The cinematic nature of the mind

Broadhurst Theatre curtain call for a jubilant Mark Jacoby (Neil Diamond now) and Will Swenson (Neil Diamond then) in A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical, book by Anthony McCarten, directed by Michael Mayer Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

When I spoke with Tony Award-winning director Michael Mayer (Spring Awakening, nominated for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Thoroughly Modern Millie) in April of 2022 he had just launched his Broadway revival of Funny Girl, starring Beanie Feldstein (since replaced by Lea Michele) in the Barbra Streisand role as Fanny Brice and Ramin Karimloo taking on Nicky Arnstein, played by Omar Sharif in the film. Now he has A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical with Will Swenson starring as Diamond (then) and Mark Jacoby as Diamond (now). The book is by Anthony McCarten (screenwriter of The Two Popes. On Wednesday, December 28, 2022 Pope Francis announced that retired Pope Benedict XVI, age 95, was “very ill.” Three days later, on Saturday, December 31 the Vatican disclosed that Pope Benedict XVI had died). McCarten also has on Broadway The Collaboration with Jeremy Pope as Jean-Michel Basquiat and Paul Bettany as Andy Warhol, directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah at the Manhattan Theatre Club Samuel J Friedman Theatre.

Michael Mayer with Anne-Katrin Titze on Anthony McCarten: “He was great to work with. He’s done musical movies [Bohemian Rhapsody, Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody], but never a stage musical.”

That’s three shows between them up and running live for theatre-goers to enjoy in 2023. Happy New Year one and all from me to you!

From New York City, Michael Mayer joined me on Zoom for an in-depth conversation on A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.

Anne-Katrin Titze: Hi, Michael, so good to see you! How are you?

Michael Mayer: I’m okay, still standing! I just haven’t stopped working for months and months and months.

AKT: It has been a busy and eventful year, yes. How is A Beautiful Noise going?

MM: It’s going very well. It’s going great, everyone’s having a really good experience. It’s been terrific.

AKT: And Funny Girl is having a second wave with the new cast.

MM: That’s crazy over there, that’s like a whole new world. It’s been a very interesting year, I will say that.

AKT: Ramin is still in the cast, right?

MM: Yes, everyone is still in the cast. The only people that are new are Lea and Tovah.

AKT: I thought about you earlier today when I spoke with Marie Kreutzer about her film Corsage.

MM: Corsage?

AKT: Yes, Austria’s Oscar entry [now shortlisted], about Empress Sisi of Austria.

Neil Diamond (Will Swenson) auditioning at the Bitter End singing Solitary Man Photo: Julieta Cervantes

MM: Oh wow.

AKT: With Vicky Krieps of Phantom Thread. It’s very interesting. There is a moment when she falls off her horse which ends in a big catastrophe very similar to Marnie. And I had to think about your fabulous staging of the horses at The Met.

MM: Amazing!

AKT: In Beautiful Noise there were actually a few moments that made me think of Hollywood films from the Thirties and Forties.

MM: Very interesting!

AKT: I don’t know if this is what you were constructing. One of them for the Sweet Caroline number when the “thing” comes up - that felt totally like The Great Ziegfeld or something like that.

MM: Yes, totally.

AKT: The staircase thing. The other one was the therapist and Neil on the side talking, it felt like Here Comes Mr. Jordan or Heaven Can Wait.

MM: Oh interesting! I totally know what you mean, yeah.

Neil Diamond (Will Swenson) with his soon to be ex-wife Jaye Posner (Jessie Fisher) Photo: Julieta Cervantes

AKT: It felt otherworldly as though they were already dead.

MM: That’s hilarious! At some point, if this show keeps going, if people do it after Neil Diamond has passed on, then it certainly will feel like a conversation from the past, as opposed to one that is happening now. I actually wasn’t thinking about movies at all. Just the cinematic nature of how the mind works. The fluidity of images. The idea that we have that the animation of our psyche allows for us to go from place to place very quickly in our heads and even concurrently. I thought of it as the magic of the theatre where you can change clothes like this [Michael snaps his fingers].

People emerge out of nothing and just embody all of your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your creativity. And that keeps shaping. Once you examine what’s in your head it takes on a life of its own. It starts leading you places that you don’t even want to think or talk about. But you end up there anyway.

AKT: That’s very interesting! You mention the clothes changing at the start. That of course only works in theatre. It totally works as a magic trick! Don’t tell me how you did it, although I’m dying to know. It’s so clearly what you can’t do on film.

MM: Yeah, you cut or it’s CGI or whatever. I just wanted right away to tell people that we were in a theatrical space. And we were going to play fast and loose with the truth, which is what the mind does. Anyone who’s ever been in therapy, you know how you’re “I’m not going to talk about that thing.” But then you end up talking about it over and over and over again unbeknownst to you. We betray ourselves constantly.

Neil Diamond then (Will Swenson) with Neil Diamond (Mark Jacoby) now and his doctor (Linda Powell) Photo: Julieta Cervantes

AKT: Now I’m betraying myself. I had something I wanted to connect to this. Yes, the wolves, the story of the wolves battling within us. The angry wolf and the happy one. Was that in Anthony McCarten’s script?

MM: Yes.

AKT: How did you work with him?

MM: He was great to work with. He’s written plays before, so he definitely knows how theatre works, but he had never done a musical. He’s done musical movies, but never a stage musical. He was incredibly open to my suggestions. It was his first time collaborating with a person who has done musicals for 30 years. I think it was a new world for him. You should have a conversation with him actually. He’s a real movie guy.

