‘BEACHES’: Kelli Barrett & Jessica Vosk. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

BEACHES: A NEW MUSICAL
Book by Iris Rainer Dart & Thom Thomas
Music by Mike Stoller
Lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart
Directed by Lonny Price & Matt Cowart
Through May 24, 2026
Majestic Theatre
245 W 44th St.
https://beachesthemusical.com/

By Scott Harrah

The beloved 1988 hit “chick flick” Beaches, starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, arrives on Broadway as a new musical. Composer Mike Stoller provides the score, while Iris Rainer Dart returns to write the book and lyrics. The film was a box-office blockbuster. However, does this adaptation hold up, and does the story still resonate nearly 40 years later?

An iconic film like Beaches does not need reinvention. It needs restraint. The musical closely follows the original emotional blueprint. It traces a lifelong friendship shaped by ambition, class differences, loyalty, and loss. As a result, longtime fans will find much that feels familiar. At the same time, the show offers enough theatricality and vocal power to engage new audiences. Still, the shift from cinematic intimacy to stage spectacle raises a key question: Can a quiet, deeply personal story sustain itself when the emotions must carry the narrative through song?

Beaches follows more than 30 years of friendship between Cee Cee Bloom (Jessica Vosk) and Bertie White (Kelli Barrett). Cee Cee is brassy and ambitious. Bertie is shy and comes from a wealthy, conservative family.

Under the boardwalk

As in the film, the story chronicles the two women from a childhood meeting on the Atlantic City boardwalk through years of letters, reunions, and diverging paths. Cee Cee pursues show business with relentless drive. Meanwhile, Bertie searches for identity beyond her family’s expectations. She dreams of becoming a lawyer and navigates love, marriage, and motherhood.

Scenes featuring the younger versions of Cee Cee and Bertie stand out. Mayim Bialik famously got her start as Little Cee Cee. Here, Samantha Schwartz and Zeya Grace deliver engaging performances. The young actors feel natural and well-cast. As a result, they ground the early scenes with warmth and authenticity. However, from a mid-orchestra seat, some dialogue and lyrics are difficult to understand.

As the years pass, the two women drift together and apart. Their friendship reflects ambition, circumstance, and the different lives they choose. Cee Cee remains driven by her career. In contrast, Bertie seeks stability while wrestling with her own sense of identity.

Mama’s girls

Both women feel the strong influence of their mothers. Leona (Sarah Bockel), Cee Cee’s mother, is flashy and boisterous. She favors garish clothes and Yiddish-inflected humor. She is like a Jewish Mama Rose, pushing her daughter toward stardom at any cost. Meanwhile, Bertie’s mother Rose (Lael Van Keuren) is the quintessential patrician “WASP,” controlling and icy. She dismisses Cee Cee as “vulgar” and insists Bertie marry well. Ms. Bockel delivers strong comic energy. At the same time, Ms. Van Keuren gives the role a haughty, imperious edge.

The relationship between Cee Cee and Bertie cycles through closeness and conflict. Long stretches of separation follow. Letters and reunions reconnect them. Ultimately, the story leans into sentimentality in its final act. The emotional arc feels familiar. Its success depends on how well the production earns those moments.

‘BEACHES’: Jessica Vosk & cast. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

The old razzle-dazzle

The show opens with Cee Cee’s TV variety-show number, “You Believe in Me.” Jessica Vosk belts the song alongside backup singers. The staging recalls Bette Midler’s early work with the Harlettes. It also evokes the glossy look of “The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour.” Iris Rainer Dart once wrote for that series, which makes the reference feel intentional. The number sets a razzle-dazzle theatrical tone from the start.

Vosk commands the stage immediately. She delivers powerhouse vocals and a brassy confidence that fits Cee Cee perfectly.

Star turns & spotlight moments

Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barrett anchor the show. Both bring strong acting chops and emotional weight. Their voices are powerful and expressive. Songs like “My Best” highlight their range and control.

Brent Thiessen plays John Perry with charm and complexity. He creates a character who attracts and unsettles Bertie. Ben Jacoby plays Michael Barron, the wealthy suitor favored by Bertie’s mother. He represents the “appropriate” match she expects.

