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.
“Sweet Caroline” lands right before intermission, and the whole scene is so good (So good! So good! So good!) that this New Yorker almost forgot the song is the anthem for the Boston Red Sox. Book writer and biopic veteran Anthony McCarten (The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, Bohemian Rhapsody), also represented on Broadway this season by the Warhol-Basquiat play The Collaboration, places the songs thoughtfully, and for maximum emotional effect: Diamond’s first live performance is acoustic, the melancholy slow burn “Solitary Man.” As his confidence grows onstage, his numbers get bigger and glitzier. Act 2 opens with the wild, soulful “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” featuring the singer in full razzle-dazzle, sequin-and-tassel mode and the chorus shimmying for dear life. Combining “Brooklyn Roads” with “America” is a stroke of genius (though bringing in Neil’s bickering parents between verses dampens the mood). And the existential power ballad “I Am…I Said” gets the spot it deserves, as the 11 o’clock number, where it’s sung by Mark Jacoby as present-day Neil, with Swenson joining in at the end.
Given the advances in technology, you can imagine a future in which coders will be able to re-create the Neil Diamond concert experience in hologram form. (The star, now 81, retired from touring four years ago due to a battle with Parkinson’s.) For now, though, Swenson & Co. offer a reasonable facsimile of Diamond in the flesh for fans to soak up. Or, to paraphrase that quintessential Diamond hit “Sweet Caroline,” they try so hard, so hard, so hard.
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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