Beaver County's Broadway star Amber Ardolino says what's special about 'A Beautiful Noise'

Amber Ardolino never really had a Plan B.

The North Sewickley Township native moved to New York with the single-minded purpose of becoming a Broadway performer.

Mission accomplished for the Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School graduate currently co-starring in "A Beautiful Noise," the Neil Diamond jukebox musical running through June 30 at the Broadhurst Theatre on West 44th Street in Manhattan.

Fresh off a role in Broadway's adaptation of "Back to The Future," with a glittering New York theater resume that also includes "Moulin Rouge: The Musical," "Funny Girl" and "Hamilton," Ardolino made her "A Beautiful Noise" debut last month with flair.

"I have this song called 'Forever in Blue Jeans' and when I finished singing that on my first night and I looked out into the audience, there was a standing ovation," Ardolino recalled last week in a phone interview. "That was the first time something like that has ever happened to me in a theater experience. It was so nice after all the work you put in to get to this point for the audiences to pay you back in that respect. It's like unmatchable. A very goosebump-y moment."

She's giving theatergoers goosebumps, too, with her portrayal of Marcia Murphey, the second wife of singer-songwriting legend Diamond.

"Marcia really tells it like it is," Ardolino said. "She's a visionary. She met Neil before he was famous and kind of helped him find himself and become the icon in music that he is. She was his muse. She's a strong woman who knows what she wants. And it's really fun to be able to play that kind of go-getter, bold woman in a show. It is the Neil Diamond show, but you see how Marcia really has such an impact on his life and playing her is kind of crucial to what goes on in the show. That is really fun."

Ardolino, 30, shares many of those same bold, go-getter qualities.

"I think I've wanted to do this for as long as I can remember," the 2011 Lincoln Park graduate said. "I grew up dancing in Ellwood City at a local dance studio, Studio P, and then when I found out I wanted to sing and do musicals I transitioned to Lincoln Park. And the minute I was at Lincoln Park performing in all their shows, I just knew that Broadway was what I wanted to do."

At age 16, Ardolino was among 100 Pennsylvania students selected for the first-ever Pennsylvania Summer School of the Arts, a program launched by Lincoln Park that enabled her to study the finer points of ballet, jazz and modern dance, while also doing work in musical theater and creative writing.

“It’s very intense,” Ardolino, a Lincoln Park junior at that time, said in a 2009 Times interview.

That scholastic training reinforced her ultimate bucket list dream of being a Broadway performer, "to the point I would cry and tell my mom I was not going to go to college because I was going to go straight to Broadway. And no one believed me, but it's kind of what happened. I went to college (Syracuse) for a couple of months, and I ended up booking a job and said, 'That's it, I'm out of here,' and I took myself to New York to see how long it would take."

Her first audition was for "In The Heights," the acclaimed Lin-Manuel Miranda musical that granted her a callback but didn't hire her ... not at first, anyway.

Ardolino succeeded in her second audition and landed an ensemble role in a national tour of “West Side Story,” then months later got a call from "In The Heights" producers who hired her for a fill-in part after an ensemble performer got injured.

Ardolino kept auditioning for everything she could find, landing an ensemble spot in the national tour of "Flashdance: The Musical" and then a 2015 starring role as Sherrie in "Rock of Ages" at The Venetian in Las Vegas.

She did not take on any side gigs customary to the theater industry, like waitressing or retail work, to pay the rent while waiting for stage roles to appear.

"I never gave myself a backup plan," Ardolino said. "I've always been told 'You need to get a secondary job to help pay the bills ... you need to find a way to support yourself.' I had myself in every audition I could think of straight off the bat, so I never really gave myself an opportunity to have a backup plan. I always knew it's either this or nothing. I think because I put myself in that corner of being 'OK, you've got to do this,' I never had to actually rely on a backup plan."

