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      Review: ‘A Beautiful Noise’ Makes for a Morose Neil Diamond Musical

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      In the new Broadway show, Will Swenson plays the superstar, who seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a quest — but for what?For decades, Neil Diamond was on top of the world. He toured arenas packed with shrieking fans. He wrote “Sweet Caroline,” an irresistible anthem that continues to trigger Pavlovian singalongs — a feat that would delight most performers, but Diamond didn’t leave it at that and was a prolific hit machine.A 1986 profile in The New York Times described him in these words: “Olympian aspiration, raw aggression and agonizing self-doubt.”As unlikely as this might sound, it is that last trait that forms the narrative engine of “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond Musical,” the ambitious, often rousing, occasionally heavy-handed biographical show that opened on Broadway on Sunday at the Broadhurst Theater. We meet a superstar with no confidence, despite being known to engage the beast mode in concert and prowling stages in tight pants and a wide-open satin shirt. He seems perpetually dissatisfied, as if on a fruitless quest — but for what? What gnaws at him?To answer those questions, the book writer, Anthony McCarten, put Diamond on the couch, or more exactly in an armchair: “A Beautiful Noise,” directed by Michael Mayer, is framed as an extensive therapy session between the aging singer (Mark Jacoby) and a psychologist (Linda Powell).Diamond is there because his wife Katie — spoiler alert: she’s the third one — and kids forced his hand. Apparently Diamond is “a little hard to live with these days,” we’re told. Maybe his family is frustrated by his grouchiness and poor interpersonal communication skills, at least based on his laconic sullenness with the doctor. When she presses him for insights, he curtly says, “I put everything I have into my songs.” Fine, then let’s see what they have to tell us about the man who wrote them.Mark Jacoby, seated left, as Neil Diamond and Linda Powell, seated right, as his therapist in the musical.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd so Diamond makes a second entrance, but now he is in his prime and portrayed by Will Swenson (“Les Misérables,” “Assassins”) in a gravity-defying statement pompadour. This is a swaggering coif that means business, but it is contradicted by the 1965 Diamond’s passive posture and apologetic stammering.As the doctor and the older singer revisit his catalog — often commenting on the action from their chairs, like a double vision of the narrator in “The Drowsy Chaperone” — we retrace Diamond’s journey, starting with his early days at the Brill Building. One of the influential American hit factories, the location also played a key role in “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” and it’s where the mighty Ellie Greenwich (an amusingly perky Bri Sudia) starts mentoring the shy young man from Brooklyn in the mid-1960s.Diamond, after writing hits for others, like “I’m a Believer” for the Monkees, sets out to perform his own material, with smashing results. In one of the most entertaining episodes, he signs with Bang Records, a mob-associated label run by Bert Berns (Tom Alan Robbins), himself a songwriter good enough to earn his own tribute musical, “Piece of My Heart.”By the end of the ’60s, Diamond was a serial chart-topper; by the early ’70s, he had mutated into the Lord Byron of soft rock, all strutting gloom and troubled romanticism. That turning point is when Swenson, a stage veteran and Tony nominee for the 2009 Broadway revival of “Hair,” really takes ownership of the role. While he doesn’t entirely let go during the concert scenes — a common issue with Broadway performers playing rockers — Swenson gets close to Diamond’s swaggering sexuality and delivers hit after hit with a relaxed confidence: “Sweet Caroline,” of course, and especially “Brother Love’s Travelling Salvation Show.” But there is no “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon,” the epitome of Diamond in his louche Lee Hazlewood mode, which could have really spiced up a musical that can feel timid; likewise, the show’s title echoes Diamond’s 1976 album and one can’t help but wonder what would have happened if his 1968 LP “Velvet Gloves and Spit” had inspired McCarten instead.In any case, the superstar continues seeking, especially love. While still married to his first wife, Jaye (Jessie Fisher), he falls for Marcia (Robyn Hurder, channeling Ann-Margret). The latter gets some of the numbers directly connecting a character’s motivation or emotion with a song — she sings “Forever in Blue Jeans,” for example, when feeling neglected by her constantly touring husband.Robyn Hurder as Marcia and Will Swenson as the younger Diamond.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut much of the time McCarten — who wrote the screenplays for the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” and whose play “The Collaboration” opens on Broadway later this month — refrains from shoehorning new meaning into existing lyrics by manipulating the context in which the songs are used, à la “Mamma Mia!” Many of this show’s most effective moments simply use the songs as surface signposts, an approach that defeats the purported point of the book but reflects the way many listeners experience pop music: We associate it with events and moods, recall what was happening when a hit came on the radio or when we attended a concert.One such scene is Diamond’s debut at the Bitter End. He performs “Solitary Man” and the audience members, sitting at nightclub tables, slowly lean forward, like flowers drawn to the sun. This is the most striking example of Steven Hoggett’s subtle choreography, which to its credit looks like nothing else on Broadway right now: The movement is fluidly, organically incorporated into the scenes, rather than awkwardly grafted onto them.As Diamond sharpens his live persona in Act II, David Rockwell’s set, until then dominated by hanging lamps, morphs into a “Hollywood Squares”-like concert stage that incorporates the orchestra. (Considering how energized Diamond was when performing, having to retire from touring in 2018 because of Parkinson’s disease must have been especially painful.) It all looks and sounds great, but the clock is ticking — therapy! — and we are no closer to understanding the real Neil.Until, at long last, the older singer cracks and stops obfuscating. Naturally, the source of his discontent can be found in his childhood, and the show finally makes the essential connection between Diamond’s artistry and his roots, including his Jewishness. By that point it feels rushed and not quite earned, not to mention a little too nakedly sentimental.And yet, the beating heart of “A Beautiful Noise” is that sequence, featuring “Brooklyn Roads” and “America” leading into “Shilo,” which becomes Diamond’s Rosebud and is performed with almost unbearable grace by the ensemble member Jordan Dobson. Never mind: naked sentimentality is just fine.A Beautiful NoiseAt the Broadhurst Theater, Manhattan; abeautifulnoisethemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

