Beaches
Opening Night: April 22, 2026
Theater: Majestic Theatre
Website: beachesthemusical.com
Beaches, A New Musical, based on the best-selling novel that became the blockbuster film, brings to the stage one of the most iconic friendships in popular culture. This sweeping, emotional, and joy-filled new musical follows the vivacious Cee Cee and elegant Bertie, who meet as children and become fast friends. From pen-pals to roommates to romantic rivals, Cee Cee and Bertie’s oil-and-water friendship perseveres over the course of 30 years through even the most tragic trials.
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April 22, 2026
The musical, adapted by Dart (book and lyrics), Thom Thomas (book) and Mike Stoller (music), doesn’t trust that stormy dynamic, preferring the upbeat to the uncomfortable, as if that were what the medium demanded. The result is a pervasive, underwhelming blandness in a condescending production. Picking up a Broadway imprimatur en route to a national tour, it appears to have forgotten what — beyond the Divine Miss M — drew fans to “Beaches” in the first place.
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April 22, 2026
Beaches, the musical, is not bad but it is fatally misguided. […] It is very hard to care about anything onstage.
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April 22, 2026
The two performers leading the cast are the real spectacle. Barrett puts our hearts in our throats as Bertie, her Waspy restraint breaking like a dam holding back tears late in the second act. And Vosk, finally originating a Broadway role after 15 years of reliable service as a replacement and in the ensemble, delivers the most heartfelt performance of the season.
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April 22, 2026
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.
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April 22, 2026
Sadly there’s little wind beneath this uninspired musical’s thin and tattered wings. Even the film’s critic-defying, pinky-swearing fanbase may be disappointed in the barebones production, jarring plotting, tired dialogue and ham-handed staging.
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April 22, 2026
When a Broadway musical doesn’t work, it’s almost never the fault of the actors. It isn’t in this case, either. Some of them even squeeze in some moments of charm; you can see why both women would fall for Thiessen’s languorous director, and Schwartz has camp gusto as the littlest Cee Cee, an already-jaded Atlantic City child star dressed like Baby June in Gypsy if she started the show as a stripper. But Vosk is the principal lifeline here. Now she just deserves a vehicle that isn’t beached.
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April 22, 2026
At the end of “Beaches,” when Vosk belts the famous song from the movie so sublimely, the audience momentarily forgets the sandy slog that came before it. And then, woken up from that trance at the end of the bows, I heeded the advice of another lyric from “Wind Beneath My Wings”: “Fly! Fly! Fly!”
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April 22, 2026
Unfortunately, the so-bad-it’s-good pleasure that comes from a movie is harder to achieve in the theater. The actors aren’t in the room with you when they embarrass themselves on film. In the theater, they’re definitely in the room with you. […] A mess as major as “Beaches” required not one but two directors, Lonny Price and Matt Cowart.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2026
There is an audience for this sentimental piece, I think, given the relative paucity of sincere musicals this season. Women, especially, who remember and love the movie and its signature song will warm to its proffering of a thing devoutly to be wished: your most successful friend telling you they owe it all to you. Enough for a nice matinee with a bestie, no?
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2026
As scripted, the two women are dramatically lopsided. Cee Cee is far more dynamic, and Vosk gamely and aptly pours forth enough brass to fill a horn section and enlists her mighty belt. As the passive Bertie, who forgoes law school because of a guy in this version, Barrett brings vulnerability and an endearing quality to her songs and scenes.
READ THE REVIEWApril 23, 2026
Singing the signature song from the movie, Vosk is joined by Teen Cee Cee and Little Cee Cee for “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which will have you reaching for your best friend and making her promise not to die. Okay, maybe that was just me, but either way, you’ll be grabbing your tissues and be reminded that Vosk truly is a powerhouse.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2026
That imbalance extends to the score, too. Despite the pedigree — music by Grammy Award-winning legend Mike Stoller with lyrics by Dart — the songs rarely linger. They do their job in the moment but fail to build a musical identity or deepen character in a meaningful way. By the time the story reaches its most famous emotional beat, it’s still searching for the resonance it needs.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2026
Vosk must shine all the brighter because the production surrounding her is so hurried and perfunctory. Directors Lonny Price and Matt Cowart are deft at little bits of stage business – the show’s often amusing, joke-filled book, by Dart and the late Thom Thomas, assists in that regard – but they have trouble building toward the story’s big emotional climax, as Cee Cee watches her friend slip away to illness and the two contemplate what might become of Bertie’s young daughter. A tear still comes to the eye at the end, but that likely has more to do with memories of the film, or thoughts about one’s own life, than with what the stage show has been doing for two hours.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2026
The creative team clearly wants to make “Beaches, A New Musical” seem different but also familiar. It probably won’t surprise anyone that the show ends with Vosk as Cee Cee singing “Wind Beneath My Wings,” the one song not written by Mike Stoller. (indeed, it would probably surprise theatergoers if that song were not included.) Vosk is a talented Broadway veteran, and she’s a vibrant, playful Cee Cee. But she’s not Bette Midler. Mike Stoller is a legendary songsmith, but none of his songs in this score are anywhere near as memorable as the handful that Midler sung in the movie — not just “Wind Beneath My Wings,” but such standards as “Under the Boardwalk.” There is little here that feels an improvement on the movie, and several aspects that feel like a downgrade. The costumes for Cee Cee are garish; the set design is chintzy and predictable.
READ THE REVIEWApril 22, 2026
As directed with relatively sure hands by Lonny Price and Matt Cowart and choreographed by Jennifer Rias, the enthusiastic cast rises—and perhaps rises above—the script’s middlingly enthralling script.
READ THE REVIEWApril 23, 2026
Aside from the two leads, brash young Samantha Schwartz as brash young Cee Cee in flashbacks, and James Noone’s efficient and attractive jigsaw-piece-collage set, that’s pretty much it on the credit side of the ledger. Whichever of the co-directors, Lonny Price or Matt Cowart, was responsible for steering the supporting players into feeble sterotypical caricatures has a lot to answer for.
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