FOR Redlands product Hannah Fredericksen, stepping onto the QPAC stage in A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical next March will mean considerably more than another opening night.
It will be a homecoming 15 years in the making, with her home state debut after building an impressive career spanning musical theatre and drama, with credits including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Mousetrap, Dream Lover and Assassins.
“It means everything to me, coming home and playing to a home crowd,” Fredericksen said.
“I’m so pleased that it’s with this show. I think it’s kind of divine timing that it’s with A Beautiful Noise.”
Fredericksen’s love of performing began while growing up in Brisbane, where learning guitar unexpectedly led her towards singing.
Her parents encouraged that growing interest, taking her to classes before she became heavily involved in amateur theatre at Brisbane Arts Theatre on Petrie Tce, while going to school at Coorparoo State School and Moreton Bay College.
In A Beautiful Noise, Fredericksen has the unusual challenge of playing two very different women who helped shape Neil Diamond’s life in legendary songwriter Ellie Greenwich and his mother, Rose Diamond.
Greenwich was a hugely influential songwriter whose catalogue included classics such as River Deep Mountain High and Do Wah Diddy Diddy.
“She really discovered Neil,” Fredericksen said.
“I had no idea that Neil Diamond wrote I’m a Believer or that he wrote Red Red Wine.
“She [Ellie] sort of gave him the confidence, I guess, to go out on his own.”
Rose Diamond occupies an entirely different place in the story, as Fredericksen said playing Neil’s mother allowed her to help audiences see the shy Brooklyn boy who existed long before the sequins, stadiums and global superstardom.
“We get to sort of see where this amazing Neil Diamond that we know, where he began, what his beginnings were and his relationship with his parents,” she said.
For those expecting A Beautiful Noise to simply roll through Diamond’s greatest hits, Fredericksen says the production offers considerably more, with Broadway director Michael Mayer travelling to Australia to direct the local production, describing it as a play wrapped inside a rock musical.
After watching shows at QPAC as a Brisbane youngster and wondering what it would be like to perform professionally, Fredericksen is finally coming home to stand on that stage herself.
A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical plays the Lyric Theatre, QPAC from March 20.