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      Playing Neil Diamond: A Dream Role, and a ‘Crazy Privilege’

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      Will Swenson, the star of “A Beautiful Noise,” has come a long way from his days as an eighth grader wooing girls with his Diamond repertoire.Back in the era of the eight-track tape, the actor Will Swenson’s father played Neil Diamond albums practically on a loop. A poster of Diamond, the Brooklyn-born singer-songwriter most famous for the singalong behemoth “Sweet Caroline,” hung on a wall in the family’s garage.So when Swenson was in eighth grade, looking to “woo girls around the campfire” with his guitar, it was obvious to him that a few Diamond tunes belonged in his repertoire.“My go-to was ‘Play Me,’” he said, “which is the most sexual song ever, and I don’t think that it dawned on my innocent little Mormon brain that I was singing just lascivious lyrics to these innocent little Mormon girls.”In early November in his dressing room at the Broadhurst Theater, Swenson laughed at that memory in what he called his “post-show morning voice”: extra deep with a touch of sandpaper. Given the demands of his song-heavy current Broadway gig — playing the title character in “A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical,” which opens on Dec. 4 after a month of previews — it was probably not the kindest thing to ask him to tax his voice further by giving a 90-minute interview.“It’s all right,” he said, an hour in. “Necessary evils.”With a book by Anthony McCarten, whose Warhol-Basquiat play, “The Collaboration,” opens on Broadway later in December, “A Beautiful Noise” is both a conventional jukebox musical and a strange beast, structurally. Michael Mayer, its director, aptly described it this way: “The first act is a musical wrapped in a play, and the second act is a play wrapped in a concert.”Swenson, who portrays the Neil Diamond of the 1960s to the 1990s, in the musical, which opens Dec. 4 at the Broadhurst Theater in Manhattan.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe conceit that makes it what Swenson considers a memory play involves the present-day Neil Diamond, played by Mark Jacoby, talking through his life and lyrics with his therapist, played by Linda Powell. The real Diamond, now 81, spent years in psychoanalysis.Swenson, who at 50 can easily look much younger, headlines as the Neil Diamond of the 1960s to the ’90s. (In the interest of vocal preservation, Swenson plays the role seven times a week instead of the usual eight. Nick Fradiani takes over on Wednesday nights.) An anxious Jewish songsmith from Flatbush whose family name actually is Diamond, he writes the Monkees hit “I’m a Believer,” finds his feet as a performer on the tiny club stage of the Bitter End in Greenwich Village, inadvertently signs a record deal with the Mafia that comes back to bite him hard and over the years walks away from one marriage and then another.And amid all that, evolves into a globe-trotting, sequin-wearing, arena-playing star.For Swenson, doing a Diamond impression long ago became a kind of party trick. At some concerts given by his wife, Audra McDonald, he has come on toward the end to sing a little Diamond with her, mischievously.“We would set up ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers’” — the Diamond-Streisand duet about a couple whose love has died of neglect — “by saying, ‘Well, this is kind of our song. It kind of represents our emotional relationship,’” he said.A Tony Award nominee for playing Berger in Diane Paulus’s 2009 Broadway revival of “Hair,” and an Obie Award winner for his 2018 performance as Satan in “Jerry Springer — The Opera,” he’s been dangerously sexy in “Murder Ballad,” unnervingly menacing in “Assassins” — and fortuitous offstage in “110 in the Shade.” That 2007 Broadway production is where he met McDonald, whom he married in 2012, and with whom he has a 6-year-old daughter.To hear Swenson tell it, though, Diamond is the role he’d been waiting for since well before “A Beautiful Noise” became “a twinkle in anybody’s eye.” Playing a series of eight guitars as he traces the arc of Diamond’s life, he’s aiming for something deeper than mere mimicry.“I have strong feelings,” he said, “about the blurry line — the tricky, tricky line — between honoring a sound and, well, impression and impersonation.”But how to craft a performance that captures Diamond for eagle-eyed fans while allowing himself interpretive latitude?“That is the question, isn’t it,” Swenson said, wryly borrowing a line from early in the show, when Diamond has yet to find a sound that is his own.Neil Diamond circa 1968. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesABOVE THE COUCH in Swenson’s dressing room, near a photo of him and McDonald with their older children on their wedding day, is a framed, poster-size image of Swenson with Diamond at Fenway Park in Boston, when the cast of “A Beautiful Noise” went there to sing “Sweet Caroline” last June.That appearance — at the ballpark where Diamond had sung the same song in 2013 to comfort a city stricken in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing — was a promotion for the show, which was in town for its pre-Broadway run. It was also a rare public performance by Diamond, who retired from touring in 2018 after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.“It was just beautiful,” Swenson said, “to sort of watch him step into that piece of himself that I’m sure he’s missed so much.”A note in the Playbill for “A Beautiful Noise” suggests the profundity of that longing. Titled “Letter From Neil,” and dated September 2022, it begins:“The idea of a Broadway musical about my life has always been a daunting one. It wasn’t until the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease prematurely ended my touring career that I started to seriously consider the prospect. I say ‘prematurely’ because my heart and soul would tour until the day I die if only my body would cooperate.”The symptoms of Parkinson’s manifest differently in different people, but voice, movement, balance and cognition can all be affected. There’s an ache, then, built into the show’s celebration of Diamond’s life and music. Someone else — someone whose body will cooperate — gets to be onstage, performing Diamond’s songs in front of his fans. I asked Swenson if he thinks about that poignancy.“Yeah,” he said, misting up. “It’s a crazy privilege. Especially because he does it better. Like, I’m the poor man’s version, and you’re screaming for me.”But such is the curious performer-audience dynamic of jukebox biomusicals, whose playlists so instantly unlock remembrance that they might as well be madeleines. And just as Michael Jackson fans react to Myles Frost in the title role of “MJ” as if Jackson himself were in the room, Diamond fans respond to Swenson as if they were at a Diamond concert back in the day.It’s quite a thing to behold. At the first preview of “A Beautiful Noise,” in early November, a sea of mostly older audience members needed merely the slightest cue not just to sing along (which, in the case of a few judiciously chosen songs, the show encourages) but also to perform the same movements in unison — air punches, raised arms. To an uncanny degree, they knew precisely what was expected of them, because Diamond had expected it.Steven Hoggett, 50, the show’s choreographer, finds this tapping of physical memory “professionally fascinating,” particularly when he watches the crowd from above. The son of Diamond fans, Hoggett grew up in Britain knowing the albums his parents played, like “The Jazz Singer” (1980), and singles that charted there, like “Beautiful Noise.” But he looks in wonder at the Diamond faithful, whose bodies have retained their kinetic history.“These people,” he said, “they’re responding to gigs they went to when I was 4.”Giving Diamond fans possibly the closest thing they can get now to the live concert experience of an artist they love, Swenson is the beneficiary of all that nostalgic affection, which he knows isn’t really for him.“I feel like I’m lying to them sometimes, because I’m like” — and here Swenson dropped his voice to a whisper — “‘I’m not Neil.’”BEFORE SWENSON MADE it big on the New York stage, he was a star of Mormon cinema.Born in Logan, Utah, the second of four siblings, Swenson spent his early childhood in Glendale, Calif., doing shows at his grandparents’ theater. His grandmother, the biological daughter of a Ziegfeld Follies girl who gave her up for adoption, was a playwright — “three-act, family-friendly comedies, mostly,” Swenson said.He was 12 when his parents moved the family to Salt Lake City to start their own theater, and about 16 when he met the girl who would become his first wife.Between high school and starting college at Brigham Young University, he went on a two-year mission to Ecuador. During that trip, which he remembers as “a beautiful time” in his life, he kept waiting in vain for confirmation from God that everything he had been taught about Mormonism was true.Swenson at Carmine Street Guitars. In the show, he plays a series of eight guitars as he traces the arc of Diamond’s life.Peter Fisher for The New York TimesThen in 1999, he joined the second national tour of “Miss Saigon.” As the show crisscrossed the country, he visited sites that figured in Mormon history, read books about the church, discovered unsettling things that he had not known about it.“Having to tell my mom that I was going to leave the church was maybe the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Swenson said. “From the time that I decided that I had to leave the church to the time that I legitimately was open and honest about it with everyone was probably a 12-year journey.”In the early 2000s, as he was starting out in New York, he returned to Utah to star in a movie called “The Singles Ward,” as a standup comic whose wife divorces him, which dumps him back into the Mormon dating pool. The film was a niche success, so he did some more, including a sequel to “The Singles Ward.”But the apex was “Sons of Provo,” which Swenson co-wrote, directed and starred in. A clever, very funny mockumentary about a Mormon boy band, it doesn’t come off as the slightest bit mean, even when you know that he eventually left the fold.Does it matter, by the way, that a former Mormon from Utah has been cast as a Jewish guy from New York? To Mayer, 62, who is Jewish — and whose other current Broadway show is the revival of “Funny Girl” — the answer is no.“The thing about Neil that is most compelling,” he said, “isn’t necessarily the fact that he’s Jewish or that he’s from Brooklyn as much as he is a bit of a victim of a generational anxiety and depression. And I feel like that is not unique to the Jews.”There is also an argument to be made from what Swenson recalls as Diamond’s response at the first reading the actor did of the show. Performing for him, as him, from just a couple of yards away, Swenson worried initially that Diamond was bored, because he listened with his eyes closed.“I think we got to ‘Solitary Man,’ and he started kind of rocking and tapping his thumb and sort of mouthing the words,” Swenson said. “And then we got to, I think, ‘Sweet Caroline.’ And he kind of raised his hand, singing along, and it was just like: Oh, my God.”Swenson isn’t Diamond; it’s true. But even for the man himself, he can play the part. More

