Beaches, A New Musical review: Schlocky friendship show docks during Broadways low tide

2 hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission.At the Majestic Theatre, 247 W.

44th Street.Pay close attention to the lyrics of the song “Wind Beneath My Wings.” They’re pretty cruel.“It must have been cold there in my shadow.” Ouch.“So I was the one with all the glory; you were the one with all the strength.” That’s a backhanded compliment if there ever was one.Even the title suggests the singer’s subject is, well, completely invisible.Bette Midler’s dig-filled hit is from “Beaches,” the 1985 movie starring her and Barbara Hershey that’s based on Iris Rainer Dart’s novel.Every incarnation of this cliched story, including the new Broadway musical that ill-advisedly opened Wednesday night, has been about an imbalanced and often toxic friendship just as Midler’s chart-topper suggests — even if the two women at its center are sold as the quintessential pals.The exhumed show at the Majestic Theatre goes so far as to project snapshots of happy audience members with their besties on a giant screen before Act 2 as if to say: You’re all Cee Cee Bloom and Bertie White.I dearly hope not.

Who’d want to endure three decades of repetitive fights over unappealing men that cause years-long freeze-outs? I also pray that the hypothetical musicals about the lives of the folks in those intermission photographs include much better songs than the not-so-easy-listening ones here by Mike Stoller and Dart, and books containing a single believable human being.As it stands, the characters who inhabit “Beaches” are about as alive as the sandy shells boring Bertie so loves to collect.This musical has been bobbing around the US and Canada since the Obama Administration, and has finally docked during Broadway’s low tide.So not only is its music rather long in the tooth, but the score with some true clunkers also works very hard not to venture too far from the soft synth 1980s sounds of “Wind Beneath My Wings.” There’s nothing new about it.Even wh...