{"id":600963,"date":"2026-04-23T05:04:12","date_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/600963\/"},"modified":"2026-04-23T05:04:12","modified_gmt":"2026-04-23T05:04:12","slug":"80s-tearjerker-washes-out-as-stage-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/600963\/","title":{"rendered":"’80s Tearjerker Washes Out As Stage Musical"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tBeaches<\/a>, that tearjerking \u201980s tale of female friendship beloved by some, snubbed by others and mostly remembered for Bette Midler\u2019s rendition of the soaring theme song \u201cWind Beneath My Wings,\u201d has had a long road to the stage, and the wait has done it no favors. Whatever charms the 1988 movie had \u2013 and they were slight if soggy \u2013 have been washed away like so much sand erosion, leaving the stage cluttered with the flotsom of cartoon characters, broadly drawn performances and some chintzy-looking sets. <\/p>\n

\n\tOpening tonight on Broadway<\/a>, Beaches, A New Musical, as the full title has it, is a mostly forgettable endeavor, and that, sadly, includes a score that will not likely takes its place in the treasured legacy of its composer, the great rock & roll songwriter Mike Stoller.<\/p>\n

\n\tBy the time \u201cWind Beneath My Wings,\u201d the Grammy-winning AOR hit written by Jeff Silbar\u00a0and\u00a0Larry Henley, makes its inevitable end-of-show entrance, whatever nostalgia remains is solely for Midler and her signature performance of the song. The new Beaches is most charitably viewed as an oldies act for a movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe premise, for anyone who needs reminding, is an odd couple lifelong friendship that survives domineering mothers, long distances, polar opposite personalities, men and misunderstandings, all until a terminal disease does the separating that a long list of previous plot devices couldn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

\n\tWe first meet CeeCee and Bertie (named Hillary in the movie that starred Midler and Barbara Hershey) on an Atlantic City beach when the girls are children, or, more accurately here, tiny adults with all the characteristics they\u2019d take through life. CeeCee (a scene stealing, for better and sometimes worse, Samantha Schwartz, directed to channel both Midler and Mae West) is already something of a boardwalk star, performing in a bright red bustier-style get-up and fishnet stockings, sassing her equally brassy mom (whom she calls by first name Leona) and encouraging milquetoast Bertie to ignore her own stuffy mom\u2019s instructions by dipping a toe or two in the surf. Challenge accepted, friendship born.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tZeya Grace (left) and Samantha Schwartz (right) in \u2018Beaches\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMarc J. Franklin<\/p>\n

\n\tThe girls go their separate ways at summer\u2019s end, but their pen-palship continues through their teens and into adulthood. When they reunite as adults they haven\u2019t missed a beat.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe musical\u2019s book by Iris Rainer Dart (who wrote the original 1985 novel) and Thom Thomas takes a vaguely snapshot approach, with quick scenes from the women\u2019s lives \u2013 Love Letters-style passages, introductions to the men they love and fight over, and glimpses of CeeCee\u2019s show business rise (she grows up, apparently, not so much to be Bette Midler\u2019s Beaches character but more the Divine Miss M herself, at one point performing at a gay bathhouse and later making variety-show appearances in Midler\u2019s signature \u201970s trash-with-flash style beneath an explosion of red hair.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the adult CeeCee, Jessica Vosk<\/a>, a fine powerhouse singer, chooses \u2013 or is directed to choose \u2013 an over-the-top style that draws heavily, naturally enough, from Midler (the outr\u00e9 style, the Merman-esque volume and chanteuse vulnerability). There\u2019s some Streisand, too, and a big dose of Andrea Martin, specifically Martin\u2019s signature SCTV character Edith Prickley, that bawdy, gawdy ham with all the bravado of a Catskills clown. Standard wisecrack: \u201cI look like the girl next door\u2026to a kibbutz!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tKelli Barrett<\/a>, as the adult Bertie, is suitably prim and proper, pitched to a more human level than CeeCee but not significantly more convincing. We can only imagine what each of these characters sees in the other aside from plot mandates, with an audience\u2019s sense of \u201980s nostalgia required to do some very heavy lifting. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe men in the cast \u2013 Ben Jacoby and Brent Thiessen \u2013 are suitably smarmy in their stick-thin roles, with the supporting adult actresses \u2013 Sarah Bockel and Lael Van Keuren \u2013 playing the mothers with caricature zeal. Zurin Villanueva, as a late-in-the-show hospice caretaker, has a refreshing natural ease hinting at a sturdier Beaches that might have been.<\/p>\n

\n\tTitle: Beaches
Venue: Broadway\u2019s Majestic Theatre
Director: Lonny Price and Matt Cowart
Book: Iris Rainer Dart & Thom Thomas
Music: Mike Stoller, with Lyrics by Dart
Cast: Jessica Vosk, Kelli Barrett, Samantha Schwartz, Zeya Grace, Bailey Ryon, Emma Ogea, Ben Jacoby, Brent Thiessen, Sarah Bockel, Lael Van Keuren, Zurin Villanueva, Harper Burns
Running time: 2 hrs 30 min (including intermission)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beaches, that tearjerking \u201980s tale of female friendship beloved by some, snubbed by others and mostly remembered for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[17756,21540,110469,88,261429,261430],"class_list":{"0":"post-600963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-beaches","9":"tag-broadway","10":"tag-broadway-review","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-jessica-vosk","13":"tag-kelli-barrett"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=600963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}