‘A Beautiful Noise’ hits Pittsburgh with music, memory and Jewish heart

Hannah Jewel Kohn first heard Neil Diamond’s music at a bar and bat mitzvah party when she was a young teen. It moved her then, and it moves her now as she performs the role of Diamond’s second wife, Marcia Murphey, in the touring production of “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical.”

“It’s truly like a dream come true for me,” Kohn said. “I’m just really living out one of my dreams.”

“A Beautiful Noise” is running at the Benedum Center from Sept. 9-14.

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The show was created in collaboration with Diamond, one of the most popular rock singers of the 20th century.

Premiering on Broadway in 2022, the musical tells the story of Diamond’s rise from humble beginnings in Brooklyn to being a superstar selling more than 120 million albums and with a catalogue of classics, including “Sweet Caroline,” “Forever in Blue Jeans” and “America.”

Diamond stopped performing in 2018 at the age of 76 after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Like other “jukebox musicals,” including “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” and “Jersey Boys” about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, “A Beautiful Noise” uses the star’s music to tell their story. The Broadway run of “A Beautiful Noise” ended in 2024 after 657 performances, and the North American tour began shortly thereafter.
Kohn has been with the tour since its inception.

The Jewish actress, who grew up in a suburb of Detroit, has been performing professionally since she was 18. She was in the first national tour of Disney’s “Frozen” and in the touring company of “Beauty and the Beast.” She also was in the Pittsburgh CLO’s 2019 production of “Grease.”

Kohn said she is thrilled to take on the role of Marcia Murphey, who was married to Diamond from 1969 to 1995. Murphey was a significant influence on the musician, including during times when he was dealing with depression.

Portraying Murphey, Kohn said, is gratifying “because I play a pivotal part in his life, his career, his success, because I keep him from those limited beliefs that he has about himself. I see this gift in him, and I help him to believe in himself and to trust that he has something really special. It’s really rewarding to be that woman who is behind that success, that kind of man. And it’s rewarding to also see the audience cry and laugh and sing and dance, and it takes them back to maybe a memory that they have listening to ‘Sweet Caroline.’”

Audiences typically arrive at the show “with so much excitement about his music,” Kohn continued. “And so to tell this story that they might not have known before is extremely rewarding. I don’t want to spill too much, because there’s, like, a secret element to the show, as to how we tell his life story. It’s not what you think.”

The show also has some very Jewish moments, Kohn said.

“I think it’s the right amount of humor that the Jews will love,” she said.

Included are scenes where the struggles of Jewish immigrants are captured as well, Kohn said. Diamond’s parents, and all four his grandparents, were immigrants, which may have inspired his song “America.”
Kohn recalled meeting Diamond when he came to one of the company’s performances at the Pantages Theatre in Los Angeles.

“Honestly, it was a dream come true for me to meet him and to hear his stories and for him to see the show,” she said. “It was very nerve-racking, but also so fulfilling. It was one of our proudest moments in our show to do it in front of him.”

Diamond was “extremely proud the show,” Kohn said, noting he was clapping and singing along with the music. At the end of the show, he sang “Sweet Caroline” along with the audience.

Kohn said she relates to the portrayal of Diamond’s parents as loving and supportive; her parents were like that, too.

“I’m one of five kids, and my parents loved all of us unconditionally, and they helped me to really chase my dreams,” she said. “They believed in me, and they never said no. They never said, ‘I don’t think that this is going to work out.’ They just said, ‘If that’s what you want to do, do it.’ So I’ve always had so much confidence instilled in me since a very young age that I’ve kept with me forever.”

Rather than heading to college after high school, she gave herself three months to see if she could book a show. She did, and has never looked back.

Kohn enjoys touring the country with musicals, she said, “because we are bringing shows to people who normally don’t have access to Broadway shows. … It is really, really, special.”

“A Beautiful Noise,” she said, will be a unique experience for theatergoers.

“Neil Diamond could have had a biopic, an autobiography, a biography, a mini-series — anything to share his life story — and he chose a musical to share his story. And I think when you see the show, you’ll understand why: It’s because it feels like a real-life concert. It feels like you’re really with him when he was touring, and you feel the electricity of the music, like hitting your soul, hitting your heart. You feel the excitement and it’s spectacular, moving. It’s inspirational and it’s relatable, and it’s for everyone, whether you’re 10 or whether you’re 100. It really is a show for everyone.” PJC

Toby Tabachnick can be reached at ttabachnick@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.