Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The new jukebox musical A BEAUTIFUL NOISE: THE NEIL DIAMOND MUSICAL is standard, crowd-pleasing fare (at best)

• By drediman
• December 5, 2022
• No Comments

Last night, yet another jukebox musical arrived on Broadway when A Beautiful Nose: The Neil Diamond Musical opened at the Broadhurst Theatre. The musical follows in a long line of formulaic bio-musicals (e.g., Jersey Boys, Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, Motown, Ain’t Too Proud, Summer, etc.) that have ingrained themselves into — for better or worse — the musical theater tradition. As you may have already gathered from its title, this latest entry into the musical sub-genre tells the story of Neil Diamond’s life and career to more or less crowd-pleasing effect.

In structure, A Beautiful Noise — which features a book by Anthony McCarten (who penned the screenplay for the Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody) — initially presents itself as a session between an older Diamond (played understatedly by Broadway veteran Mark Jacoby) and his therapist. As they dig into his psyche as a man and artist, the show flashes back to key moments of his life. In concept, this framing device is an efficient way to mine the psychological and emotional depths of Diamond’s life and expansive, hit-laden songbook (including the unstoppable “Sweet Caroline”). However, in execution, the dutiful musical only allows for a skeletal chronicle of his life, which is made less compelling given that the songs only occasionally inform the dramatic moments depicted onstage. Additionally, the question remains — apart from being an ego project, which is okay — whether Diamond’s story is one that needs to be told. Despite the singer-songwriter’s relatively minor life drawbacks (including a string of unsuccessful marriages), I would argue that there are more pressing stories that need telling.

The net result is at best standard jukebox musical fare, and not nearly as effective as Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the gold standards of this genre of musicals. Thankfully, Michael Mayer directs the musical with only occasional dips into full on extravagance. Altogether, his staging here is a step up from his abysmal directorial work in the current revival of Funny Girl. As the show’s younger incarnation of Diamond, Will Swenson is very good in an oddly thankless role. Nevertheless, he has enough of Diamond’s seductive swagger to get the audience going. To boot, he’s a vocal dead ringer for the rock legend, which further contributes to the illusion.

SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED

A BEAUTIFUL NOISE: THE NEIL DIAMOND MUSICAL
Broadway, Musical
Broadhurst Theatre
2 hours, 15 minutes (with one intermission)
Open run