If you’re a big Neil Diamond fan, perhaps you took in last year’s film Song Sung Blue, about a couple in a Neil Diamond tribute band, as the next best thing to seeing the now retired real singer-songwriter himself. Now you have a chance to learn all about Diamond in the touring production of A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, onstage at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall through April 4.
Shows like this one, packed with hits by the popular and prolific songwriter, are typically labeled as jukebox musicals—heavy on songs the audience can sway and clap to, light on biographical details. I suppose the term fits here, too. But the distinguishing thing about the show, with a book by Anthony McCarten, is the framework of mixing scenes with a younger Neil, his career taking off, with much later ones showing an older Neil visiting his therapist. Since Diamond signed off on the show, you want to give him kudos for being willing to reveal so much of his inner pain throughout much of his life.
There’s a huge contrast between those scenes featuring Neil—Now (Robert Westenberg) and his doctor (Lisa Renee Pitts), sitting in chairs in a bare, dimly lit space, and those depicting Neil-Then (Joe Caskey, subbing on opening night for an ailing Nick Fradiani), which start off modestly enough but eventually develop into big production numbers complete with an onstage band, backup performers, and glitz and sequins—lots of sequins. We’re shown the young Neil, already married (to Jaye Posner, played by Tiffany Tatreau) and a father, trying to sell his songs in New York’s Tin Pan Alley. He’s overwhelmed to meet an earlier songwriting legend, Ellie Greenwich (Heidi Kettenring), even though she’s at first unimpressed with the compositions he has to offer…