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- [00:00]
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- [01:32]
Strayer University Promoter
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- [02:04]
Mickey Jo
Beaches both a noun and a verb. To be beached would be to be washed up ashore, to be adrift, helpless, languishing, often used to describe a giant, imminently dead sea creature. Incidentally, we gotta talk about this show. But before we do, a quick introduction to me if you happen to be meeting me for the very first time. Oh my God. Hey, welcome to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you're listening to this Broadway musical review on podcast platforms. I am Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theater. I am a content creator and a critic here on social media and today I am coming to you from location here on a beach. Did I say beach? I meant bench. I am currently in a park on the west side of Manhattan. Listen, if I could have found a beach, I would have taken you to one. But you're going to have to believe me that that bright thing you're seeing behind head is the Hudson and beyond it is New Jersey, where at least part of this musical takes place. I am here today amidst my Spring 2026 Broadway trip where I am seeing around two dozen shows, many of them brand new openings, to let you know all about one of New York's most recent musical theatre arrivals, Beaches, currently playing at the Majestic Theatre. And unusually for a beach, there is something of an elephant in the room with this one. Because every so often, almost once a season, sometimes twice a season, there comes along a show where which is sort of regarded as a flop on arrival. People talk about it before it opens, before it gets reviewed, sometimes before it even begins its first preview performance, and they often do so less than graciously. And it's not the best part of the industry. It's not fair to the company members, to the creatives, to the crew, everyone working on this production. But right now, here on Broadway, that show is definitely Beaches. I saw one of the show's final press preview performances earlier this week. It subsequently opened. It has not been reviewed well, and you know you hate to kick sand at something which is for all intents and purposes, all already dead. But in the name of good theater, maintaining standards in a struggling industry, and trying to learn lessons from our mistakes, there is plenty that we can say about Beaches. So this is going to be my full review. I'm going to tell you everything about this show and whether it's essentially as bad as you've heard. Meanwhile, if you're looking forward to my other Broadway reviews, of which there are going to be plenty, make sure you're subscribed here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any new videos or following me on podcast platforms in the meantime, like let's Talk about Beaches. So though the show is new to Broadway, it's been in development for quite a while. It is officially based on the novel, which has also been adapted for Screen the novel by Iris Rainer Dart, who is credited now as a co book writer. The show has had multiple creatives over the years. Sadly, a couple of them have passed away during the ongoing sort of decade plus creative process of bringing this show to Broadway. It has had multiple regional outings and it does seem as though. Though it's probably going to inevitably have some symmetry in its lifetime, because it feels as though the ideal destination for a show like this and for this material is somewhere like a regional little playhouse, somewhere where there's a coastal connection. And it's going to be a charming little musical with some familiarity of the film that people love. All of this to say it's not necessarily a show which belongs on Broadway. It has arrived here as a limited run at the Majestic Theatre, a theatre which it really does not belong in. That's probably part of its problem ahead of a planned national tour. But it's also very possible that this is only really playing on Broadway in order to launch the show and boost its profile for future licensing. Now, the creatives currently credited on the show are as. Iris Rayner Dart, the original novelist, and Tom Thomas are credited with the book. Mike Stoller is credited with the music, and Iris Rayner Dart is also credited with the lyrics. But it has been developed in collaboration with David Austin. This production has been directed by Lonnie Price and Matt Cowett and. And I will tell you a little bit about the plot of Beaches, for those of you who aren't familiar. I hadn't seen the film beforehand, which I dare say wasn't detrimental to my enjoyment of the show. If anything, I think it made it easier to enjoy it without the knowledge of Bette Midler's performance, which, along with her performance of the song Wind Beneath My Wings, is kind of the film's enduring legacy. That, and it being super sad. And I knew that much going in. I also knew that this was a story of lifelong female friendship. We follow Cece Bloom, played by Jessica Vosk, as well as her friend Bertie White, played by Kelly Barrett. They meet as children on a beach, one of many on which they will spend time together throughout their lives. At which point cece is an already fatigued child star, performing in a sort of vaudeville peer show, like a sort of a baby June who could haggle cab fare. Bertie, meanwhile, comes from wealth. She's from a higher social class. It's an accident that the two girls encounter each other, but they are immediately quite fascinated by each other, and they become fast friends from two very different walks of life. We then see how each of their lives progresses, the ways in which they move apart, but then come back together. For cece, this is all about chasing fame as a performer. She eventually becomes hugely successful. We learn this at the very beginning of the show, because it's framed from the end and we then flash back to the past. That isn't achieved, however, without years of playing humiliatingly small and unglamorous roles in a sort of a summer stock theatre. Bertie, meanwhile, is expected by her mother and society to marry a wealthy suitor and become a housewife. But she has aspirations of entering the legal profession and advocating for civil rights. Ultimately, as you might expect, and as we've seen in other similar stories, the two women achieve some of their ambitions, but also encounter other unexpected challenges in life. Some of them romantic, some of them different. They move apart, they reconnect, they feud, they put it behind them. They grow closer than ever before. 