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    Review: A stellar voice elevates ‘A Beautiful Noise’ at the Segerstrom Center
    • July 30, 2025

    “Solitary Man” is the first song Neil Diamond recorded and this title, unexpectedly, turns out to be the thematic underpinning of “A Beautiful Noise,” the jukebox musical bio that arrived Tuesday, July 29 at the Segerstrom Center for a two-week, mostly sold out (better hurry!) run.

    While there’s musical joy on display in 29 glittery Diamond hits from over the decades — fair enough to characterize them as “so good, so good, so good” — the somewhat surprising storyline is an extended psychiatric dive into the singer’s dour, alienated nature, a search to tell why Neil has been loneliest at his top.

    The curtain rises to find the latter-day character (in the program he is called “Neil-Now”), sitting stony-faced in an oversize, cushy armchair, avoiding eye contact with a woman facing him in a matching chair.

    This silent treatment showdown — Diamond has been pushed into therapy by his third wife — avoids getting to the heart of why a guy who seemingly has it all, ultimately feels he has nothing at all.

    To break through Diamond’s frosty nature — in a previous session, he justified it by saying “I put everything I have into my songs” — the therapist reveals a copy of the Diamond songbook.

    • Nick Fradiani performs as “Neil – Then” (center), with Robert...

      Nick Fradiani performs as “Neil – Then” (center), with Robert Westenberg as “Neil – Now” (left) and Lisa Reneé Pitts as Doctor in “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.” (Photo by Jeremy Daniel)

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    Nick Fradiani performs as “Neil – Then” (center), with Robert Westenberg as “Neil – Now” (left) and Lisa Reneé Pitts as Doctor in “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.” (Photo by Jeremy Daniel)

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    For the duration of the 2 ½-hour show the pair stolidly thumb through this roadmap of his past searching for lyrical clues, while a singing and briskly choreographed ensemble energetically swirls about, recreating hits starting from Diamond’s earliest days as songwriter and then singer.

    While suitable as a device to structure the storytelling, this is something an audience gets used to rather than anticipates. Not to mention that it creates storytelling limitations.

    For instance, paging through the songbook largely restricts learning much about how Diamond’s childhood might have shaped his insecurities. Additionally, Neil-Now is dad to four kids, but they’re hardly mentioned since his family life largely accents Diamond breaking up with wives he hardly ever sees (providing a chance to hear the Barbra Streisand duet number “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers,” sung here with his on-the-way, out-the-door second wife).

    To the detriment of the proceedings late in the second act, there is a wad of exposition gristle that brings things full stop in the form of a labored revelation of why Diamond is such a grump and perhaps maybe won’t be one in the future.

    The reason this show truly does live up to its title, is  “Neil-Then,” aka, the amazingly voiced Nick Fradiani.

    Biographical jukebox musicals on tour inevitably lose steam when merely adequate casting serves up a bland approximation in place of superstar performance.

    But Fradiani, a 2015 “American Idol” winner who took over this role at the end of its Broadway run, has an astonishing instrument, impossibly close to the real Diamond in his 20th century vocal prime.

    Fradiani’s baritone — “gravel wrapped in velvet” is how an early character describes the Diamond voice — has the pitch and power to deliver. Leading the musical ensemble, whether it’s the boisterous “Cherry, Cherry,” the full-throated, stately “I Am … I Said” or that yearning, powerhouse “Solitary Man” … song by song, Fradiani makes no missteps.

    He is equally right sporting the impossibly high-piled pompadour hair and black leather jacket of Diamond’s early, scuffling years as well as the poofy long-haired, black and silvery sequined looks of the superstar era.

    The show has satisfying performances in the supportive roles.

    Veteran stage actor Robert Westenberg — Broadway credits include the original mounting of “Into the Woods” and as Javert in “Les Misérables” — brings a craggy, pleading intensity to Neil-Now. It’s a treat to hear him harmonize with Fradiani in the show’s closing number. (Care to take a guess what that might be?}

    Tiffany Tatreau and Hannah Jewel Kohn are apt at animating the very differing personalities of Diamond’s first two wives. Each does right by numbers with different moods: Tatreau’s singing in the nowadays lesser known “Play Me” is suitably plaintive, but not acquiescent. Kohn sasses up the energetic “Forever in Blue Jeans.”

    In nonsinging parts, Kate A. Mulligan is an amusing presence as an early-career Diamond cheerleader while Lisa Renee Pitts is a suitably patient and probing force as the therapist in the armchair pushing Diamond to discover what makes him really tick.

    Finally, a bit of unasked for advice to all burgeoning pop music stars whose life could become a jukebox musical:  maybe go on tour a little bit less?

    From those Jersey Boys through the Temptations and now Neil Diamond, a lesson of incessant road touring over the decades is you may generate — and, who knows, even keep? — millions of dollars.

    But it seems likely to generate a lifetime of wreckage on the home front … though maybe your jukebox musical won’t have as much drama.

    Just sayin’.

    ‘A Beautiful Noise’

    Rating: 3 stars (out of a possible 4)

    Where: Segerstrom Hall, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa

    When: Through Aug. 10. 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sundays

    Tickets: $66.67-$179.67

    Information: 949-556-2787; scfta.org

    ​ Orange County Register 

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