The story of the legendary Neil Diamond comes to life on stage in a gripping and uplifting new musical featuring a score of his most beloved songs. With his first break into songwriting in the 1960s and his meteoric rise in the 1970s, and plenty of crushing disappointments and heart-stopping triumphs along the way, Neil Diamond has maintained an almost unthinkable level of superstardom for five straight decades. How did a poor Jewish kid from Brooklyn become one of the most universally adored showmen of all time? There's only one way to tell it: a musical set to his era-defining smash hits that entranced the world.
But more often than not, “A Beautiful Noise” gets bogged down in a labored narrative premise in which a bitter and depressed Diamond of the present day (played by Mark Jacoby) relives a sanitized and simplified version of his life story by talking to a psychologist (Linda Powell) who serves as an interviewer/interrogator, culminating in a contrived attempt to achieve an emotional climax (in which both versions of Neil Diamond sing “I Am…I Said” together) and finally find an excuse for adding “America” into the playlist.
In the end, A Beautiful Noise can’t overcome the central challenge of being a Neil Diamond biomusical, which is that Diamond’s life has not been, in and of itself, especially dramatic. (The Gloria Estefan musical On Your Feet! had the same problem.) His first two marriages failed, but in drifts and not crashes; an association with mob-linked record executives (Michael McCormick and Tom Alan Robbins) is quickly overcome. The therapeutic framing notwithstanding, what we get here is less a story than a retrospective sequence of events, or perhaps events of sequins.
Digital Lottery:
Price: $55
Where: The digital lottery for A Beautiful Noise can be found at rush.telecharge.com.
When: Entries for the digital lottery, will start at 12 AM ET, one day before the performance, and winners are drawn the same day at 9 AM ET and 3 PM ET.
Limit: Two per customer
Information: Seats may be located in any section of the theater. While every effort will be made to seat pairs together with a full view, there is a chance that pairs may be split up and that your seat may have a partial view of the stage.
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