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      Review: In Lea Michele, ‘Funny Girl’ Has Finally Found Its Fanny

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      The “Glee” star is stupendous in the role Barbra Streisand made famous, turning the 1964 musical into something better than we know it to be.Though it can be a great vehicle, “Funny Girl” has rarely been a great ride. Even its first-rate Jule Styne songs — “I’m the Greatest Star,” “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” among them — are problematic. Not only are the lyrics, by Bob Merrill, often inane (“I’ll light up like a light”?) but the challenge of the vocal writing that made Barbra Streisand a star in 1964 makes casting anyone else now a nightmare.And let’s not get started on the book, by Isobel Lennart, which in telling the (mostly fictional) story of the early-20th-century comic Fanny Brice, and her disastrous love affair with the gambler Nick Arnstein, seems to have been assembled from a warehouse of used musical-comedy parts. They do not work well together, however well they work individually.The revival that opened in April at the August Wilson Theater — its first on Broadway — only made matters worse. Harvey Fierstein’s meddling with the confusing book confused it further by giving Nick (Ramin Karimloo) more to do; nobody cares what Nick does. And Fanny, whom we do care about, was just too much of a reach for Beanie Feldstein, offering a pleasant performance in a role that shouldn’t be. “Without a stupendous Fanny to thrill and distract,” I wrote at the time, “the musical’s manifold faults become painfully evident.”Lea Michele, who took over the role on Sept. 6, turns out to be that stupendous Fanny. Yes, she even lights up like a light. Both vulnerable and invulnerable, kooky and ardent, she makes the show worth watching again.She can’t make it good, though. Michael Mayer’s production is still garish and pushy, pandering for audience overreaction. A confetti cannon tries to put an exclamation point on a dud dance. Many of the minor players overplay. The lighting by Kevin Adams would make a rat clap, and the unusually ugly set by David Zinn seems weaponized against intimacy. It looks like a missile silo.But at least “Funny Girl” now has a missile: a performer who from her first words (“Hello, Gorgeous”) shoots straight to her target and hits it.It has been a tortuous path to this obviously right and seemingly predestined casting, with decades of false starts involving Lauren Ambrose, Debbie Gibson, Sheridan Smith and others. Feldstein was just another in the long list of misfires; after she ditched the show in a cloud of apparent acrimony — a cloud everyone denied — her standby, Julie Benko, took over.Benko, who is still the Thursday night Fanny, sings the role very well, so you never worry, as you did with Feldstein, that she might not make it through the songs. Then too, Benko gets closer to the dark heart of the comedy, backfilling its shtick with something like anger. Still, good as she is, her voice and the rest of her performance don’t yet match; she even has a different accent when acting the role than when singing it.Like Barbra Streisand, Michele brings added depth to her performance. When Michele sings “People,” our critic writes, it’s not a bald statement but a genuine inquiry.Matthew MurphyMichele matches throughout. Her voice, an exceptional instrument, is not an ornament but a tool, and she knows how to use it. That in itself is no surprise; she seems to have been trying out for the role since 2009. Over the course of her six seasons as Rachel Berry on “Glee,” she sang most of Fanny’s numbers with exceedingly high polish, if sometimes a powerful whiff of Streisand karaoke. (Rachel’s middle name was Barbra.)Onstage, though, the Barbraisms are less in evidence. A few are unavoidable, Streisand having in essence rewritten, and improved, some of Styne’s vocal lines. And in general, anyone hoping to make a success of “Funny Girl” has to follow the originator’s template, because it was created for her — you might almost say “on” her, like a couture gown. The songs work (and the scenes nearly do) when a performer can access a manic desperation to succeed, not caring how she comes off or what she loses in the process. Let’s just say that Michele, like her idol, has that access.What surprised me in “Funny Girl” is that she can also access much more. You need not understand the details of vocal placement to understand that a performer able to belt all of “People” without worrying about switching registers has plenty of bandwidth left over to worry about more important things. When Michele sings the song, it’s not a bald statement but a genuine inquiry: Can Fanny be successful in both love, which means a lot to her, and work, which means more?And at the end, when life has delivered its unhappy answer, Michele isn’t playing at sadness. A hot mess of tears, she takes her time recovering sufficiently to move into the finale, a reprise of “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” It’s a mark of her shaping of the role that she sings it quite differently than she did at the end of Act I, when Fanny is reaching outward to grab the life she wants. Now she’s reaching inward to rescue herself from emotional disaster — a point Michele makes with typical vocal daredevilry in the song’s final heart-stopping phrase.Unfortunately, you may not hear it. Despite the amped-up vocals, the amped-up audience is often even louder than Michele. (On Tuesday, one of her several mid-show standing ovations was actually mid-song.) You can’t blame fans for their excitement, and at least there’s something worth being excited about here. But it seems to me that the production is reaping the dubious reward of its constant goading and prodding. You can see Michele having to calculate on the fly how and when to resume, or whether to blast right through, unheeded.Tovah Feldshuh, left, replacing Jane Lynch as Fanny’s mother, brings grit to the role.Matthew MurphyIn a way, she’s almost too serious for the show; comedy, at any rate, isn’t her (or its) best suit. That’s a problem when the title is “Funny Girl.” Still, when Michele is given a good situation to play, as when Nick seduces her in a restaurant, she gets good laughs. Other times, as in an embarrassing in-joke added post-Feldstein, coyly referring to a song sung on roller skates in the 1968 movie, she looks lost, even as the audience yuks on cue.I hope she’ll keep burrowing into the role and not give in to the general hysteria. She certainly has allies in that fight: Karimloo, especially as the broken man Nick becomes at the end, does some lovely, quiet work, and Tovah Feldshuh, having replaced the zany Jane Lynch as Fanny’s mother, is so gritty and salty she could turn ice into slush. In the smaller role of Florenz Ziegfeld, Peter Francis James remains a model of dignified restraint.Charismatic performers make the thing they’re performing disappear. In effect, they replace it; their voice becomes its voice, their skin its story. That Michele makes “Funny Girl” seem better than we know it to be is the wonderful but possibly irreproducible product of the mutual need between an old-fashioned talent on the way up and an old-fashioned musical on the way down. It’s a need like that of lovers, and you know what the song says about them: Despite all evidence, they’re the luckiest people in the world.Funny GirlAt the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; funnygirlonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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      ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at 40: The Plant That Conquered the World