AKT: I’d love to [and because this suggestion came from Michael, who is one of the most sincere people in the world of entertainment ever, the conversation did happen a few days later]. The Two Popes I absolutely adored.

MM: I loved it, too.

AKT: Talking about collaboration, did you see The Collaboration?

Neil Diamond (Will Swenson) performing with the singers/dancers Photo: Julieta Cervantes

MM: Not yet. I want to go see it. I haven’t really been able to see anything because I haven’t stopped being in my own theatres. I’m going away for a little bit and then January will be a lot about seeing other people’s shows. I’m looking forward to that.

AKT: This year was really the opposite of the two years prior.

MM: Totally. I think that’s why it was so busy this year because things got pushed. If I had the last four years be normal years, I might have done something here, something there, something here, something there. But everything stopped, so all of these things were condensed into the last year and a half. So it was onerous.

AKT: Live theatre still has a newness to it past Covid for audiences.

MM: For sure.

AKT: It’s very emotional. There are quite a few moments that are extremely emotional in A Beautiful Noise.

MM: Oh it’s true. I think people don’t expect that it will be as moving as it is. They think it’s going to be a cheesy Neil Diamond sing-along. So when it has gravitas and it talks about illness and about the idea that you can’t do the thing that you spent your entire life doing, that has defined you. All of us lived through that. All of us, I should say, make work that requires being in proximity with each other and for a live audience, whether you’re a dancer, a musician, a singer, an actor, a playwright, a director, a set designer, lighting designer. Whether you’re an usher, whether you sell peanuts at the ballpark - anything that involved live interaction, all of us stopped doing that for two years.

Neil Diamond (Will Swenson) reaching out with the singers/dancers Photo: Julieta Cervantes

So we know what it is not to do the thing that we were put on this earth to do, the thing that defines us. Then to go from doing nothing into a show that examines the question of who are you if you’re not permitted, either because of a disease that you have or a pandemic that’s out there, or a war, or a flood, or whatever, whatever is preventing you from doing that - how do you self-identify? How do you know who you are?

AKT: It’s totally about identity, which I didn’t expect either. The Coming to America number completely caught me by surprise, what you were doing with it. In a very positive way.

MM: Neil Diamond has never been respected by the music critics, no one takes him seriously as a songwriter although no one has ever been more popular. He sold more albums than any other artist in history. People like it. I grew up loving this stuff, so I never had a problem with it. You know, hopefully contextualizing these songs the way that we have, gives people an opportunity to hear them for what I think they are, which is incredibly good American songwriting that has staying power.

It’s been interesting for me being in the room watching people who just want to sing along go “oh wow, that’s actually really saying something profound there!” And then the people who come in - maybe they’ve had a few drinks and they’re there just to sing Sweet Caroline 1800 times in a row who find themselves weeping at the end of the show. They are moved by it and they so were there just for a party. It’s fascinating.

A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical at the Broadhurst Theatre Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

AKT: It’s also your cast. I mean, you are always wonderful with the diversity of the ensemble.

MM: It’s very important to me. It always has been.

AKT: That’s just great and from beginning to end wonderful. Will Swenson and Mark Jacoby, they were both really touching and shifting perspectives throughout. How did you find those two for Neil Diamond?

MM: Will I’ve known for a long time. We’ve never worked together. I didn’t know he was a Neil Diamond fan. So when his name came up, I was like, sure, is this really going to be cool enough for Will Swenson?

AKT: Ha!

MM: And then to find out that he grew up with his music and loves it so much. It’s like a dream for him to be playing this character. I felt really lucky. And then Mark Jacoby - I had been building this projects through the years with a different actor who is on a big TV show and couldn’t do this. I auditioned a few people and Mark being one of them and he was just so good and got better and better in rehearsal.

AKT: They are a good combination.

MM: They are great together and it’s weird, they never even have a scene together, obviously. You see them always in relation to each other. Will is just great, he sounds like Neil Diamond but he doesn’t do a Neil Diamond impersonation, which I really appreciate.

Lea Michele in Funny Girl subway posters Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

AKT: He doesn’t. It never goes into the cheesy, it’s just charming.

MM: Did you grow up listening to Neil Diamond?

AKT: No. I am one of those “oh, I know that song” people. Of course I knew Sweet Caroline. And Song Sung Blue I remember hearing on the radio, thinking it was Song Song Blue. I thought it was repetition and never knew it was the past tense of the verb.

MM: Did you sing along?

AKT: A little bit, but not really. I am less a sing-alonger than a paper catcher.

MM: Oh there it is!

AKT: I always keep those souvenirs. You love doing that, don’t you?

MM: You know, the audience gets a kick out of it and it’s the right thing at the moment. Anytime you can break that fourth wall with something physical, it’s a pleasure. It just gets tactile and reminds people of the bigger room they are in, which is fun.

AKT: Very much so.

MM: The next show will be the one exception.

Anne-Katrin Titze with Michael Mayer and the A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical streamers shot into the audience

AKT: No paper thrown?

MM: No confetti and no streamers.

AKT: Lovely to talk to you, as always. Let’s do The Algonquin soon!

MM: Anytime you want to meet up for a martini at The Algonquin, I would love it!

AKT: We look very Christmas-y today! You’re red and I’m green!

MM: I noticed that, It’s perfect. I love your Peter Pan collar. It’s adorable. It’s always great to talk to you!

Coming up - Anthony McCarten on the book for A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical and more on The Collaboration.

Read what Anthony McCarten had to say on The Two Popes, Andy Warhol, and his worship trilogy.