Neil Diamond has been a musical icon for more than 60 years. Nearly everyone has sung along to one of his songs in all those years.
“Sweet Caroline” has become the standard at nearly every sporting event and wedding since it was released.
The Broadway show “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical” gives fans a different insight into the musician's life. It will be at the Forrest Theatre in Philadelphia from Dec. 10 to 22. Tickets are available at telecharge.com.
Created in collaboration with Diamond, “A Beautiful Noise” is the uplifting true story of how a child from Brooklyn became a chart-busting, show-stopping American music icon.
With 120 million albums sold, an induction into the Songwriters and Rock and Roll halls of fame, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and sold-out concerts around the world that made him bigger than Elvis, Diamond's story was made to shine on Broadway, and head out on the road across America.
“It's really a musical dramedy in my mind and it all takes place in a psychiatrist's office,” said Dale Duko, who has the enviable role of playing the back-up for star Robert Westenberg in the traveling show. “All the stories are being told with Neil Diamond in therapy and he suffered from a great deal of depression. So, it's not all fluff and flowers, you know what I mean? It's a really significant story. They spend a lot of time in these two chairs. The doctor and he do. And, uh, but you have to, I mean, you have to, you have to really work at holding on to literally being depressed. It's a gut-wrenching thing. There are a lot of tears and all that stuff. It's really amazing. So at the end of the show, for me, the, the eight times I've done it, I've just gone sort of back to my room. I've given the big smile and taken the big curtain call and would just sit there for about 15 minutes.”
For Duko, the show can be harder because each night he has to get mentally and physically ready for a role he may not even play, depending on the star’s health.
“A lot of shows, people get to leave after intermission,” Duko said. “One of my friends, a pretty big stage manager on Broadway, said that she would keep me around all the way through the show. If it was her choice, because some of these guys are fairly old. And she's like, you never know who's going to fall down. You never know who's gonna all of a sudden twist their ankle walking up the steps. I don't mind it at all, and I watch it almost every day. I cover all five of those old-guy roles. So it's pretty crazy and it's pretty fun. As a result, I've had to literally learn every word in the script.”
Duko’s career has taken a lot of twists and turns through the years.
“I started out, um, just doing theater,” Duko, 65, said. “my first show ever was 50 years ago last month when I was 15.”
Eventually, though, he decided to try his hand in television and moved to Los Angeles. He worked on roles with shows like “Law & Order,” “Bull” and “General Hospital.”
“I kind of kicked into the TV world and that sort of thing and I did a million other jobs,” said Duko. “I ran a film studio for a while. I did all kinds of stuff and then I came back to New York.”
After the pandemic and an actors strike, Duko was cast in “A Beautiful Noise,” his first Broadway play.
“I went to Ryder College and I posted a thing on their website, ‘Hey man, it's easy peasy. All you gotta do is, you know, graduate and wait 45 years,' ” Duko said. “So you have to be really, you have to, the challenge is to go ready every day, even though the likelihood is, you know, less than probable.”