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      Members of the cast and creative team from the original production, as well as the current Off Broadway revival, look back on how the show came together and discuss its enduring influence.“Little Shop of Horrors” was Alan Menken’s last shot.It was the winter of 1979 when Menken, a young composer, and Howard Ashman, the lyricist, playwright and director, were coming off a disappointing Off Broadway run of a musical version of the Kurt Vonnegut novel “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.”So, when Ashman called with the idea to develop a low-budget musical comedy about a murderous plant, based on Roger Corman’s semi-obscure 1960 black comedy film, Menken made a deal with himself: He would give musical theater one more shot. If it didn’t work, he would commit to writing advertising jingles full time.Of course, the off-the-wall, low-budget musical would go on to become an improbable success, selling out houses at the 98-seat WPA Theater in the East Village before transferring to the 347-seat Orpheum Theater, where it would run for a little over five years. In the decades since, it’s reached cult classic status and become one of the most produced shows at high schools across the country.On the 40th anniversary of the original Off Off Broadway production, which opened on May 20, 1982, at the WPA Theater, members of the original cast and creative team, as well as some from the current Off Broadway revival and family members of Ashman, who died in 1991 from AIDS, at 40, reflected on how it came together, its improbable success and why it still resonates. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Howard Ashman directing Ellen Greene, who played Audrey. “He just loved me, and when a director just adores your creativity, your creativity blooms,” she said. Estate of Howard AshmanThe seed that would become “Little Shop of Horrors” had been planted in Ashman’s head for a few decades, ever since he saw Corman’s black-and-white horror spoof of the same name when he was around 14. But revisiting it proved a bit tricky.SARAH ASHMAN GILLESPIE (sister of Howard Ashman) My husband and I were the only people Howard knew who had the Betamax, and we rented “Little Shop” — the movie — for us all to watch. Except for Howard, we were appalled. We didn’t think it would be a good idea at all to do the show. Of course, he ignored us entirely. That was Howard’s way; when he had a vision for something, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.And Ashman had the perfect partner in mind: The composer Alan Menken, with whom he’d just collaborated on “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.”BILL LAUCH (Ashman’s partner) Howard had the idea that “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” had an Off Broadway sensibility, but it was just too expensive. He resolved that the next musical he was going to do is going to have a very small cast — under 10 characters. And it was going to have some kind of element at the heart of it that would be so unusual that it would just demand attention.ALAN MENKEN (composer) I hadn’t seen the film, but a few weeks after he told me he wanted to make a musical, it showed up on cable TV. My God, there were so many fun elements!40 Years of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’The off-the-wall musical comedy about a murderous plant, which debuted in 1982 Off Off Broadway, continues to resonate.  Revisiting a Classic: The comedy becomes a morality tale for the age of universal celebrity in Michael Mayer’s revival, which opened in 2019. Leading Man: Conrad Ricamora just ended his run in the revival as Seymour, the show’s nebbishy hero.Inhabiting Seymour: The actor Jonathan Groff took on the iconic role in 2019. From the Archives: In 1982, our critic described “Little Shop of Horrors” as a show “for horticulturists, horror-cultists, sci-fi fans and anyone with a taste for the outrageous.”The production at the WPA had to come together quickly, cheaply and without the reassurance of big names in the cast.MENKEN The theater was run by Howard and Kyle Renick, and they used to joke that WPA stands for “We’ll Produce Anything.” Howard and I paid for Marty Robinson to be able to construct the first Audrey II, and I played [the piano in] the show myself.FRANC LUZ (Orin Scrivello, Audrey’s sadistic dentist boyfriend in “Little Shop”) They sent me the script, and I turned the audition down. I was like, “How did this get at the highly regarded WPA with lines like, ‘Oh, Seymour?’” It wasn’t until I heard the demo cassette tape Howard and Alan had made that it made sense. I thought, “Jesus, this is really special.”LEE WILKOF (Seymour) I originally auditioned for the dentist. But Alan Menken, who I had known from a revue I did some years earlier, was giggling at me in the toupee — I’d been bald since I was 18 — so I took it off. And Howard Ashman said, “You’re a Seymour!” It came down to me and Nathan Lane for the part, and Connie Grappo, who was Ashman’s assistant director, told Howard to cast me. That’s why I married her! [Laughs]Christian Borle, left, as the dentist and Jonathan Groff as Seymour in the Off Broadway revival that opened in October 2019.