She kept acing auditions, ending up in the ensemble for Broadway's "Head Over Heels," set to the music of The Go-Go's, and the groundbreaking "Hamilton" where she also was a standby and in the ensemble for the Chicago premiere before being added to the Broadway production in 2018.

By 2019, Ardolino was working as a swing and understudy to the lead Satine character in the original Broadway production of "Moulin Rouge."

Then the 2020 pandemic hit, causing the lights to go down on Broadway.

For the first time in her adult life, Ardolino was forced to pursue a non-stage career. She earned a diploma in interior design, an occupation she also finds to be rather interesting.

"Now I have a backup plan if Broadway ever closes down again," she said.

Ardolino industriously cultivated huge Instagram and TikTok followings, paying dividends in September 2020, when fans helped her win a reader's poll hosted by BroadwayWorld.com, which proclaimed her the "Broadway Star to Be of the Next Decade."

In the summer of 2021, the lights went back on for Broadway, and Ardolino soon regained her career momentum, landing a role in the revival of "Funny Girl" and then the part of Marty McFly's sister in "Back to The Future."

Her "Funny Girl" director convinced Ardolino to audition for "A Beautiful Noise" to replace the departing Robyn Hurder, a Tony Award nominee who had originated the role of Diamond's wife, Marcia.

Ardolino won the role and will play Marcia straight on to June 30 when "A Beautiful Noise" closes on Broadway.

"What's kind of nice about this is with Broadway shows, you typically get a closing notice and then the show closes in a week or two," Ardolino said. "We actually got our closing notice for June 30, so we still have four more months to really sell out the Broadhurst and give people time to get to New York City to buy tickets. I'll be playing Marcia every night up until then."

"A Beautiful Noise" is not a typical Broadway musical "because there is that rock concert element to it," Ardolino said. "It feels like you are at a Neil Diamond concert. But paired with that concert experience you're also getting a really deep, emotional story about Neil Diamond. A lot of things people didn't know about him necessarily. When people come to see the show, they hear these songs and see where these songs stemmed from in his life, like why he wrote 'Cherry, Cherry'; why he wrote 'Solitary Man,' why all these songs came to be. You're getting the backstory. It makes his story and the show so much more special. And you're getting really great dancing and performers performing their hearts out. I think there's so many good things about the show and I can't urge people enough to see it."

There's already talk of taking "A Beautiful Noise" out on the road.

"You never know, you might actually see me on a national tour of 'A Beautiful Noise,'" Ardolino said. "I love the show so much and I'm so excited that it's getting to breathe life into other cities in America, not just New York City."

While it might be hard to pull Ardolino out of New York now, any national tour she ever does that plays Pittsburgh would be a first-time for her.

"Isn't that crazy? I've never performed in Pittsburgh before," Ardolino said. "Ever.

"While growing up in Pittsburgh, I even auditioned for shows in Pittsburgh but never booked them. I got cut from the auditions," she said. "I was like, 'OK, I guess I'm just going to have to perform on Broadway' (laughs). I've never been given the opportunity to perform in Pittsburgh yet. But one day, hopefully."

She enjoys trips home to see her Beaver County family, always making sure to visit former stomping grounds.

"Yes, I go to the (Brighton) Hot Dog Shoppe every time I come back. I'm thinking about it now. Mmmm, it's so good. And I go to National Grind, my favorite coffee shop," Ardolino said. "I love coming back home. When the show closes on June 30, I'll definitely be making a visit back home just to spend some time there. I love where we grew up."

Back home, her name now gets cited as an inspiring example of someone who achieved her dreams through diligence and unwavering belief.

"It's been such a long time coming, and it took so much hard work and passion," Ardolino said. "To be from a small town, and to know that this dream actually came to fruition. Now that I'm finally here I don't take it for granted at all because I know how long the journey took and how badly I wanted it from such a young age. I'm very happy."

Scott Tady is entertainment editor at The Times and easy to reach at stady@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Beaver County Times: Beaver County's Amber Ardolino stars in Broadway's Neil Diamond show