’s own experience. The reserved, inward looking man revealed in the therapy room feels almost at odds with the rhinestone clad performer capable of commanding enormous arenas, and that contrast gives the musical much of its emotional power.
There is something extraordinarily moving about watching the meaning of songs you have known for decades unfold within the context of the life that produced them.
Will Swenson is sensational as Neil Diamond Then. Having originated the role on Broadway, he brings an ease and confidence to the performance that makes it feel far more than impersonation. He captures Diamond’s distinctive sound and physicality, certainly, but more importantly he finds the vulnerability underneath the stage persona.
And then there is that extraordinary catalogue of music.
The sheer number of songs Diamond wrote that have become part of our collective soundtrack is almost startling when presented one after another: Cherry, Cherry, Cracklin’ Rosie, Song Sung Blue, Holly Holy, I’m a Believer, I Am… I Said, Sweet Caroline and so many more.
Some become joyous, foot stomping celebrations that had the Princess Theatre audience singing and moving in their seats, and eventually out of them. Others land very differently when woven into Diamond’s personal story. Ballads that have always been beautiful become heartbreaking when acted out against moments of loss, loneliness and relationships coming apart.
His first wife Jaye Posner, played by Alana Tranter, and second wife Marcia Murphey, played by Ashleigh Rubenach, are portrayed with great heart. Watching those relationships begin with such hope and then fracture under the pressures of ambition, absence and the extraordinary trajectory of Diamond’s career is genuinely affecting. Even knowing how the story ends does little to lessen the sadness of seeing two marriages unravel.
That is perhaps one of the most interesting things about A Beautiful Noise: telling the story of a living person is inherently complicated.
Neil Diamond is still here. So is Katie Diamond. Both have been closely connected to the creation of the musical, and their involvement lends the therapy room framing an additional sense of intimacy. We aren’t simply watching a retrospective assembled after its subject has gone. There is a feeling of Diamond actively participating in the examination of his own life, including parts that are uncomfortable or painful.
For a performer whose public life was built around enormous concerts, dazzling costumes and songs sung by tens of thousands of people at once, this is a surprisingly quiet portrait of the man underneath it all.
Perhaps that is why it affected me so much.
The musical never loses sight of the pleasure of the music itself. The band is superb, the ensemble is infectious and the great songs still arrive with all the energy you want them to. But by the end, they carry more weight. Lyrics that once felt familiar have been placed back into the life that produced them, into ambition, loneliness, love, loss and the complicated cost of becoming Neil Diamond.
A Beautiful Noise is both a celebration of an extraordinary catalogue of songs and a surprisingly tender portrait of the man who wrote them. Joyful, intimate and deeply moving, good times never seemed so good.
A BEAUTIFUL NOISE: THE NEIL DIAMOND MUSICAL
@theneildiamondmusicalau www.theneildiamondmusical.com.au
For tickets and season information visit www.theneildiamondmusical.com.au