4. It is just about enough narrative to justify a two act musical, because there's next to no subplot. We're only really following this friendship and their lives, particularly cece's. The framing for all of this that I mentioned briefly is that cece, a big star to begin with, is filming an episode of her hugely watched TV show when she gets some sort of a very important call and immediately abandons the set. Interspersed throughout these scenes from the past, we see little moments of her trying desperately to get somewhere at very short notice. She is trying to get onto a fully booked flight, she is trying to get a taxi through a storm. And she does so at every turn by singing her beloved popular theme song and having people fall down at her feet. More on that later. What I want to talk about a little bit here before I describe some more of the material to you is the justification for this being a musical in the first place. Because it's not a conversation that we have enough when it comes to these adaptations. And whether it's screen to stage or page to stage, like the Notebook, another example of a recent Broadway musical adapted from a book, which was also very well known as a film. We do still need to consider, does this need to be an all singing, all dancing, two act Broadway show? Where is the justification? And with this story, an awful lot of it, as well as an awful lot of the expectation, I think, comes from that final moment. And Wind Beneath My Wings. There are so many films from this era that have just one iconic musical moment. Hocus Pocus is an example. Sister act has a handful of them. The Bodyguard is another, and that has proven enough for audiences. Dirty Dancing we could also talk about. That's proven enough for audiences before because they form a connection of like, especially when there's a great Broadway star playing this role, you Think, oh, well, you know, this could be as bad as people are saying it is. But Jessica Vosk singing Wind Beneath My Wings, that's reason enough to buy a ticket, and you would be surprised, but we're gonna get there. Outside of the Wind Beneath My Wings, of it all, the only real theatrical license that I think this story has is cece's arc, right? This larger than life, vibrant, inherently theatrical personality that she is, and her knowing that she's a star, trying to convince all of these men to let her audition for the role. She does an audition, she's like, I've rewritten the material for you. She's sort of a Jewish archetype with a Jewish mother. She eventually becomes successful. She marries the man of her dreams, she eventually wins him over, but then her success proves too much for him and he leaves her and she is alone yet again. And that would be a great story for a musical if it weren't for the fact it already is. It's Funny Girl. That show already exists. So this is just Funny Girl and her friend Bertie at the beach, only with worse songs. And let's talk about this material because, you know, the songs aren't bad, they're just utterly generic and forgettable. And for a songwriter of this calibre, that is surprising. They very much get you from point A to point B. But 50 years from now, people will be baffled by the fact that this premiered on Broadway in 2026, when it sounds like something written in the 70s, and that's not a criticism of the sound of the score and the era in which it's deliberately set, as much as how unimaginative it is and how uninspiring it is. The book, I think, is a little better. I don't know to what extent it's a close adaptation of the screenplay. It is functional. It's also charming. You know, to my surprise, having heard what I'd heard about Beaches, I spent an awful lot of time sat in the orchestra of the Majestic Theatre smiling to myself. It is very witty. There are some really great laughs in there. There's one joke that CeCe makes to a couple of nuns who she encounters, which was side splittingly funny. I would call it comedy familiar of, like the Golden Girls. It also has an awful lot of heart. It has defined charact. You grow to care about this female friendship, which is probably the most important part of the show. The biggest question for a lot of people might be, did it make you cry at the end? Is it landing that emotional impact? Because if it's you know, not particularly inspiring or original or intelligent. But you still feel things. That's still a success. The answer to which, from my perspective, is I came so close to crying, and then I got stopped in my tracks. And that's because Beaches is not a bad show from the beginning. Like a sunburn, it grows on you steadily and unexpectedly. You're sat there on the beach, enjoying a nice time, looking out at the view. It's pleasant. You're smiling to yourself. You're laughing a little bit. And then gradually you realize that there's been a gentle breeze and the problems begin to make themselves apparent. And to bring the metaphor to its ultimate conclusion, you are, by the end of the thing, in pain. So here are some more of my thoughts about the creative choices in Beaches, and what I mean by that really is the problems with Beaches.