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesNext was his most important piece of casting: The person who would design, build and perform the murderous plant, Audrey II.MARTIN P. ROBINSON (puppeteer) Howard told me later that when he presented the challenges of the script — the need for a plant that would start small and get bigger in increments, as well as talk, sing and take over the stage, then the world — most people he talked to said, “Well, you’re going to have to give up this.” I was the only guy who said, “Yeah, sure, you can do all that.”Rehearsals began in earnest, with Menken and Ashman continuing to prune their project as the actors settled into their roles.ELLEN GREENE (Audrey) Howard lived on Greenwich Avenue right around the corner from the Pink Tea Cup, and Alan would be sitting at the piano, and Howard would pace up and down shouting. He was a very strong director — very bright, with a dry sense of humor and tremendous heart. Alan wanted to please Howard, and it was like a dance between the two of them. It was glorious to watch.LUZ Ashman had that kind of intellect that goes at 100 miles faster than everybody else. He would remember lyrics, and he knew every bit of music from the ’60s and ’70s.MENKEN Howard could be impatient about music because it was the one thing he couldn’t directly do himself! [Laughs]For the score, Menken opted for a blend of pop, rock and Latin music.MENKEN It’s the dark side of “Grease,” but there are also elements winking at the late ’50s and early ’60s — beach blanket horror movies with people dancing on the beach while some monster came in from the water to terrorize people — as well as Phil Spector rock, which is apocalyptic in tone. And then our narrators were a girl group derived from the Ronettes and the Shirelles. It was a real cocktail of really dark themes and fun spoof elements.Thanks to his father, Menken had an idea for the stage musical that would become iconic.MENKEN My dad, who was a dentist, was actually president of the New York chapter of the American Analgesia Society, which is a society of dentists who promote the use of nitrous oxide as safe. So I had the idea that Orin was obsessed with nitrous oxide and put the mask on himself to enjoy the sadomasochistic joy of drilling teeth and then get the mask stuck. Howard thought it was hilarious. My dad actually provided the slides for the “Look, Seymour, this could happen to you” part!Ashman was an intense, demanding director, but his dry wit captured the hearts of the cast.LUZ Even if we fought about something — “You know, I don’t think this character would do that” — he’d say, “Oh, he would, he would.” Eventually, you just learned that he was always right.GREENE Howard and I had a respect and a free-flowing love between the two of us. We just got each other. He just loved me, and when a director just adores your creativity, your creativity blooms.MENKEN He was brilliant, and I don’t say that lightly.Meanwhile, the enormous, man-eating Audrey II puppet was taking shape in Robinson’s apartment.ROBINSON I started with the imagery in the Corman film, but I made the shape a little more sophisticated, with curved sharp teeth hidden on the inside that you didn’t see until she started talking. It’s carpeted inside, with a red, hairy interior. It was a workout moving those arms, but I was 28 and I was jacked. I see pictures of myself back then and say, “Oh, my God.”LUZ Marty started the show as this tall, skinny guy with this big Afro, and by the end of it, he had a swimmer’s body. He was like Adonis.Finally, after two weeks of previews, opening night arrived on May 20, 1982.WILKOF We blew the roof off the first night.MENKEN People just went absolutely crazy.WILKOF We were all just floating during that performance. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my career.“Little Shop of Horrors” was a smashing success — and quickly became the hottest ticket in town.WILKOF I was going around the week before opening night handing out fliers, and casting directors would go, “What the hell is this?” And two weeks later, they were calling and asking — no, begging — me for tickets.Rick Moranis as Seymour in the 1986 film.Globe Photos/ZUMAPRESS, via Alamy After a month of performances at the WPA, “Little Shop” transferred Off Broadway to the Orpheum. When it closed on Nov. 1, 1987, it was the third-longest-running musical and the highest-grossing production in Off Broadway history.MICHAEL MAYER (director of the current Off Broadway revival) The buzz around it was incredible. It walked to the razor’s edge of being a satire of a kind of B movie, and yet it had so much true heart.The musical went on to receive Los Angeles and West End productions in 1983 before being turned into a film in 1986, which starred Greene as Audrey and Rick Moranis as Seymour. More than two decades after its original opening night, it finally debuted on Broadway in 2003. Ashman, who had declined a Broadway transfer, believing a smaller house was needed to preserve the impression of the plant’s massive size, never got to see it.LUZ It’s still a shock and a shame that we lost him so young. In October 2019, the current Off Broadway revival opened at the Westside Theater, starring Jonathan Groff as Seymour, opposite Christian Borle as the dentist.MAYER I never saw the film, so I tried to be true to my memory of what Howard did as director.CHRISTIAN BORLE (Orin Scrivello in the current Off Broadway revival) Obviously it has to be funny, but the abuse stuff is so ugly, especially in this day and age, that I felt compelled to play that stuff as straight and dark and awful as possible. Ultimately, he has to be worthy of being fed to the plant.Though the original cast and creative team have gone on to other careers, including Menken’s award-winning run with Disney’s animated musicals, they all agree: They’ve never come across another project like “Little Shop.”ROBINSON When you’re 28, you think, “Oh, this happens all the time.” But that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.MENKEN Howard and I jokingly called “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid” “Somewhere That’s Wet.” “Little Shop” is the DNA of everything that ended up exploding at Disney, in a funny way.MAYER It resonates more than ever right now — the idea of the Faustian bargain you make for fame and success in a world where people are making a living being TikTok performers and Instagram influencers, and people are famous for being famous more than at any other time in history. It examines the dark side of the American dream, and because it’s so funny and entertaining and moving, it isn’t going to bum you out so much. More

