Despite Jessica Vosk, BEACHES Is Beached – Review
Beaches, the musical, is not bad but it is fatally misguided. Its source material – Iris Rainer Dart’s 1985 novel, later adapted into a cult film starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey – has retained its melodramatic grip on culture, if only for its Grammy-winning theme, “Wind Beneath My Wings.” It even shares the same threads of a female friendship spun throughout decades with this century’s most wildly successful Broadway adaptation, Wicked. But even with Dart returning to write the stage show’s book and lyrics (Thom Thomas assisting with the latter), it is very hard to care about anything onstage.
This is not the fault of its hard-working cast, led by Jessica Vosk (in the Midler role) and Kelli Barrett (in Hershey’s). A decade or so ago, when cynical exercises in screen-to-stage adaptations were popping up like Hollywood herpes (have we found a cure for Ghost: The Musical?), this would have been one of the better ones. It’s perfectly harmless, and just as forgettable. Impressively, it took two directors, Lonny Price and Matt Cowart, to helm an underwhelming production which hobbles itself at nearly every turn.
Because, yes, we knew this was meant to tour as soon as its limited Broadway run closed, so James Noone’s set (designed to stay out of the way of David Bengali’s hideous projections) is ready to pack up and hit the road. Should anyone in the touring cast fall ill, Mike Stoller’s bland score and Jennifer Rias’ choreography can be performed by most passersby within a mile of your city’s performing arts center. Tracy Christensen’s costumes can be found at Sears right now, J. Jared Janas’ wigs at the Party City next door, and even the shadiest non-union house can quickly rig up Ken Billington’s lighting designs.
It’s a matter of a production playing us for suckers, and these poor performers getting socked in their stead. Vosk, particularly, though bereft of material to leave much of an impression, acquits herself as a strong lead. Her Cee Cee Bloom, a blowsy Jersey gal born for the stage, belts to the rafters and has charisma to spare. Try as the production’s marketing might to ignore the film, her raised-in-a-gay-bar cheek and series of flaming hairdos are pure Midler. In the musical’s best scene, when Cee Cee exposes her romantic Achilles’ heel and throws herself at the handsome John (Brent Thiessen), Vosk briefly attains the aching vulnerability of Barbra-as-Fanny’s star.
A small cast can usually be a practical matter, but why cast two actors to play the ladies’ teenage selves (Bailey Ryon and Emma Ogea) in, essentially, cameos instead of redirecting those funds toward more adults in the ensemble? The result is dismal group scenes and a criminal overreliance on wig-shifting from Thiessen, Ben Jacoby, Sarah Bockel and Lael Van Keuren (as the leads’ mothers), and especially Zurin Villanueva, who heroically whips up genuine comedy from the approximately twelve bit roles she’s made to play.
Why start the show with a rollicking Vosk song only to screech to a halt with two kid numbers, the first a grating ballad? The leads’ child versions are pretty winning, even if they evoke the queasy feeling of watching a youth pageant. Little Cee Cee (Samantha Schwartz), especially, is a sparky scene-stealer unfortunately saddled with an FBI raid’s wardrobe and a litany of swears in search of comedy.
Barrett, while appropriately prim for the WASPy Bertie White, doesn’t have nearly enough to work with, and their friendship suffers as a result. We’re meant to value her commitment to family and stability – the things star-on-the-rise Cee Cee will gleefully throw away – even as she dooms herself to family expectations and a jerk of a husband (Ben Jacoby). But her songs lack character, and her storyline takes a backseat to Cee Cee’s more obviously pyrotechnic one, and we’re left wondering what about her could lift up anyone’s wings.
That is, of course, until the finale, when the sands of time have eroded her health and Dart’s plot goes full tearjerker. But, by then, to paraphrase another improbably successful ‘80s shlockfest, the tears one might have shed for their dark fate grow cold and turn to tears of bewilderment.
Beaches is in performance through September 6, 2026 at the Majestic Theatre on West 44th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.