- [12:27]
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- [13:29]
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- [14:05]
Mickey Jo
So this is one of those unusual, troubled shows. And I'm not here to tell you that the score is great or that the book is brilliant. But I don't think those are its principal problems. It's really a lot more to do with the creative choices made around them. And it's not a problem consistently, for the most part, it is directed decently enough. The scope of the whole show is surprisingly small. It is a limited cast, the majority of whom either play or understudy CeCe or Bertie at various different ages. We have young child versions of both of them who have great material. Specifically, the child version of Cece is an absolute riot, brilliantly portrayed. Let me tell you the name of the very talented young actress who you will be seeing again on Broadway. Samantha Schwartz is her name. Zaya Grace, also very talented, playing young Bertie. Puzzlingly, there are teenage versions of the two of them who we only see for the briefest of flashes. They sort of play them aged up to their high school years, but by the time they're graduating high school, or that's what it seems to be, they are already being portrayed by Jessica Vosk and Kelly Barrett. I gather that in a previous incarnation of the show there have been multiple. They may have utilized the sort of middle version a la Fun Home, a la the Cher show, a la the Dolly Parton musical, a la the Notebook. Apparently we always have to have three. I would interrogate that writers of musicals. I don't think we always need to have three. I guess they used to have more material, but then they realized that we need to see Jessica Vosk and Kelly Barrett sooner. And it works whenever we see them on stage, I think. I don't know why those middle ones are still in the show. To exist for the briefest of moments and then play other ensemble roles. The consequences of this casting, I will say, is that the very few men in the company play all of the male roles existing around these two, including their romantic interests. And there are very few actors of color in the company. It is largely an all white cast because apparently these two must only be played by white performers. I guess very much not. Ala the Notebook. One of the biggest creative problems in this production is the design. Everything that you are seeing on stage, the scenic design by James Noon is again just sparse and unimaginative. I couldn't imagine seeing anything on after Gypsy at the Majestic that looked more like a non equity tour and didn't belong on that stage. But this is inarguably even worse. I've heard that if you see it from the mezzanine, then the floor sells it a little bit more. They've got kind of a boardwalk aesthetic with a strange compartment that reveals a reclining child, as if she were holds luggage being stored in an airline's overhead locker. There is a beachy backdrop, a limited portion of which is revealed on occasion throughout the show. Show, and the fuller version of which we get to see towards the end when the two of them meaningfully return to a beach at the show's emotional conclusion. I liked that reveal, but not at the expense of scarcely feeling like we were at the beach the entire time, because the lighting makes the whole thing feel so dark. That is the lighting design by Ken Billington. And for the show to be called Beaches. For so many of these scenes to be taking place at the beach, it just didn't feel like we were there ever. I say this with some authority as someone who. Who grew up at the beach, or at the very least by the beach. The set design is completed by these moving LED panels, but they're these sort of, like, jigsaw piece kind of style columns that move sideways across the playing space. I cannot figure out what this is meant to represent other than, like, those kind of asymmetrical photo frames that you can get that you can put separate photos into. Is it meant to be indicative of, like, memories and, like, the photos that you take with friends over a lifetime? Whatever it is, it's ugly. I thought I was annoyed when they had a flat painted like a red curtain at Funny Girl at the August Wilson Theatre. Turns out way worse than that is to have a weird, jagged LED screen displaying a curtain via a pixelated graphic. The costume design by Tracy Christensen, though, may in fact be worse. And there are many moments when CC's outfits specifically are deliberately garish. And, you know, some of it is fun in a campy way. It's almost always indicative of the era. The start of Act 2 is going to haunt me for some time because we get this kind of a montage of cece performing. Everything is going very well for her professionally. She's going from venue to venue. It's very the rise of Louise as a burlesque artist. In the second act of Gypsy, if she were wearing just the ugliest outfits. The emotional undercurrent at this point is that Cece and Bertie have, since the end of the first act, become a stranger, estranged. And so even though she's finding professional success, she is feeling personally adrift. But we see her in all of these different outfits, some of which feature a reveal. And you sit there thinking, there's no way that this dress can get uglier. And then, bam, the