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      in Music

      A Neil Diamond Musical Is Coming to Broadway, After a Stop in Boston

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      “A Beautiful Noise” will start at Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston next month and transfer to Broadway’s Broadhurst Theater in November.A new musical about the life and career of Neil Diamond is coming to Broadway late this year.“A Beautiful Noise, The Neil Diamond Musical” will start previews on Nov. 2 and open on Dec. 4 at the Broadhurst Theater, the show’s producers said Wednesday. The Broadway production will be preceded by a six-week run starting June 21 at the Emerson Colonial Theater in Boston.Diamond, an 81-year-old Brooklyn native who was one of the most successful songwriters of the rock era, retired from touring in 2018, citing a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, and this year he sold his catalog to Universal Music Group. He wrote and performed “Sweet Caroline,” which has become a sports stadium favorite, especially at Fenway Park; won a Grammy for best original film score (“Jonathan Livingston Seagull”); and in 2011 was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.The stage musical will feature a score made up of Diamond’s songs, with a book by Anthony McCarten, the Oscar-nominated screenwriter behind “The Two Popes” and “The Theory of Everything.” The show is being directed by Michael Mayer, the Tony-winning director of “Spring Awakening” and a veteran of several adventurous jukebox musicals, including “Swept Away” (featuring songs from the Avett Brothers), “Head Over Heels” (the Go-Go’s) and “American Idiot” (Green Day). Steven Hoggett (“Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”) will choreograph.The lead producers are Ken Davenport, a Broadway veteran (his credits include the Tony-winning revival of “Once on This Island”) and Bob Gaudio, a musician who was the producer of several of Diamond’s albums. The musical is being capitalized for up to $20 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission; a spokesman said the producers are hoping to keep the budget to $19 million.The actor Will Swenson will star as Diamond in the Boston run of the show. Casting for Broadway has not yet been announced. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Funny Girl’ Review: Broadway Revival Shows Why It Took So Long

