Good times never seemed so good: Star of Neil Diamond musical, Heidi Kettenring, discusses dual roles ahead of Popejoy performance

Award-winning musical theater performer Heidi Kettenring has been a Neil Diamond fan for a very long time. She now stars in the touring production of “A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical,” which opens at Popejoy Hall on Tuesday, Feb. 3.

“I was about 7 when ‘The Jazz Singer’ came out,” Kettenring said, referring to the 1980 movie musical featuring Diamond in his first film acting role.

A young Kettenring signed up for the Columbia Record Club, a popular mail-order subscription service that allowed new members to purchase 10 albums for a penny.

“Neil Diamond’s ‘The Jazz Singer’ was in that original 10,” Kettenring said. “So, I was a fan from a young age, but mostly of his ‘Greatest Hits’ stuff. Then, I had a friend in college who was very, very into Neil Diamond. So, through him, I got to know more of the songs that are in this show, like ‘Shilo’ and ‘Soolaimón’ and – oh my gosh – ‘Crunchy Granola Suite’ is one of my favorites!”

Kettenring plays two roles in “A Beautiful Noise” – Diamond’s mother, Rose, and the songwriter and music producer Ellie Greenwich, one of Diamond’s most significant collaborators.

“It works beautifully in the structure of the play for the same person to do both parts,” Kettenring said, “and as an actor, it’s thrilling, because the two women are so different and so similar at the same time.”

One of the challenges in differentiating the two characters onstage, she said, was that they are both New Yorkers.

“They both have a Brooklyn accent, so that doesn’t help me as far as differentiating them,” Kettenring said.

Through scene work during the rehearsal process, Kettenring found Rose’s voice, especially in emotionally charged scenes, starting to pitch itself higher.

“And with Ellie, she knows what she’s got going on. She’s direct. She’s quick. So, I just dropped the timbre of my voice a little bit,” Kettenring said.

To differentiate the two characters in terms of movement and gait, Kettenring drew on acting exercises from her undergraduate training at Northwestern University.

“In my first year of theater school, it was a lot of theater games. We had to go to the zoo and watch animals (and imitate their movements). I don’t do any of that anymore, but I think those building blocks are just part of me now,” Kettenring said.

The more time she spent inhabiting the two characters, the more she felt herself standing and walking differently.

“It wasn’t intentional. Like, I didn’t walk around the rehearsal room, trying to come up with a walk or a stance,” Kettenring said. “But I discovered over time that one of them (Greenwich) walks a little more upright and with less alacrity. And the other one, Rose, in my portrayal, is a little quicker, a little more driven.”

Kettenring said she has been very lucky to have had the opportunity to bring many strong female characters to life on the stage, from Elinor Dashwood in “Sense and Sensibility” to Jo March in “Little Women” to Nessarose in “Wicked,” which ran for three years in Chicago. Kettenring considers her dual roles in “A Beautiful Noise” to be “right up there” with the best roles of her career.

“With Ellie, even from my first entrance into the play, it’s a thrill, because she’s on a mission,” Kettenring said. “She’s got her cup of coffee and her watch, and … she’s a woman on a schedule.”

Rather than viewing these women as mere supporting characters in Diamond’s life story, she sees them as co-equal participants with strength and agency of their own.

“A Beautiful Noise” is a jukebox musical that will no doubt appeal to fans of the gravely-voiced singer-songwriter, but Kettenring thinks its appeal is much broader than that.

“There are people who maybe wouldn’t come because they don’t know Neil Diamond’s music, or they think they don’t like Neil Diamond’s music. But I encourage everyone to come, because … there’s something for everyone,” she said. “I mean, you’ve got these beautiful scenes talking about our inner workings and inner feelings, and then you literally have moments where he’s in concert.”

“A Beautiful Noise,” she said, combines glitz and grit, mixing moments of musical escapism with authentic emotions.

“What I did not expect, when I first saw it on Broadway, was the cathartic cry I had when it was over. I did not anticipate that,” Kettenring said. “And then, a friend of mine, who knew that he was going to get that (emotional experience), didn’t realize that he was going to be on his feet at the end of the play, singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ with us. He was like, ‘I didn’t think I liked Neil Diamond’s music, but I was on my feet doing the choreography with you guys when it was over.’”

Logan Royce Beitmen is an arts writer for the Albuquerque Journal. He covers visual art, music, fashion, theater and more. Reach him at lbeitmen@abqjournal.com or on Instagram at @loganroycebeitmen.