bodice tears Away. She spins around, something falls down and it's worse. It's so much worse. And the outfits the. The backing singers are wearing are also ugly. There is no sense of any kind of rise to stardom communicated via an improvement in costuming in the same way it is in Gypsy. With the set and with the nature of it, you get the sense that Louise is moving up in the world. Cece is just moving sideways through a Halloween costume store, looking ever more flammable and wearing the entire time a sort of a Queen of Hearts wig, because it's a heart aesthetic that's going on in this song. I don't know if it's also meant to be a tribute, because it's Ginger to Bette Midler's character, Winifred Sanderson in Hocus Pocus. And it's fine enough in the campy musical number when she wears it for an emotional hospital scene afterwards and when she still has it on through this complicated reconciliation with Bertie, which is initially an argument before they really listen to each other. Then. Then the comedy of the wig starts to get a little bit in the way. I think, in general, I do think if Jessica Vosk is going to be the shining light of this production and we're going to spend so much time looking at her on stage, we ought to have some slightly nicer wigs. I do think, in the name of culpability, I ought to tell you who is responsible. Yeah. J. Jarrodjanis for wig, hair and makeup design. And it's just not a good wig. It's a loud wig. It's a memorable wig. It looks like it maybe has its own dressing room, but it's not good. But how I wish that the aesthetics of this production were its only problems. Let's talk about one aspect of it, which is the framing device. We start with CeCe, the star. She's walked off set of her TV show as it is getting ready to go live on air. Clearly, this is something very urgent. Every time we then see these flashes of her trying to get to where she needs to get to, it is played somewhat for laughs because she's using her celebrity status to get herself a seat on a plane. When she gets given tickets by an adoring fan and her daughter, she says, oh, no, I don't want these. Who's in first class? And though this is comic, our ultimate destination here is a place of some considerable emotional weight. And that is kind of suggested by her determination, the fact that she is trying to get a taxi through a storm, except she goes on this journey wearing a trench coat and a big hat given to her by a staff member on the TV show. And she is desperately trying to get on this plane. She has to get a seat on this flight, she has to get a taxi when no one wants to take her through a storm. We reach a point in the second act where it becomes harder to tell what is that present that we're flashing back to and what is the past, because it's just Jessica Vosk in the same wig. And when we see her arrive to the hospice that she has been trying to reach after receiving an urgent phone call, she enters so casually, seemingly in the daytime, in a different outfit, in a white dress with geometric shapes on it, having seemingly desperately got a cab through a storm in the night and then like slept somewhere at a hotel to go and check in in the morning. Like any sense of urgency has been utterly lost at this point. I assumed initially this was an earlier hospice visit and the one that she had been making in the introduction and the scenes we kept flashing to was later and it was really last minute and it was really desperate. But we lose all desperation at this moment, all of which I might forgive if they land into the emotional ending and we come so close. There is much to say about the way in which. And this is going to be a spoiler alert if you couldn't read the writing on the wall here. Her friend passes away. I mean, if you listen to the lyrics of Wind Beneath My Wings, then you understand what we're talking about. But her friend bertie passes away. CeCe has agreed, convinced her, in fact, that CeCe should be the one to raise her daughter. Both as a sort of a parallel to cece being the one as a child who expanded Bertie's horizons and sort of enriched her life by being her friend all those years, but also so that cece can repay that kindness and selfless generosity that she's been shown by her friend, while not necessarily being the best of friends herself. It must have been called There In My Shadow. Etc. Etc. Anyway, it's a really heart wrenching scene when CeCe is talking to the child of her close friend, the child who doesn't like cece all that much, but she's trying to win her over. And the nurse enters to one side of the stage and silently nods to cece as if to say, it's happened, Bertie has passed away. We see cece react to this, but not saying it out loud in front of the young girl. The two of them then walk off stage together. It's a moving moment. It's quite profound. It's also very easy to miss, and it is a surprising storytelling moment from a show which up to this point could not be accused of attempting subtlety. But it's what happens next that is the single most egregious thing. And if it weren't for this, then the show would simply be bland and fine and maybe even a three star review. But I could not believe it has taken me days to recover from the way in which they bottle wind beneath my wings. By bottle, I mean screw up.