Where it washes ashore

Lonny Price and Matt Cowart direct the production. The show runs over two and a half hours with an intermission. As a result, it feels long, especially in the first act. The directors extract strong performances from the cast. However, the material would benefit from tighter editing. Several scenes and songs could be trimmed.

The adaptation stays faithful to its source. It delivers the expected emotional beats. Still, the heavy use of flashbacks creates challenges. Onstage, time shifts feel abrupt at times. The musical feels more like a translation than a reinvention. The episodic structure across the years seems rushed, a problem that is common with epic films turned into musicals.

The show also reflects a familiar creative pattern. Iris Rainer Dart’s earlier 2011 World War II musical, The People in the Picture, used similar themes. Both works blend memory, humor, tragedy, and Jewish cultural identity. At times, sentimentality dominates. The tone feels heightened, with emotions pushed beyond what the material earns.

The finale, set to “Wind Beneath My Wings,” embraces spectacle. The staging is visually striking and slightly camp in a fun way. Multiple versions of Cee Cee and Bertie appear together, including the younger performers. The moment is a crowd-pleaser. However, a tighter journey would make the payoff stronger. Beaches is a fun musical that makes waves but struggles to stay afloat.

Published April 22, 2026
Reviewed at press preview on April 17, 2026.

‘BEACHES’: Jessica Vosk & Kelli Barrett. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘BEACHES’: Jessica Vosk & Kelli Barrett. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘BEACHES’: Zeya Grace (left) & Samantha Schwartz. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘BEACHES’: Jessica Vosk. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘BEACHES’: Kelli Barrett. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘BEACHES’: Brent Thiessen & Ben Jacoby. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

‘BEACHES’: Kelli Barrett (center) & cast. Photo: Marc J. Franklin.

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‘WALKING WITH GHOSTS’: Gabriel Byrne. Photo: Emilio Madrid.

WALKING WITH GHOSTS
Written by Gabriel Byrne
Directed by Lonny Price
Through December 30, 2022
Music Box Theatre
239 West 45th Street
(212-719-6200), www.GabrielByrneOnBroadway.com

By David NouNou

Walking With Ghosts is an honest attempt by Irish actor Gabriel Byrne to stage and perform a one-man monologue about his childhood and part of his adulthood in Dublin. Mr. Byrne starts from the day he was born by being yanked out of his mother’s womb, and the struggles she had getting him out, and his shabby and drab surroundings growing up. I couldn’t help but think of the scene in Auntie Mame, when Mame Dennis, writing her autobiography and collaborating with her Irish ghostwriter, Brian O’Bannion, regarding her birth and childhood, pens the confusing opener to her memoir: “Like an echo from the caves of Coccamaura, I came forth while Deirdre wept cool tears.” Definition: simply put “on the day I was born, it rained.”  It continues, “How bleak was my puberty in Buffalo.”  All I could think of was how dreary was Mr. Byrne’s puberty in Dublin?

It is not easy writing a compelling two-hour and 30-minute monologue about all the ghosts from his childhood and the past, starting with his parents, siblings, childhood friends, happy moments with grandma going to the cinema, colorful neighbors and drunkards, good and often spiteful teachers; and ultimately the “Catholic priest.” I needn’t finish that sentence. That brings us up to age 14 and end of Act I, clocking in at one hour and 15 minutes.

Act II starts with Mr. Byrne as a teenager, failing miserably at different jobs: plumber, dishwasher, bathroom clerk, until he finally gets to answer an ad for amateur actors to be in a Shakespeare company. This is where he finds his niche and begins to find friends and gain self-confidence. He starts getting small parts and some recognition. He meets his Irish idol, actor Micheál Mac Liammóir and meets Richard Burton for a scene he has with him, being filmed in Venice. From that drunken evening spent with Mr. Burton, Mr. Byrne tells us his downfall from grace due to his alcoholism and ultimately his will to overcome his addiction. Finally ending with the deaths of his mother and his father. As Mr. Byrne tells us, he is walking with ghosts and all these ghosts are inside him now.

There have been many and often effective monologues by actors on the New York stage: Last year’s Reuben Santiago-Hudson in Lackawanna Blues; the late Carrie Fisher back in 2009 in Wishful Drinking; Jesse Tyler Ferguson playing 40 different characters in 2016 in Fully Committed. These stars had the ability to inform as well as entertain. They engaged us from start to finish.

