Test of true friendship drives emotional ‘Beaches’ musical

They meet cute, as kids, in Atlantic City. The year is 1952.

Little Cee Cee Bloom (Presley Ryan, a comic knockout in a bravura opening number that sets a very high bar for all that is to follow), is a Jewish girl from the Bronx with blazing red curls, a motor mouth and prodigious skills as a singer-dancer.

Little Bertie White (Brooklyn Shuck), is a bit younger, and a very different sort of child — shy, proper, fearful, sheltered. She also is in a panic because she has somehow become separated from her Waspy single mother from Pittsburgh, with whom she is staying at a nearby hotel on the beach.

Cee Cee desperately craves an audience, and Bertie can only be dazzled by this girl bursting with such talent, moxie and freedom. The opposites attract, and it is the start of a friendship that will endure (with one major rupture) for more than three decades. Their friendship is, of course, is the driving force behind “Beaches,” the new musical based on the popular 1988 movie that starred Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey.

‘BEACHES’

Recommended

When: Through Aug. 16

Where: Drury Lane Theatre, 100 Drury Lane, Oakbrook Terrace

Tickets: $45 – $60

Info: (630) 530-0111; http://www.drurylane.com

Run time: 2 hours and 30 minutes with one intermission

The show, which opened Thursday at the Drury Lane Oakbrook Theatre in its “pre-Broadway” edition, features a book co-adapted by Iris Rainier Dart (based on her novel) and Thom Thomas, with music by David Austin and lyrics by Dart. Polished and accomplished, with ideally cast sets of three different actresses playing the child, teenage and adult incarnations of each of the two principal female characters, it captures the changes in American women’s lives from the 1950s through the mid 1980s with considerable subtlety. But there also is something of a paint-by-numbers quality to the whole thing that only relaxes in its very last scenes.

With echoes of such Broadway shows as “Gypsy,” “Annie,” “Mamma Mia!,” and “Wicked,” “Beaches” features fluid direction by Eric Schaeffer (“Million Dollar Quartet”). And its score is a zesty pastiche of the pop sounds of the era during which Cee Cee becomes a star, mixed with ballads that capture elements of the women’s friendship and their failed relationships with men.

Cee Cee (briefly played in her teens by Samantha Pauly, but for most of the show by Broadway veteran Shoshanna Bean) is wildly talented, but will never be “the traditional leading lady.” Nevertheless, she is relentless and manages to become a Janis Joplin-meets-Bette Midler sort of star. Early on she falls in love with John (an excellent portrayal by Travis Taylor), a handsome actor-director who runs a struggling little summer theater. Bertie (played in her teens by Olivia Renteria, and in adulthood by Whitney Bashor), visits her friend there, and ends up making costumes before heading off to Paris to study fashion design. Before that summer is over, however, a little romantic/sexual mishap also transpires — an event that will be revisited years later.

Cee Cee marries John, who ultimately cannot deal with her success. And Bertie marries Michael (Jim DeSelm), a snobby lawyer with a jealous streak, with whom she has a daughter, Nina (also played by Shuck, a deft little actress), but little happiness.

Cee Cee’s struggles to forge a career are expertly played by the power-voiced Bean, who easily mixes the self deprecating with the heartfelt, and is the most obvious engine of the show. But it is Bertie’s tense acquiescence to a more traditional life, and the tragedy that befalls her, that sneaks up on you and makes a crucial difference.

Choreographed by Lorin Latarro, with musical direction by Brian Nash, and a terrific pit band led by Alan Bukowiecki, “Beaches” (which also features Nancy Voigts, Kelly Anne Clark, Michael Accardo and Andrew Varela), unfolds on Derek McLane ‘s set, whose walls are papered with the letters shared by the two women over the years.

Although it is the men who create a rift in the friendship at one point, they are essentially props in this show. The big love affair here is between the women, whose very different personalities and very different lives supply the all-important “other half” of themselves.