A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical is playing at Melbourne's Princess Theatre, where Broadway star Will Swenson delivers a performance so magnetic that the production's structural flaws recede whenever he takes centre stage. The Guardian review praises Swenson's swagger, charm and expansive showmanship, noting that his voice ranges effortlessly over Diamond's catalogue—from the easy sensuality of Cherry, Cherry to the lip-curling contempt of Solitary Man. Diamond's timbre and inflection are precisely realised, yet Swenson's own warmth comes through, making it feel less like mimicry and more like genuine musical collaboration.
But the show, like so many jukebox musicals, can't fully escape the gravitational pull of hagiography. The review notes that producers typically want a clean, uplifting version of a life that augments rather than complicates an artist's reputation. Most such shows simply give up and pile on the praise. A Beautiful Noise tries something more ambitious—opening with 85-year-old Diamond, played by Terence Crawford, moping to a therapist about "the clouds" that gather over his thoughts and make him irascible with loved ones. When the doctor, played by Monica Sayers, pulls out a book of his complete lyrics and suggests they mine the material for insight, the songs literally pour out in the form of a chorus emerging from the back of his armchair. It's a sweetly daggy but moving moment.
The Therapy Session Problem
Book writer Anthony McCarten builds the entire show around this therapist framing device, but the review says Diamond and the doctor haunt the edges of each scene, commenting pointlessly from the side and repeatedly re-establishing the moping. In the second act, the show begins to feel like an actual therapy session. McCarten mistakes self-indulgence for self-reflection, the review argues, hoping poorly placed flakes of exposition will substitute for emotional honesty.
There's an undeniable solipsism in the show, so most of the other characters feel superfluous or ornamental. Diamond's first wife Jaye, played by Alana Tranter, is depicted as a dowdy housewife and easily dispatched. Second wife Marcia, played by Ashleigh Rubenach, fares better but is largely left holding a long-distance phone and pleading for her husband's return. Music producer Ellie Greenwich, played by Hannah Fredericksen, and club owner Fred Weintraub, played by Tim Wright, are there to throw out affirmations and encouragement. The women, in particular, exist primarily to reflect Diamond's genius back at him—a tired theatrical convention that reduces complex relationships to narrative scaffolding.
When the Songs Work
Many of Diamond's songs are used cleverly, the review notes, with their inherent drama repurposed as emotional crises or turning points. Play Me becomes a lush, swooning love song for Marcia and Diamond. You Don't Send Me Flowers works as their break-up song. Sweet Caroline and Holly Holy are rousing conclusions to each act. I Am … I Said becomes a moment of catharsis for the contemporary Diamond. The reviewer suggests Morningside, about loneliness, ageing and the legacy of children and art, would have made more thematic sense.
Director Michael Mayer injects huge amounts of energy and verve into proceedings, though he leans on familiar tropes and frayed dramatic beats—including another recording-studio sequence in which the unknown rookie blows everyone away. David Rockwell's scenic design is unfussy and effective. Kevin Adams' lighting is fleshy and flash. Emilio Sosa's costumes have an ecclesiastic fervour in Diamond's most gospel-inspired songs and neatly evoke the era. Stephen Hoggett's choreography is hammy, though the cast throw themselves into it enthusiastically.
The production is on at Melbourne's Princess Theatre until October, then moves to Lyric Theatre Sydney from November.
Why This Matters:
The jukebox musical remains one of the most commercially successful forms in theatre, yet it's often compromised before audiences even enter the auditorium. Producers want clean narratives that don't complicate an artist's reputation—a conservative impulse that flattens the messy, contradictory humanity that makes great art possible. A Beautiful Noise tries something more ambitious with its therapy framing, but still can't escape the genre's inherent limitations: the solipsism that reduces supporting characters to props, the self-indulgence that masquerades as introspection, the reluctance to interrogate the personal costs of creative genius. What saves it is Swenson's heroically charismatic performance and the undeniable richness of Diamond's catalogue. Audiences will reach out to touch it in all its cheesy, maximalist, rhinestone-encrusted glory—but the form itself remains trapped between commercial imperatives and artistic ambition.