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      Beanie Feldstein stars as the comic Fanny Brice in the show’s return after almost 60 years.It must be a plot. Why else would it have taken nearly 60 years for “Funny Girl,” the hit 1964 musical about the comic Fanny Brice, to be revived on Broadway, when most Golden Age shows with even half a wit left in them — let alone such a fabulous score — have been revived unto exhaustion?And why does the mild version that finally made it, in a production starring Beanie Feldstein that opened Sunday at the August Wilson Theater, seem likely to prolong rather than break the spell?That I can answer in two words: Barbra Streisman.Or so Jerome Robbins, who “supervised” the original production, misspelled the name of an exciting young singer, then about 20, on a list of possible Fannys he drew up around 1962. That list, which also included such established stars as Judy Holliday, Eydie Gormé and Tammy Grimes, put Streisand, as she was properly but barely known, in third place.She was first on Jule Styne’s list, though. The show’s composer deliberately wrote the “toughest score” he could — rangy and histrionic in places, delicate and restrained in others — so “only Barbra could sing it.”And so it has been. As the show developed, coiling itself around Streisand’s offbeat, aggressive, once-in-a-lifetime talent — not to mention her Brice-like nose, which shows up repeatedly in Bob Merrill’s lyrics — the odds of a truly successful successor diminished. And without a stupendous Fanny to thrill and distract, the musical’s manifold faults become painfully evident.Feldstein with Kurt Csolak, left, and Justin Prescott in the show, directed by Michael Mayer.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTo rip the bandage off quickly: Feldstein is not stupendous. She’s good. She’s funny enough in places, and immensely likable always, as was already evident from her performances in the movies “Booksmart” and “Lady Bird” and, on Broadway, in “Hello, Dolly!” You root for her to raise the roof, but she only bumps against it a little. Her voice, though solid and sweet and clear, is not well suited to the music, and you feel her working as hard as she can to power through the gap. But working hard at what should be naturally extraordinary is not in Fanny’s DNA.Still, you can’t blame Feldstein for the show’s problems; that would be like blaming the clown for the elephants. The main elephant is the book, written by Isobel Lennart and fiddled with for this production by Harvey Fierstein, to no avail. Tracing Brice’s rise from gawky waif to Ziegfeld star between 1910 and 1927, along with the corresponding decline of her romance with the “gorgeous” gambler Nick Arnstein (Ramin Karimloo), it bites off more than it can chew and then, at least in Michael Mayer’s production, repeatedly refuses to chew it.The highlights-only approach is a problem in most biographical musicals, exacerbated in “Funny Girl” by its unusually high quotient of fictionalization. Brice’s family was well off, not poor, but the rags-to-riches arc made the plot more appealing. When she met Arnstein, she was no innocent, as suggested by songs like “You Are Woman, I Am Man”; she’d been married already — and he still was. The famous Ziegfeld number in which she stuffs her wedding gown to appear pregnant (“His Love Makes Me Beautiful”) never happened, and if it had, she’d have been fired.Feldstein in “His Love Makes Me Beautiful,” a Ziegfeld number that Fanny plays up for laughs by stuffing her wedding gown to appear pregnant.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut those distortions at least make a good story. The bigger distortions — perhaps necessitated by the fact that Ray Stark, who produced the original, was Brice’s son-in-law — avoid one. Arnstein did not get involved in illegal activities because he hated being supported by Fanny; he was a crook and a jailbird who had been gladly sponging off her from the beginning. Yet Brice, knowing all that, still adored him, which makes a far more interesting tale than the bowdlerized one the show offers, of a duped woman finally and regretfully seeing the light.That Arnstein wasn’t remotely gorgeous, and Karimloo totally is, we can allow. Karimloo also sings beautifully and, to the extent the new book tries to beef up the role, he’s got the beef to do it.Unfortunately the effort is counterproductive. The song “Temporary Arrangement,” in which Nick expresses his mounting fury, has been retrieved from the Styne-Merrill trunk, where it was stashed after one performance in 1964 and should have remained; its intensity comes out of nowhere and rips at the show’s thin fabric. A bit later, Nick gets a version of the title song, which though shot for the 1968 film, starring Streisand and Omar Sharif, was cut for good cause.More happily, when Feldstein sings her own version of “Funny Girl” near the end of the show, it’s simple and touching — not overstretched like her merely loud renditions of the big three hits: “I’m the Greatest Star,” “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade.”Perhaps that’s because she’s finally just sitting down with no one else onstage. (Most of the musical staging, by Ellenore Scott, is hectic.) But if Fierstein’s stabs at strengthening the secondary characters pull focus from the central one, they do help the production in small ways. As Fanny’s mother, the naturally eccentric comic Jane Lynch brings us closest to the Brice spirit, suggesting in “Who Taught Her Everything She Knows?” that zany ambition is a heritable trait. And though Jared Grimes, as Fanny’s pal Eddie Ryan, is somewhat wasted in that song, he earlier makes a fine cameo of the production’s most notable dance, a stunning tap sequence choreographed by Ayodele Casel.Jared Grimes, center, with, foreground from left: Feldstein, Jane Lynch, Toni DiBuono, Amber Ardolino and Leslie Blake Walker.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat the sequence has little to do with the story is not a deal-breaker; in “Funny Girl,” it may even be an advantage. Nor are Fierstein’s anachronisms and vulgar jokes about sex with chorines and men in trench coats catastrophic. This is not a unified work like Styne’s 1959 hit, “Gypsy,” arguably just as fictional in its portrait of the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee yet one of the indisputably great musicals. In that show, no song was allowed to serve less than double duty; everything pointed back to the plot. “Funny Girl” reaches for the same complexity but most often contents itself, except in its best songs, with mere entertainment.If the revival actually provided enough of that, it might prove irresistible. But Mayer’s staging, which at times seems to aim for the ghostly nostalgia of “Follies,” feels lumbering and underfunded, with cheap-looking sets (by David Zinn), a cast of 22 in place of the original 43 and wan new orchestrations for 14 players, based on the glorious originals by Ralph Burns for 25. (You’re going to sell me “People” with two violins?) Only the aptly gaudy costumes by Susan Hilferty suggest the Ziegfeldian overabundance that shows like “Funny Girl” were designed to purvey.This could all have been predicted; over the years, many revivals have been attempted and defeated because the thing a revival is trying to revive is not to be found in the property itself. It’s in the personality of the necessary star: someone not nice but inevitable, not diligent but explosive, not well-rounded but weird. They don’t grow them that way much, anymore, nor write new material for them. Paging Ms. Streisman!Funny GirlAt the August Wilson Theater, Manhattan; funnygirlonbroadway.com. Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes. More

