5 days ago
4
Will Swenson has been in training his whole life to play Neil Diamond, the subject of the jukebox musical A Beautiful Noise, which makes its Australian debut next year.
“He was such a staple in my house – my dad loved him so much – that I just knew all the songs,” says the 52-year-old who was unveiled as the star of the show at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre on Thursday.
As a kid, Swenson performed Diamond songs “as a party trick”. “I wanted to impress girls with my guitar playing, and around the campfire I would sing Play Me, which is like the dirtiest song … this was as an eighth-grader, not really having any idea what I was saying.”
Years later, he would join his wife, fellow Broadway star Audra McDonald, on stage for a jokey rendition of You Don’t Bring Me Flowers. “We’d say, ‘This is our song, it kind of represents our relationship’. And she’d slap me halfway through.”
Neil Diamond started out writing songs for other people, but for four decades from the 1970s he was a recording and touring machine.
When he heard there was a musical in development, Swenson knew he had to go for it. “I mean, I was close to Neil’s stuff, I knew this is a voice I can do, I play the guitar, I look like him a bit. This is a fit for me.”
Luckily, one of the show’s producers had seen his cabaret schtick with his wife, and thought so too. But the person who most needed convincing was the man himself.
Swenson recalls the day in January 2020 when he performed a bunch of songs for Diamond in the rehearsal room, as the producers hoped and prayed the subject of their budding show would give it his blessing.
“And he liked it, and we got the green light. And then a month later, the world shut down.”
The show – which is structured around the older Diamond’s sessions with his therapist – finally did open on Broadway in December 2022. Swenson played the younger Diamond, singing 23 songs a night, eight shows a week. And after a year, he says, “as much as I loved it and was having a blast, I needed to take a break and heal up a bit”.
Neil Diamond surprised the opening night audience, and the cast and crew, with a performance of Sweet Caroline at the Broadway premiere in December 2022.
A year on, voice and body back in top condition, he got the call asking if he fancied revisiting the role in Australia. “And I was like, ‘Yeah, there’s a lot of interest. I’ll jump back into that’.”
The investment in this show is personal for veteran promoter and producer Paul Dainty, too. He first toured Diamond in this country in the 1980s, and all up did “seven or eight big arena tours” with him.
The relationship was good business, but there was a personal dimension too.
“You don’t often have the sort of connection with a show like I’ve got with this one,” says Dainty, who was an original investor in the Broadway production. “We forged a strong friendship over those years. In fact, he was godfather to my son. It’s nice to be bringing his life story to the stage after having had that association.”
Neil Diamond is one of the music industry’s genuine titans. He has sold more than 130 million records under his own name, as well as writing songs for others (including The Monkees, Elvis Presley and Deep Purple). Sweet Caroline, Kentucky Woman, I’m a Believer, Solitary Man, Shilo, Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon … he wrote them all.
He was one of the biggest concert acts for decades from the 1970s, with his double live LP Hot August Night sitting at number 1 in Australia for 29 weeks in 1973-74. He was the first artist to sell a million concert tickets in this country – “and there were many more after that”, adds Dainty.
In 2017, Diamond was forced to retire from performing after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease (Dainty in fact had tickets on sale for another Australian tour, which had to be cancelled, at the time). But he did appear in the Broadway theatre on opening night, even singing Sweet Caroline from his private box to the delight of the audience.
The singer joined Dainty and Swenson at the Princess Theatre on Thursday, too, albeit via FaceTime from his home in the US. What chance he might make it Down Under for opening night next year?
Promoter Paul Dainty and performer Will Swenson were joined by Neil Diamond, via FaceTime.Credit: Chris Hopkins
“We’ll see,” says Dainty. “He loves Australia, he’s spent a lot of time here over the years, so it would be pretty special.”
Neil Diamond in Melbourne on a hot (or more likely cold) August night for the opening of his own show?
“It would be a beautiful noise,” Dainty says. “A beautiful night.”
A Beautiful Noise is at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne from August 5, 2026. Tickets on sale now at ticketek.com.au
