Where it begins is with a couple of people facing each other in easy chairs. One is a therapist known only as The Doctor. The other is an elderly Neil Diamond, the singer-songwriter best known for songs such as “Sweet Caroline,” “Cracklin’ Rosie” and “Song Sung Blue.”
Diamond is in this position at the behest of his current wife because he’s “difficult to live with.” He hopes these sessions will exorcize the demons responsible for the dark “clouds” of depression that have haunted him for decades.
The modern-day Diamond (Tom Bottelsen) thinks this process is futile, because “I put everything I had into my songs.” So The Doctor (Lisa Reneé Pitts) produces a volume of Diamond’s lyrics and begins to quote from it.
And out of the darkness that surrounds them emerges a 10-member vocal ensemble to sing a medley of some of Diamond’s classic songs built around the title song of his 1976 album “Beautiful Noise.” That also serves as the title of the show that opened its Tulsa run Tuesday at the Tulsa PAC, presented by Celebrity Attractions.
As with any jukebox musical, what’s important in “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical” is the songs. People who attend these shows do so not to learn about the life of a favorite artist, but to hear — and, let’s be honest, maybe sing along with — songs that have been a part of their lives for years, even decades.
And if those songs can gain gravitas by serving as dramatic beats within a hagiography such as “A Beautiful Noise,” so much the better.
Diamond always has had a flair for the melodramatic in his music, although there is not a great deal of drama — melo or otherwise — in the way his life story is told in “A Beautiful Noise.” The musical, with a book by novelist and playwright Anthony McCarten, was created with Diamond’s assistance and approval.
We learn of a couple of broken marriages, the typical trials of a struggling young artist, a bad business deal that briefly brought him in conflict with gun-wielding gangsters, complaints about the physical and emotional strain of being on that endless treadmill of “write-record-tour” that comes with being one of the most successful musical artists of all time — and that’s about it for the story.
Fortunately Diamond’s songs work well in almost any context. Most of his best-known hits are featured, as well as songs he wrote that others made famous, such as “I’m A Believer,” a hit for TV band The Monkees.
“American Idol” winner Nick Fradiani plays the younger version of Diamond, and he does an excellent job of capturing the sound of Diamond’s singing voice, which one of the show’s characters describes as being “like gravel wrapped in velvet.”
Fradiani also gets across the energy and spectacle of Diamond’s famous live shows, with righteous performances of such songs as “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show,” “Crunchy Granola Suite” and “Thank the Lord for the Night Time.”
The actresses playing Diamond’s first two wives each have a show-stopping moment. For Tiffany Tatreau, who plays Diamond’s first wife Jaye Posner, it’s “Love on the Rocks,” which accompanies the scene where their marriage falls apart. Mary Page Nance as Marcia Murphey gets to tear up the stage in “Forever in Blue Jeans,” making this somewhat vapid number into a cri de coeur, expressing all the frustrations of lives lived apart in the pursuit of stardom.
Bottelsen, who recently took over the “Neil – Now” role, doesn’t look or sound much like Diamond. But he gets across a sense of vulnerability and the unease of revealing too much of one’s past to a stranger. The program includes a message from Diamond himself that speaks to his years of psychoanalysis and the benefits he gained from it.
The 10-member ensemble billed as “The Beautiful Noise” more than lived up to that moniker, providing sterling harmonies supplied by musical supervisor and arranger Sonny Paladino. Miles Plant led the nine-piece onstage band, Steven Hoggett came up with the rudimentary choreography and Michael Mayer directed.
And yes, there were several sing-along moments, including a final rendition of “Sweet Caroline” (bom, bom, bom) as the finale.
“A Beautiful Noise” continues through Feb. 22 at the Tulsa PAC, 101 E. Third St. For tickets: call 918-596-7111 or visit tulsapac.com.
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