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Garry Marshall’s 1988 film Beaches is no testament to subtlety. But in its gauzy, hustling way it is an effective tear-jerker, poignantly tracing decades of a friendship as it unwittingly approaches tragedy. Because Bette Midler is one of its stars, Beaches is also full of music, mostly old standards but a few more modern tunes, too, most notably the radio hit Wind Beneath My Wings, which was not original to the film but was made famous by Midler’s recording.

There is music baked into the story; there are two female lead roles; and there is a passionate fanbase that has, by now, perhaps aged into their theatergoing years. All of which would suggest that Beaches is the perfect candidate for a Broadway adaptation. Indeed, a musical was conceived in 2014, but the show stalled out of town and it would take another 12 years for a (heavily revamped) version to reach New York City. Despite all that time and effort, the show is, alas, still not ready for primetime.

The current version of Beaches (based more closely on Iris Rainer Dart’s novel than on the film) features a score by Mike Stoller, a 93-year-old music-industry veteran whose Broadway revue Smokey Joe’s Cafe was a massive hit 30 years ago. Stoller is no doubt a legend, but his creative faculties are not at their sharpest here. The original songs are samey and unmemorable, their jazzy retro melodies heavily weighed down by Dart’s hyper-literal, expositional lyrics. Tune after tune comes and goes (the program reminds me that they have names like Show the World Who You Are, Wish I Could Be Like You and The Brand New Me), none of them sticking.

Perhaps it was a matter of licensing costs, but no songs from the film (save for Wind Beneath My Wings) have made it into the stage show. Imagine my dismay when I scanned the song list in the Playbill and saw no Oh Industry. How long have I and no doubt many others waited to see that bizarre number – part of a downtown avant-garde musical starring Midler’s character, ambitious singer Cee Cee Bloom – live on stage only to be so cruelly denied. That it is replaced by such bland muzak which makes the disappointment sting all the more.

There is plenty of camp to be found in this Beaches, but it’s mostly the generic kind. We’re not even served a big group number to get the energy up. Thank heavens, then, for Jessica Vosk, who plays Cee Cee with belt and guile, and basically keeps the whole show afloat. Well, so does the bright young performer Samantha Schwartz as Cee Cee’s younger self; she’s a hoot in a springy red wig and feather boa. The film is the Bette Midler show above all else (apologies, Barbara Hershey), and the stage version only intensifies that imbalance. As Cee Cee’s buttoned-up bestie, Bertie (called Hillary in the film), Kelli Barrett doesn’t have much to do but sing the show’s dullest songs, essentially just filling time before Vosk can take center stage again and warm things up with her pert humor and verve.

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.

It certainly doesn’t help that the set, by James Noone, relies so heavily on digital projection, which renders what is supposed to be a soft, sentimental saga into something cold, hard to the touch. There is nothing particularly beachy about Beaches, other than two sad little piles of fake sand at each corner of the stage. Maybe the idea is to make the show easy to load in and load out if/when it goes on tour, on its mission to make weepy messes of legions of moms and their gay friends across the nation.

I wish them luck in that endeavor. But it may only be Vosk who can get them there. Doing one’s best Bette Midler for an audience of (presumably) Bette Midler fans is a task even the most formidable drag queen would think twice about attempting. But Vosk attacks the role with cheering vigor, bringing necessary old-fashioned brass that the show just can’t muster elsewhere. It is, in the end, a fitting Midler tribute act, a loving homage to how much work the grand diva has done over the years to take maudlin material and make it something close to divine.