Beaches

Washed Ashore: A Review of Beaches, A New Musical

Majestic Theatre — March 31, 2026, 7:00 PM

There is a particular kind of Broadway show that mistakes weeping for meaning, that confuses the wringing of tears with the earning of them. Beaches, A New Musical, now in previews at the Majestic Theatre, is that show. It is a production that would very much like you to feel something. And it will do whatever it takes to make sure you do.

I felt manipulated. I resented it for that.

Let me be clear about what Beaches is not: it is not without talent. Director Lonny Price and co-director Matt Cowart conjure a world of characters from just a handful of very talented performers. Jessica Vosk, as Cee Cee, sings precisely as well as Jessica Vosk sings, which is to say formidably, reliably, and with the kind of vocal authority that fills a house. If you have seen her as Elphaba, as Jenna, as Florence, you know exactly what you are getting. She delivers it. Kelli Barrett, as Bertie, is her elegant counterpart, grounded and genuine. The cast, to a person, is working hard.

The trouble is that the material isn't working back.

The new musical features a score by Grammy Award-winning legend Mike Stoller, composer of "Stand By Me," "Hound Dog," and a catalog that towers over this one. His original numbers here are, by and large, pleasant. They are performed beautifully. They are also almost completely forgettable. My companion and I stood in the lobby at intermission, looked at each other, and could not hum a single bar of what we had just heard. We tried again at the curtain call. Nothing. A score that disappears the moment it leaves the stage is not a score. It is furniture.

Critics in Calgary framed the show as "a work in progress" that "could do with a few more rewrites," and whatever has been revised since, the central dramaturgical problem remains. You cannot speed-run 30 years of rupture and repair without occasionally making a scene feel like a highlight reel. Beaches covers three decades of friendship, jealousy, illness, and loss, and yet somehow manages to make each of those decades feel like a brisk commute. The emotional stakes arrive pre-assembled. The show tells you when to cry because it is not entirely confident you will figure it out yourself.

And then there are the children.

A star is born in Samantha Schwartz, who plays Little Cee Cee with abundant confidence and infectious verve. Her counterpart, Little Bertie, matches her beat for beat. They are, without question, the most alive and spontaneous things on that stage, two young performers radiating the kind of unguarded joy that the adult scenes, in their determined march toward tragedy, have largely edited out. One suspects the production knows this. The children seem to linger. They are deployed with a frequency that begins to feel less like dramatic choice and more like a production note: when in doubt, bring back the kids.

I do not doubt that Beaches will find its audience. If it finds the right crowd, it may well go on to be embraced as a very enjoyable guilty pleasure. The film is beloved. The story is beloved. "Wind Beneath My Wings," Grammy Award winner for both Record and Song of the Year, brings the musical to its close, and the audience around me responded as audiences have responded to that song for nearly four decades: dutifully, gratefully, tearfully. The show had done its job.

But here is my complaint, and it is the complaint of someone who works in this form and cares about it: there is a difference between a story that earns its catharsis and a production that rents it, borrowing the accumulated emotional credit of a film, a song, a cultural memory, and charging it to your account at the box office. Beaches is a long investment in a payoff it did not construct. The grief lands because grief always lands. That is not dramaturgy. That is gravity.

The Majestic Theatre deserves a musical that fills it. This one floats in it, waiting for the tide to come in.

Beaches is in previews at the Majestic Theatre, with an official opening night of April 22, 2026. It runs approximately 2 hours and 35 minutes, including one intermission, which is, coincidentally, about how long it will take to remember a song.