"Beaches" Gets Beached!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                    This will be another post that may have spoilers, so let me say first if you have never seen the 1988 film "Beaches," with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, skip this post, but see the film, and avoid this musical!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                      The "Playbill" cover says more about the show than may be realized.  The musical is at its best when the focus is on the children--Little CeCe, played by Samantha Schwartz, and Little Bertie, played by Zeya Grace.  They are wonderful, and it is interesting how they move throughout the show as figures of memory.  Because when Jessica Vosk and Kelly Barrett take over, they are so lackluster.

                                         What prompted Lonny Price to get involved in this mess?  The Sondheim alum, and forever original cast member of "Merrily We Roll Along," uses the children in a "Follies-esque" way, but the unexciting book and even worse music and lyrics make this a disappointment.

                                           The biggest disappointment is the end, which should have given audiences who are so inclined--like me--a good catharsis.  If I recall the 1988 film correctly Hillary (the Barbara Hershey character; why the name change here I could not tell you) dies with CeCe at her side, holding hands.  Tears were shed over this moment. But the show denies the audience this; when Bertie gets sick, cancer is unmentioned.  If the audience blinks, they will miss Bertie's passing, which is so anit-climatic, rushing too soon into a not so moving rendition of the moving "Wind Beneath My Wings." 

                                              "Beaches" might have been the entertaining tearjerker it is capable of being had it been better cast, scored, and more attention paid to the key emotional aspects.   Like the song in "Gigi" says, "Thank Heaven For Little Girls."

                                                   Because when they are on stage, the two little girls transform "Beaches" into what might have been.  Pity it was not.