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      in Movies

      ‘Single All the Way’ Review: Cookie Cutter Christmas

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      This Netflix holiday rom-com rests its family-friendly shenanigans on a display of chemistry that never materializes.In the warmly intentioned, but unfortunately frosty romantic comedy “Single All the Way,” Peter (Michael Urie) is a perpetual bachelor who finally has a boyfriend to bring home to his family for the holidays.But when Peter’s beau turns out to be someone else’s husband, Peter convinces his best friend, Nick (Philemon Chambers), to visit over Christmas instead. Nick is well-loved by the family — so much so that they hatch a matchmaking scheme for the two singles. Peter’s holly-jolly mother, Carole (Kathy Najimy), cajoles, but his father, siblings and nieces push the pair to help with kooky Aunt Sandy (Jennifer Coolidge) and her Christmas play, in hopes that the two friends might realize they’re better off as lovers.The director Michael Mayer creates an appealing twinkly backdrop for holiday shenanigans. But the warm-and-fuzzies promised by this Christmas comedy (streaming on Netflix) depend on a display of suppressed passion from Peter and Nick that would propel family members to scheme for their romantic union. Unfortunately, the chemistry between the characters never materializes.Peter and Nick are exceedingly polite, and frequently kept at a respectful distance from each other within the frame. This otherwise cheery movie is stingy with the longing glances or lingering touches that might suggest subterranean longing. At times it’s difficult to believe the pair as best friends, let alone as secretly pining admirers. Even their names suggest their generic anonymity.This lack of chemistry makes for lonely viewing, as if the film exists within a universe where the entire concepts of flirting, sexual tension or even baseline human rapport have yet to be discovered. The supporting cast compensates with piquancy in the side dishes, but the main course is a flavorless misfire.Single All the WayNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

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      in Theater

      Beanie Feldstein to Star in ‘Funny Girl’ on Broadway

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      With the “Booksmart” actress taking on the role originated by Barbra Streisand in 1964, the show is getting its first Broadway revival in 58 years.Beanie Feldstein will star as Fanny Brice, the role that helped make Barbra Streisand a star, in a production of “Funny Girl,” which is returning to Broadway for the first time in 58 years.The revival of the 1964 musical will be directed by Michael Mayer, who oversaw a 2015 revival of the show in London. Producers said performances would begin in the spring, but did not specify a date — though a recent Equity casting call gave April 2 as the first performance. The theater where the musical will be housed will be announced later.“The first time I played Fanny Brice was at my third birthday party, in a head-to-toe leopard print outfit my mom made for me,” Feldstein said in a statement. “So, it’s safe to say that stepping into this iconic role, on Broadway and not in my family’s backyard, is truly my lifelong dream come true.“I am immensely grateful to be able to do so alongside such a remarkable creative team,” she added, “and cannot wait for audiences to get back in theaters again!”Feldstein made her Broadway debut in 2017 as Minnie Fay in “Hello, Dolly!,” which starred Bette Midler, and had memorable roles in the films “Booksmart” and “Lady Bird.” She’ll play Monica Lewinsky next month in the new FX series “Impeachment: American Crime Story.”“Funny Girl” charts the rise of the self-deprecating comedian and actress Fanny Brice, and her relationship with the professional gambler Nick Arnstein. The original production was nominated for eight Tony Awards, including best musical.Streisand won a best actress Oscar for the 1968 film and her performance has cast a long shadow over the title role — a multidimensional character who must sing, generate laughs and succeed against the odds all at once.An attempt to revive the show in 2012, with Bartlett Sher directing the television actress Lauren Ambrose in the lead role, fell apart. So for many theatergoers, the long-awaited return of “Funny Girl” makes it one the most highly anticipated revivals in years.Jule Styne and Bob Merrill’s score includes such classic songs as “People” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade.” Isobel Lennart’s original book is being revised by Harvey Fierstein. And Mayer has a strong track record, though some of his biggest directing successes have been with rock-inflected material, including “Spring Awakening” in 2006 (for which he won a Tony) and the 2014 revival of“Hedwig and the Angry Inch.”The new production will also feature the choreography of Ellenore Scott and scenic design by David Zinn. Ayodele Casel, an artist in residence at Little Island, will oversee tap choreography for the show.Producers said that additional casting announcements would be released shortly. “Funny Girl” is the second previously unscheduled musical to announce its Broadway opening since the pandemic began. Preview performances for the new musical “Paradise Square” will begin on Feb. 22 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. More