"A Beautiful Noise" on Broadway takes the audience through decades of Neil Diamond's life and career.“A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical,” which creaked open Sunday night on Broadway, begins in the most sedate and uninvolving manner imaginable. The lights come up on a plain-looking therapy session and the titular musician, now in old age , sits opposite a woman in a red leather armchair.2 hours and 15 minutes, with one intermission.
Or the two singalongs, to “Song Sung Blue” and “Sweet Caroline,” that, at my performance anyway, prompted very little singing along.At first the musical follows the usual jukebox musical formula, straightforwardly depicting a young Brooklyn-born Diamond playing guitar at the Bitter End rock club on Bleecker Street and being discovered by record producer Ellie Greenwich . His nascent career is not unlike Carole King’s.
Act 2 is a mostly incomprehensible fusing of events with the basic takeaway that fame is hard. Diamond tours the world, his hair gets bushier and his outfits shinier. His star status strains his relationship with Murphey, and Swenson and Hurder duet on “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.”
They already hit the million dollar club for current musicals. Not hardly on the rocks. Lots of bad reporting by The Post though.
Sucks because Forever in Blue Jeans is lit.