A Beautiful Noise: When a Newcomer’s Trash is a Superfan’s Treasure - by Elizabeth Teskey

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 A Beautiful Noise: When a Newcomer’s Trash is a Superfan’s Treasure

You’ve had this nightmare before. You’re certain of it. You’re attending someone’s retirement party but- you’ve never met the honoree in question. The night is a collage of melodies passionately belted by the partygoers, adeptly recognizing the song within seconds of its opening melody. You don’t know the words. You hear tale after tale of the retiree’s greatness. You’re given little time to arrive at this conclusion yourself. You hear a touching speech about his persistent loneliness. You can’t help but feel the same. You’ve spent your night crashing a party ill-equipped to newcomers. 

But the velvet covering the plush theater-style chair under your fingertips feels all too real. You’ve just endured a night at The Neil Diamond Musical: A Beautiful Noise. 

ABN follows retired rockstar Niel Diamond (Robert Westenberg) in his mid-seventies, processing the twilight of his career, using a comprehensive almanac of his song lyrics to provoke rhinestone-studded flashbacks of the career, relationships, and so-called clouds that defined his life. 

ABN boasts similarity to biographical predecessors Beautiful: The Carol King Musical and Jersey Boys — the production’s largest blessing and curse. For die- hard Diamond fans, the night is a 2.5 hour tour down memory lane. There are singalongs, live-concert-esque moments, and darker contexts revealed about the bedazzled public life he led. Diamond himself, majorly involved in the show’s creation, viewed ABN as the autobiographical farewell concert he never got to perform. Essentially, it was a Niel Diamond concert, featuring 30+ greatest hits, dedicated to the fans. 

A fan-centered show, however, needn’t waste time helping their protagonist win over their audience. Nor must it frequently bridge the gap between its music and its plot. Between the piped-in applause, the paparazzi strobe lighting, and the hyperbolic claims that Diamond was the biggest rock star of all time less than two minutes after his first recording label, one feels pressured rather than convinced into understanding the hype. The plotline is constantly interrupted by concert-style performances, whose song choices bear little obvious relevance to the events at hand. The show at points becomes a slog through performances of random song after random song. Even many of the emotional beats of ABN felt like thrown-in excuses to sing another hit, like how Diamond’s classic America reflected a left-field revelation about generational trauma whose only foreshadowing was the throwaway Jewish jokes in Aact I1:. Likely touching and clever for those knowing the music, but lackluster and rushed for newbies. 

In all, ABN may have been the perfect Niel Diamond farewell for the flocks of 70+ year olds filling its audiences around the nation, with greatest hits including a showstopping rendition of Forever in Blue Jeans (Shoutout to spotlight-stealing actress Hannah Jewel Kohn!). But newcomers to ABN need hardly worry about missing out on a possible upcoming worldwide hit. With its resistance to a younger, unfamiliar audience, this show is likely to die as soon as its fans do. 

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