Neil Diamond celebrates birthday with Beautiful Noise cast, audience
After a performance of “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical,” the cast and audience sang Happy Birthday and “Sweet Caroline” to the singer.
DKC/O&M
- The show features many of Neil Diamond’s greatest hits, including “Sweet Caroline,” “America,” and “I’m a Believer.”
- Actor Gene Weygandt plays two supporting roles and understudies the part of the present-day Neil Diamond.
- The musical was created in collaboration with Diamond, who retired from touring in 2018 after a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.
Gene Weygandt was a teenager playing in what he calls “a very mediocre rock ‘n’ roll band” when The Monkees topped the charts with “I’m a Believer,” penned by future Songwriters Hall of Famer Neil Diamond.
“‘I’m a Believer’ just knocked us out. That was just such a great song — and really remains so. It’s just a terrific pop song; that’s all there is to it,” Weygandt said.
Nowadays, the longtime Chicago-based actor is playing two supporting roles as well as serving as an understudy in the part of the present-day Diamond, aka Neil — Now, in the national touring production of “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.”
Created in collaboration with Neil Diamond himself, the jukebox musical tells the true story of how a kid from Brooklyn, New York, became a chart-topping, show-stopping Rock and Roll Hall of Famer. The show is playing Oklahoma City through March 8 at the Civic Center Music Hall as part of OKC Broadway’s 10th anniversary season.
“It’s just a great time,” Weygandt said. “It’s just an exciting, thrilling acting experience to go from the beginning to the end of of this guy’s story.”
What Neil Diamond songs are featured in the musical ‘A Beautiful Noise?’
Written by four-time Oscar nominee Anthony McCarten (“The Theory of Everything,” “Bohemian Rhapsody”), “A Beautiful Noise” shares its name with Diamond’s 1976 album and its bouncy title track.
The musical biopic of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award honoree opened on Broadway in December 2022 and played 35 previews and 650-plus regular performances through June 30, 2023. The national tour launched in September 2024 and stars 2015 “American Idol” winner Nick Fradiani as Neil — Then, the role he also played on Broadway starting in October 2023.
Diamond, 85, retired from the road in 2018 after his diagnosis with Parkinson’s disease, but he has sold more than 130 million albums over the past half-century. “A Beautiful Noise” features several of his biggest hits, including the title track, “I’m a Believer,” “America,” “Forever in Blue Jeans,” “Cracklin’ Rosie” and “Song Sung Blue,” which also is the name of a new Oscar-nominated film starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.
Of course, Diamond’s beloved stadium anthem “Sweet Caroline” also is featured in the stage musical.
During the national tour’s recent Tulsa stop, Weygandt, 75, who has appeared on Broadway in “Come from Away,” “Wicked” and “Big,” shared what else OKC audiences can expect from “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical:”
Q: Is this experience as super fun as it sounds — touring the country performing Neil Diamond songs?
It’s a great experience for a number of reasons. First and foremost, I just love the show. And I don’t know if this is a backhanded compliment to the show, but it’s the truth: I did not expect to like it much, and I absolutely love it. … It’s presented as Neil Diamond, close to his current age, speaking with some sort of a therapist and remembering his life through his songs. And I promise you, it’s a very potent emotional journey. …
The other thing about this show is that you never know what you’re going to get in terms of just the people. And it is an absolutely wonderful group of people through and through. I believe that there are 56 of us in this company, if you include stage management, orchestra and stagehands. … It is just a stellar group of people to travel with, to hang out with and, once in a while, be stuck in an airport with … or to go with today as we’re going to see the Greenwood Rising museum.
Q: Along with serving as an understudy for Neil — Now, you regularly play the roles of Fred Weintraub and Tommy O’Rourke. What do you enjoy about those parts?
Fred Weintraub, you probably know, owned The Bitter End coffee shop in the East Village in New York, and lots and lots of stars came through there early in their careers. It was a great place to go hear music, and he’s a little bit of a functionary, I suppose, in the show, just in terms of introducing Neil as a young performer. It was the very first place he ever performed live — and he was terribly shy and terribly nervous about the whole thing.
But then the Tommy O’Rourke character is sort of an amalgamation. … The Bert Berns character, who appears with Tommy, was really a record producer in the ’60s and a songwriter himself. And then Tommy O’Rourke stands in for the mob connection that Bert Berns had to enforce his crummy contracts. Van Morrison was also subject to this, got involved with this guy as a young performer, wanted his own record deal, and found himself locked into this terrible, terrible contract that was literally enforced by the mob — and it was very difficult for them to get out of it.
So, that’s also a fairly important part of Neil’s story. … But it’s fun to play the two completely different characters, because Fred Weintraub is a pleasant, gregarious fellow who’s happy to have Neil and all the patrons in his club. And then I get to have the fun of playing a tough guy, a New York mob guy. So, I get a kick out of that. (laughs)
Q: You’re 75 years old, touring the country and performing eight shows a week of this musical — is that a sign of how much you love the work?
It’s satisfying work. This is not something you stop doing if you can. … I love the work. I love doing this, the creative part of it. When I’m Neil, playing the show with Lisa (Reneé Pitts), who plays the doctor, it is just as exciting an acting experience as I’ve ever had. She’s so alive and so fresh every night, and it is so challenging and human that you get pulled into the story.
And you get to do all the things that brought us to acting in the first place, when we were young. That kind of excitement — the excitement of being part of this creation with all these amazing people — is just hard to calculate, hard to express. It’s what you look for, it’s what you strive for, it’s what you hope every job will turn out to be — and they don’t always. … I think just about everybody in the company shares a similar reaction to being part of this.
‘A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical’
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