- [23:46]
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- [24:23]
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- [25:32]
Mickey Jo
It is fascinating to me that we could get the staging of this moment wrong because it's the easiest thing in the world. It's the justification for the show. You see Jessica Vosk in Beaches on Broadway. You're expecting oh, even if it's as bad as everyone's saying she's gonna sing the hell out of Wind Beneath My Wings. That's what I was thinking. I was expecting a terrible show, but that that was gonna be a great moment. What I got was quite a charming and pleasant enough show. I'm smiling, I'm surprised, I'm enjoying these characters. I'm getting ready to cry. And then Wind Beneath My Wings happens. And it's somehow maybe the worst moment of the entire show. Not because Jessica Vosk doesn't sing it brilliantly, she does. But because the way in which they implement it into the material is so utterly bizarre. This bear in mind is a not short, two act musical that has been in no rush up to this point. There has hitherto been nary a sense of haste. Like I told you, not a lot of characters, not a complex plot, no subplot. We have taken our time to get here. We have these long scenes, and yet when the introductory music begins for Wind Beneath My Wings, when they start playing Wind Beneath My Wings, as she's walking off, having just learned that her friend has passed away, and she's walking off with that friend's child, the young girl who she has agreed to raise as her own. And the song starts playing. They do not wait. They cannot find a way to wait for Jessica Fosk to get changed into the stunning dress she's obviously going to wear, which, thankfully, is an improvement on the start of Act 2 costumes, so that she can begin singing the song and so she can sing the line, it must have been cold there in my shadow. So instead we see young Cece, the talented child I told you about, still dressed like an adolescent stripper from Toddlers and Tiaras, alongside the very egregious middle cc, who did none of the heavy lifting for this character. They sing the first two lines before Vos comes in on the second verse, because apparently we all have places we need to be and we couldn't wait the 20 seconds for her to start singing the song. It's wild to me that she doesn't sing the whole thing by herself. It also kind of pierces the emotion of the whole thing. What would be really brilliant here, I think, is to have any kind of a short little scene. They don't even need to say anything. Like, you could have young Cece and young Bertie running across the front together and saying, like, we'll be friends forever. Right? I believe the young actress who plays young Bertie also plays the daughter at the end. So there's some logistical challenge there which, you know, we could figure out. There are ways to do this you just need something there to really just pull on the heartstrings. That little bit more flashback to them as children not knowing what lies ahead. And then have Vosk sing Winter Beneath My Wings. And all she has to do is stand there in a dress and sing the song. That is all that needs to happen. Some lights around her find the right key. I'm not convinced it's in the right key because she is a vocal powerhouse and it doesn't feel as impressive as it ought to. There's a quality of like someone belting at the top of their range and it feels maybe a little too comfortable. I don't know. She does a great job singing it because she's Jessica Vosk. She's a very talented vocalist, one of Broadway's finest. But it doesn't feel like the show stopping moment that it ought to. A part of that is because she doesn't get to start the song from the beginning. She also then stands on a little set piece that moves forward like the staging of and I Will Always Love youe in the musical version of the Bodyguard. But it's all doing a little more than it needs to in a moment where they need to just leave her alone in relative darkness in a spotlight to simply sing this song. That is all the moment needs. You do more than that. You get in its way. If you want to add to it, if you want to enhance it, if you want to make us cry, then we ought to see adult Bertie changed into something that indicates both that she's in a better place, that she's healthy now. She no longer looks like she's in end of life care. But also she's probably wearing white to indicate heaven. We need her to have a Fantine. Smiling happily, her married daughter moment. She comes on. She stands behind Vosk. Vosk doesn't see her while Vosk is singing Wind Beneath My Wings. Maybe Vosk is holding the child's hand. Maybe we do it like that. And then she turns and walks upstage content that all of her loved ones are going to be okay together without her. We don't get any of that. We just get child Cece, teenage Cece Vosk moving slowly forwards towards the audience who are not crying. Now. Before I finish this review, I have to tell you about the fantastic performances from this company. There is not a bad performance in this cast in spite of all of the challenges with