This doesn’t impugn Mr. Byrne as an actor in any way. He has given Broadway three indelible performances: James Tyrone Jr. in A Moon for the Misbegotten, Cornelius Melody in A Touch of the Poet, and James Tyrone in Long Day’s Journey Into Night. He earned two Tony Award nominations for those roles.

However, with Walking With Ghosts, director Lonny Price should have known the tastes of American audiences better and done some strong editing and tightening. A lot of incidental fat could have been trimmed off.  We are left with Mr. Byrne not giving us a performance so much as exorcising his demons.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 27, 2022
Reviewed at October 26, 2022 press preview performance.

‘WALKING WITH GHOSTS’: Gabriel Byrne. Photo: Emilio Madrid.

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‘SUNSET BOULEVARD’: Glenn Close. Photo: Joan Marcus

SUNSET BOULEVARD

Music by Andrew Lloyd Webber
Book and lyrics by Don Black and Christopher Hampton
Based on the Billy Wilder movie Sunset Boulevard

Directed by Lonny Price
Palace Theatre

Broadway & 47th Street

(877-250-2929), www.SunsetBoulevardTheMusical.com

By David NouNou

Sunset Boulevard is a blend of illusion and reality. In this version you have to suspend reality and work on the illusion. The illusion is Glenn Close recreating her 1995 Tony-winning role of Norma Desmond. I give her all the credit in the world for tackling this venture. The original version was a brilliant adaptation of Billy Wilder’s magnificent screen version of the same name. It was thrillingly directed by Trevor Nunn and the set by John Napier was truly one of the greatest and most memorable sets of all time. They anchored the show and gave it splendor and meaning.

There is no need to labor on the plot, because as we all know it is about the faded screen star of yesteryear falling for a hack younger screenwriter. We knew that this version would be scaled down, which is okay. However, it is pared down so much that at times it borders on what Carol Burnett did on her TV show, a hilarious parody of Sunset Boulevard in which she played “Nora Desmond.” From the confusing direction by Lonny Price to the most utilitarian set of scaffoldings by James Noone, this production lacks the majesty and grandeur of the original.

This revival originated at the Coliseum Theatre in London last year and now has transferred to the mammoth Palace Theatre. The four principals of Glenn Close (Norma Desmond), Michael Xavier (Joe Gillis), Siobhan Dillon (Betty Schaeffer) and Fred Johanson (Max von Mayerling) are all intact, but the quality of the performances varies indeed. Of course the people have come to see Glenn Close recreate her magical performance, but in this instance it is more of a caricature. Ms. Close is adept enough of an actress to pull it off—she still brings a haunting sincerity to the role—but she should have stuck to her old performance which had more character and less, well…caricature.

As for the other three leads, it is anyone’s guess of why they have transferred to Broadway. Originally played by Alan Campbell as Joe, George Hearn (winning his second Tony for playing Max, and Alice Ripley as Betty.) Since Joe is the lead (remember the gorgeous William Holden in the movie?), Michael Xavier is excruciatingly bland. He lacks the charm and charisma that makes Norma fall for him and this throws the whole balance of the show off kilter. Fred Johanson as Max is a combination of Daddy Warbucks from Annie and Lurch from “The Addams Family,” and this is another wrench, thus eradicating any semblance of regality, pompousness and authority. Ms. Dillon as Betty comes off best; she does the ingénue role well.

There is redemption here; the score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Don Black and Christopher Hampton remains sublime and among Mr. Webber’s best music. The orchestra, conducted by Kristen Blodgette, is a highlight that makes the evening memorable, and of course there is Glenn Close. After all, what would Sunset Boulevard be without her?

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published February 23, 2017
Reviewed at performance on February 22, 2017

‘SUNSET BOULEVARD’: Glenn Close. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUNSET BOULEVARD’: Michael Xavier. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUNSET BOULEVARD’: Michael Xavier & Siobhan Dillon. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUNSET BOULEVARD’: The cast. Photo: Joan Marcus

‘SUNSET BOULEVARD’: The cast. Photo: Joan Marcus

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