Review: A BEAUTIFUL NOISE at Hollywood Pantages Theater

There's a moment in "A Beautiful Noise," the jukebox musical about the career of Neil Diamond, where Nick Fradiani, as Diamond, says to his future wife (Hannah Jewel Kohn), "What if woe IS me?" It is at this moment that what had been a lightweight somewhat chaotic musical biography sharpens its focus and becomes a cathartic examination of a shy, reclusive Jewish boy from Brooklyn who becomes a reluctant superstar in the heady 1970s and '80s. The touring company production opened at the Hollywood Pantages Theater on Tuesday, July 8 in a run that continues through July 27. 

With a book by Anthony McCarten ("Bohemian Rhapsody"), "A Beautiful Nose" sheds light on Diamond's career, which produced some of the most intoxicatingly beautiful and infectious songs of the rock era. Diamond rose to popularity at the dawn of the singer-songwriter era, and although he started in the folkie atmosphere of Greenwich Village, it didn't take him long to transfer to the Brill Building pop factory, meeting his mentor, songwriter Ellie Greenwich, who encouraged him to start performing his own songs instead of writing hits for others.

The musical uses as its framework a conversation between a retired Diamond, suffering from Parkinson's disease, and his therapist, who tries to get Diamond to analyze the dark cloud that has accompanied him throughout his career. Scenes from his life are dramatized, beginning with his cartoonish encounter with songwriter/turned record mogul Bert Berns, who gave Diamond his first hits on the Bang record label, and progressing through his glitzy, sequined years selling out huge concert venues such as Hollywood's Greek Theater (which is, surprisingly, not mentioned). 

The result is a portrait painted in broad strokes, and although some of the dialog is embarrassing, the overall impression is that of a man who feels most at home when he is away from home, on stage performing his myriad of hits. The songs are almost universally predictable, from early hand-clapping bubbble-gum hits like "Solitary Man" and "Cherry Cherry" to his later, more self-indulgent power ballads like "Love On the Rocks" and "Hello Again." 

But there was a lot more to Diamond's songwriting than his hits, something that is not properly plumbed in the show. In an effort to please Diamond's millions of fans who live to sing the "ba-ba-ba's" and "so good, so good, so goods" to "Sweet Caroline," the production sticks to mainly charting hits. But there were other songs that could have been included as well, songs that give further insight into Diamond's brooding personality, such as "Done Too Soon," a laundry list of celebrities, inventors, authors, and notorious personalities from his 1969 "Tap Root Manuscript" LP that concludes with the sobering lyric, "And each one there has one thing to share, they have sweated beneath the same sun, looked up in wonder at the same moon, and wept when it was all done, for being done too soon." The implication is that Diamond, still at the start of the most lucrative part of his career, was fully aware that fame was fleeting. The song is one of the most disquietingly beautiful and thought-provoking of his career, but remained an album track. 

Other superb album tracks such as "Walk on Water," "Holiday Inn Blues," "The Last Picasso," and "Morningside" are also ignored, all of which could have added depth to Diamond's self-analysis. Diamond's most innovative work, the magnificent "African Trilogy" from "Tap Root Manuscript," rivals the Beatles' medleys on "Abbey Road" in its emotional impact and superb orchestrations, although "Soolaimon," extracted from the suite as a single, is included in the show's playlist of hits. Also unmentioned is Diamond's early cup of coffee with Columbia records in 1963 that produced his very first single, the deservedly forgotten "Clown Town."

What remains, however, is good enough, thanks to a superb performance by Fradiani as performer/Diamond, perfectly capturing his "gravel-wrapped-in-velvet" voice and on stage mannerisms, although physically he looks more like the Fonz than the leather-fringed superstar. As the older Diamond, Robert Westenberg doesn't fare as well, totally unrecognizable in physicality or spirit as he exposes his inner self to his therapist, played by Lisa Reneé Pitts. Kohn is especially good as Diamond's second wife Marcia, delivering a strutting performance of "Forever in Blue Jeans" while parading across the stage. 

The musical orchestrations are excellent, performed by conductor/keyboardist James Olmstead, fronting an on-stage proscenium rock band, but even better were the vocal harmonies and arrangements of Sonny Paladino. Most impressive is the opening musical number in which the cast perform a swirling montage of excerpts from some of his most familiar numbers, each blending into one another in a foggy cloud of recognition. 

The story threatens to descend into soap opera territory as Diamond hops from one marriage to another, but it would have been great to have learned more about his songwriting process, especially the celebrated "Sweet Caroline," purportedly written about the fatherless daughter of the late JFK, and some of the more opaque numbers on his 1972 album "Moods," probably his deepest and most satisfying LP, which featured colorfully worded songs like "Porcupine Pie," "Gitchy Goomy," and "Captain Sunshine." Maybe the most introspective song of Diamond's career, the sweeping "I Am...I Said" is given a prominent position in the show, in which Diamond finally comes to terms with his inability to accept the fact that his career has ended. 

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