Last Saturday I went back to NYC for a whirlwind day trip to see Beaches with my middle sister and my mother. This is a new musical based on the movie with Bette Midler. I literally haven’t seen Beaches since I was a child, and I think I only watched it once, so I only had the vaguest memory of what it was about. My sister however, is ENAMORED of Jessica Vosk, so she desperately wanted to go and see it, so we could experience a Broadway show starring her favorite singer.
Critics have been absolutely trashing this show, and my sister was so upset because she thought we were going to hate it, and have a bad first experience seeing Jessica Vosk, but all three of us really enjoyed the show. Do I think it’s ground-breaking, and a show that will go down in history? Absolutely not, but I thought it did a very nice job telling the story of the long friendship between Cece and Bertie.
The main flaw that I noticed with the show is that the songs weren’t particularly memorable. I thought the catchiest one was a little ditty called Holy Moly Matrimony (a song that a reviewer specifically called out for being stupid). All the other songs kind of blended together and didn’t stick in my head at all. The music also sounds older than I was expecting a new musical to sound. I suspect they were attempting to sync up the songs to match with the decades in which they appeared, since the story starts in the 1950s, and ends sometime in the 80s. It did give all of the songs kind of a dated feel, which I’m sure hasn’t worked in its favor.
The biggest thing this musical has going for it are the actors. The story is unavoidably a bit schmaltzy given the subject matter, and the songs aren’t very memorable, but the actors are all amazing. The two actors who play Bertie and Cece as children were particularly wonderful. Little Cece was the spunkiest, most hilarious little performer, and little Bertie was an adorable little counterpoint with her sweetness and naivete in comparison. The whole house cracked up when little Cece told little Bertie to, “Stand up and stick out your titties!” And then cracked up more when little Bertie responded, “But I don’t have any!” Then even more laughs when little Cece said, “Then do what I do and stick out where you hope they’ll be some day!”
I was happy that these two were utilized throughout the entire show, and not just shown in the beginning to then just disappear as the story moved on. They were often shown in conjunction with the two adult versions of the characters, and it made for a nice visual metaphor to show that no matter what they were going through, or the troubles in their relationship, at the end of the day they were still the two little girls who met on the beach. This is the Broadway debut for both of the girls, and they both are doing an amazing job.
People complained about the two men in the production, saying that their characters were underdeveloped, but with the focus on the friendship of Cece and Bertie, it made sense to have the men play more supporting roles. I had actually seen one of the men before in Titanic at the Ogunquit Playhouse, and he’d had my favorite voice in the show, so I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t get to sing more. The guys had one duet together where they sang about how women don’t really need a man when they have a best friend, and honestly that kind of encapsulated the whole show. It was a love story about Cece and Bertie and their friendship over the years, the men didn’t need to matter for the story they were telling.
Since going to see the show, I’ve watched Beaches the film, and I can honestly say that I liked the musical better. They made a few small changes to the plot, and I honestly think they worked for the better. Cece and Bertie’s friendship temporarily is fractured when Bertie mistakenly thinks that Cece made a pass at her husband. I think that event disrupting their friendship made WAY more sense than the weird jealousy argument that happens in the movie. I also found the character of Bertie FAR more likable as she was written in the musical. Barbara Hershey just seemed like a snotty jerk in the movie, and I couldn’t understand why Cece wanted to continue having an adult friendship with her, although the little girl version of the same character was delightful.
The most memorable part of the show for me, was when Bertie was ill, and the scenes between her and the other child actor playing her daughter. At first I thought it was the same actor who played little Bertie also playing her daughter, but they were just very similar looking (at least from where our seats were) little girls. Bertie has a ring she wants to give her daughter, she says that she wanted to give it to her when she got married but then she trails off. The daughter gets upset, not wanting to accept that her mother is terminally ill, so she runs away, and then Bertie absolutely breaks down. She wails about not being able to see her daughter grow up, or fall in love, and the emotions she showed were just heartbreaking. I was blubbering like a baby. Truly a parents second-worst nightmare, dying before your kid can grow up.
The show ended with Jessica Vosk coming out in a very pretty gown and singing a lovely rendition of Wind Beneath My Wings. That reminds me, I forgot to mention her costume changes, they were absolutely INSANE. I wish I’d thought to count every costume you see her in, because the amount of changes was just wild, and some of them were so fast you’d blink and miss them! They must have had so many costuming people waiting in the wings to help her out with all of those.
There was one additional woman in the ensemble who played a ton of different characters, and she was an absolute hoot. There’s one scene where she’s singing badly on purpose for an audition scene, and she was just a riot. She was one of my favorite parts of the show.
I don’t think I’d pay Broadway prices to see Beaches again, but it was a perfectly cute musical, definitely moving and emotional, and it made me wish that I had my own Bertie or Cece (without the whole dying from cancer business of course). If you have a bestie, and you’re near NYC, you should definitely take them to go see it!
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