‘A Beautiful Noise': A Diamond not much in the rough
'A Beautiful Noise' runs through Sunday at Belk Theater
This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on February 26, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. And check out this link for Toppman’s archive of reviews in the Ledger.
Review: In ‘A Beautiful Noise,’ Neil Diamond’s story hits the stage — but the music steals the show
“A Beautiful Noise” serves up Neil Diamond’s deep and varied songbook, and it does so with top-notch performances. (Photo courtesy of Blumenthal Arts)
by Lawrence Toppman
Tina Turner fought off extreme poverty and a husband who beat her. Fela Kuti was jailed by the Nigerian government and saw his mother die after soldiers threw her out of a window. Michael Jackson dealt with — well, we know the crazy stuff he dealt with, or at least some of it.
So whose jukebox musical starts in a therapist’s office? Neil Diamond’s.
The guy was in demand as a songwriter in his early 20s, recorded dozens of top-40 hits over two decades and has been popular for half a century. Yet there he is at the start of “A Beautiful Noise,” reacting queasily to bits from “The Complete Lyrics of Neil Diamond” read by his shrink. Go figure, as they said in Brooklyn when he grew up in the 1950s.
That book is mythical. The songs, spaced shrewdly through this loosely autobiographical musical, are real — and, to the ears of someone who listened to “Cherry, Cherry” in eighth grade when it came out in 1966, entertaining.
The critic in me has to admit the show plays fast and loose with chronology and countless facts. The sources of Diamond’s depression — parents who lacked faith in his dreams, boyhood loneliness, marriages ruined by extramarital sex and tour absences, self-doubt about artistic worth — have plagued countless entertainers. The psychiatric insights also seem superficial, though we might expect them from a doctor who has treated him for weeks without listening to any of his songs or looking at any lyrics.
The fan in me didn’t mind all that and appreciated the chance to hear a deep and varied songbook performed with skill, energy and new orchestrations. And the people who see the show at Belk Theatre this week in its Broadway Lights incarnation will undoubtedly be fans.
The title comes from his 1976 mini-comeback album “Beautiful Noise,” produced by Robbie Robertson of The Band. Only its title track figures here, because the show focuses on hits: “I’m a Believer,” “Song Sung Blue,” “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” and the rest — except, oddly, “Sweet Caroline.” (Just kidding: It closes the first act and comes back for a singalong at the final curtain.)
The point of the show, despite the analyst’s set-up, is less to cogitate than to celebrate. New Zealand writer Anthony McCarten received Oscar nominations for his thoughtful biopics “The Theory of Everything” (about Stephen Hawking) and “The Two Popes” (about Benedict and Francis). Here he’s in fanboy mode, possessed of the spirit that has earned New Zealand and especially Australia the reputation for being rabid Diamond-ites.
We hear over and over how wonderful Diamond is, how he was bigger than Elvis (yes, when Elvis was washed up), how people adored him worldwide. We don’t hear about the colossal failure of “The Jazz Singer” film, nor do we get an explanation for why the older Neil (played by Robert Westenberg) shuffles about as if in pain and mysteriously had to stop touring. (Perhaps those are references to the Parkinson’s disease that officially ended his career at 79 in 2020.)
What we do get, musically, is top-notch. Nick Fradiani, who plays the younger Diamond, not only replicates the man’s vocal sound — gravel in velvet, as one character aptly says — but tempers it according to the age he’s playing at the moment. He has charisma even when Diamond’s at his mopiest, and he bewitches the audience in extended concert sequences.
Hannah Jewel Kohn sings and dances up a metaphoric storm as the second wife with extended but not infinite patience, and Westenberg exudes pained gravity. I saw his Tony-nominated work in “Into the Woods” 38 years ago and kept waiting for him to sing; in the finale, he rose nobly to the occasion.
Yet much of the heart of the production comes from the nine-piece band, which rocks as powerfully for conductor James Olmstead as any I’ve seen on tour, and a 10-person chorus billed as The Beautiful Noise. They adapt flawlessly to moods and moves over a quarter-century of Diamond’s career, matching Fradiani’s intensity. I can’t imagine the show without them.
If You’re Going: “A Beautiful Noise” runs through Sunday at Belk Theater, 130 N. Tryon St. Shows start at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1:30 and 7 p.m. Sunday.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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