the show. Chiefly among them, Jessica Vosk as Cece Bloom. From what I know of the Bette Midler performance and from what I know of Bette Midler in other screen roles, she feels very much distinct enough. It also, for fans of hers, feels like a very quintessential Jessica Vosk performance. It's kind of the Broadway leading lady role she hasn't had yet, but is overdue. It's also her first time, I believe, originating a role on Broadway. She replaced the and Wicked. She replaced In Hell's Kitchen. She had that Fruma Sarah moment. What is it about your daughter marrying my husband? All of this stuff. She's been interviewing people on the street. She has paid her dues, and certainly this is a show that she is carrying on her back. But she makes it look effortless and easy because the comedy of it all comes so naturally to her. The vocals, the attitude. She is a great fit for this and she is reason enough to go and see it. I also know that something is not working musically with Wind Beneath My Wings. It wants to feel like a memory from Cats moment. It wants to feel more emotional. Right now, I don't know if it feels too much like a diegetic performance where she's kind of like trying to be professional about it. I want Lady Gaga at the end of A Star Is Born. I want her almost falling apart. And I'm getting a capable vocal. There's not enough emotion in it there. And admittedly, I cannot imagine how difficult it is to be getting ready to open a show, knowing the critical response it's going to get, knowing that every gay bar in town is talking about how soon it might announce closing. That's not easy for anyone. In a comparatively less showy role, we have Kelly Barrett, who does some really lovely work. The two of them together have some beautiful scenes. When we get towards the end and it's the two of them together on a beach and cece is taking her there, and cece is stepping up as a carer looking after her. There's some really poignant moments. They both do lovely work and Kelly Barrett is really wonderful as this young woman figuring out what she wants to from her life and who she wants to be and eventually working through the challenges that she faces. The material for which in her character arc, I will say, is a little bit rushed. She is suddenly and immediately very sick and inexplicably on the opposite side of the country to her family. There's some great supporting work in there as well from Zurin Villanueva, who has some lovely standout comedy moments as a supporting player at the theater where CeCe is performing, playing a dog in Peter Pan and playing Uncle Jocko in Gypsy. Brent Thiessen does brilliantly as well, very charming as the long suffering artistic director of that theater whom CeCe is enamored with, who eventually marries her before going all Nick Arnstein on the situation. It's a talented cast playing charming roles which will subsequently be portrayed in community theater productions and regional productions. That feels like the ultimate life for this show, and not a bad one necessarily. Sometimes the shows which are ideal for those kind of settings just aren't necessarily made for Broadway and it's a flaw of the industry and licensing and profiles that they feel as though they have to launch themselves in a setting for which they aren't particularly well suited because now this is how the show is going to be remembered. And yet because the problems with this show aren't necessarily in the material and because there is something there which is charming and which is moving, I think there is a way, not with this production at this time, but in the future, to salvage Beaches and find something in it that works a little bit better. We need a different design, we need a different creative approach. Obviously it has had a fraught journey to the stage in terms of the material and the teams who have been working on it and all things considered, it's probably in better shape than it ought to be. And to be quite honest, you would get a better show quite quickly if you just fixed the way that they stage Winter Beneath My Wings. Those have been my thoughts about the new musical Beaches at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway and as always, I would love to hear yours. If you have seen this show already or if you saw one of its pre Broadway regional productions, I would very much love to hear from you in the comments section down below. What did you think of it? In the meantime, thank you for listening to my review. If you would like to hear more of my Broadway reviews, there will be so many coming soon. As soon as I find the time to sit down and tell you about all of the shows that I am seeing. If you don't want to miss those, make sure you're subscribed here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so you don't miss those videos or following me on podcast platforms. And as always, I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day for 10 more seconds. I'm Minky Jo Theatre. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a Stagey day. Subscribe
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