A BEAUTIFUL NOISE
Music and Lyrics by Neil Diamond
Book by Anthony McCarten
Directed by Michael Mayer
Broadhurst Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
A Beautiful Noise struck me as a kind of Merrily We Roll Along told forward, without the dramatic point. Well, forward from the vantage of a flashback. We start with Neil, an older man (Mark Jacoby) sitting in front of his shrink (Linda Powell), reviewing his life (Will Swenson is the younger he), trying to come to grips with what went wrong, with his spiritual disquietude.
Unfortunately, the answer is: nothing much. Oh, perhaps a lot within the context of a man facing his personal demons. But in the context of dramatizing a life: not so much.
To be sure, some of the Neil Diamond story is show-bizzy interesting, in the manner of Popstar Bio Theatricalized that has become a common subgenre, like a Life Magazine profile with a jukebox: that he started out writing songs for others, that he was a late blooming performer, allathat. Not revelatory, but told well.
We’re told, however, that the angst is caused by his increasing addiction to writing, performing, touring and the perks of stardom that kept him away from hearth and home and destroyed two marriages.
Which is certainly plenty to discuss with your therapist.
You struggle to accept that you irreversibly did what you did, to understand that you undeniably are who you are…and that you can emphatically learn from both. But failing the unearthing of some deep suppression of kind—and none of that is part of Diamond’s presented story—there’s no suspense in the struggle. It’s abstract, internal and the outcome is inevitable.
Subsequently, Act One, the beginning to the middle of Diamond’s career, is okay enough because we’re following a progression of career events. And Act Two, in which he’s riding high and avoidant of familial responsibility—as my Yiddische Mom would have said—“gets noodgedik already.” It marks time.
The Neil Diamond catalog is very well performed, the cast is quite fine and the acting, for a musical directed by Michael Meyer, is unusually…restrained, I guess is the word. By which I don’t mean low-key, but do mean free of outsize, joke-pumping behavior. The production values for a music-video-peppered biopic musical likewise skirt ostentation, but that puts them in support of the story rather than overwhelming it, which is all to the good.
Beyond noting that, deep critical analysis, much as it may help onstage Neil, doesn’t help a coherent assessment of the proceedings. Like so many of the pop-star bio musicals we’ve seen, A Beautiful Noise is what it is, does what it does, and satisfies the need it’s meant to satisfy. And if that sustains it, I’m happy for all involved. And we can leave it at that.