A Beautiful Noise is a show that celebrates the life and music of Neil Diamond – a trail that takes us through five decades of Diamond and contains some of his biggest hit songs. The star of the show is Fisher Stevens, a Neil Diamond tribute act and winner of TV show Stars In Their Eyes back in 2001.
The show kicked off with some images being shown on the big screen at the back of the stage, the musicians for the show are set on lit platforms spanning the whole width with a set of stairs in the middle. A narrator accompanies the images, highlighting some facts about Diamond – the fact that he was born and brought up in Brooklyn and his family and school life in that area.
The live show includes a full band with several guitarists, a drummer, a brass section that includes saxophone and trumpet along with a keyboard player – all are in full flow as we hear a short instrumental medley of some of Diamond’s most well-known tracks.
Stevens joins the stage through the centre staircase and takes us into “Brooklyn Roads” from 1968, a nice opening especially with the images of Brooklyn on the big screen and the title of the show “A Beautiful Noise”. Stevens then spoke of Diamond’s days as a songwriter in the Birdland Club in New York City where he would eventually write some hit songs for other performers. However, the show took something of an odd detour at this point with a medley of songs performed that came out of the Birdland Club but had very little or nothing to do with Neil Diamond – this seemed a little out of place.
The song “I’m A Believer” was next in the show. This was picked up and recorded by The Monkees with great success and this was Diamond’s breakout moment and other successes followed with very notable names such as Elvis Presley, Lulu and Cliff Richard recording Diamond songs with great success – interestingly he always intended for them to release them himself but he had become known for songwriting and some big artists were very keen to release his work.
In 1966 Neil Diamond signed his first record deal and started to release his own material. Stevens proceeded to talk us through this part of Diamond’s life singing “Solitary Man”, “Cherry Cherry” and “Kentucky Woman” – all songs released on his first record label. We also heard “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” which was released around the same time and Stevens made reference to a cover version of this being used in Quentin Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction.
Shortly before the interval, the show took another strange detour during the performance of “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”, a song Diamond didn’t write but released in 1970 – a year after The Hollies’ version. The big screen showed images of what appeared to be random artistes that have passed away over the years – some you could argue are connected to Diamond in some way such as Elvis and Johnny Cash but this list included artistes such as Michael Jackson, David Bowie, George Michael and Prince! All very talented but I’m not convinced they have any place in a Neil Diamond show.
The second half opened with Stevens returning to the stage with “Forever In Blue Jeans” and “I Am … I Said” which had the audience singing along very nicely. However, we then saw another of the now familiar detours as one of Stevens’ backing singers performed a rendition of “Woman In Love”, a song released by Barbra Streisand and written by The Bee Gees. Now this subsequently led into the Diamond / Streisand duet from 1978 “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers” which I have to say was beautifully performed and definitely one of my favourite parts of the show – but the idea that the show needed a solo Streisand performance was confusing to me.
The show finished in rousing style with a number of hits from The Jazz Singer including “Love On The Rocks”, “Hello Again” and “America” with the final rendition of “Sweet Caroline” having the audience on our feet singing along.
Despite my criticisms of this show, what I will say about this show is that Fisher Stevens is an incredible Neil Diamond impersonator. It is very hard to tell vocally the difference between Stevens and the real thing – you have to hear him live to appreciate this. I was just disappointed with the overall show as I think it drifted away from the subject matter too often – Neil Diamond has a back catalogue of hits to fill many hours and so the many detours seemed unnecessary.
Reviewer – John Fish
on – 17/10/18
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