Beaches The Musical ★★

Talk about not making a splash.

Beaches has arrived on Broadway, but its shores are barren, devoid of character development, a worthy plot, witty dialogue, or memorable songs — save one, which you already know — or any real reason for a show to be at the Majestic Theatre, formerly the longtime home of The Phantom of the Opera, and one of New York City’s finest venues.

The grand Majestic is actually a major problem for the production, which in no way can fill its space. Beaches is much more an intimate chamber piece than spectacle, far more suitable for Off-Broadway, and the rather anemic sets by James Noone often leave the show’s actors adrift in a cavernous void.

Not that giant sets are needed to create theatre magic. But they’re helpful when all else is woeful. And underwhelming. Most of the time Beaches is so painfully dull that one can’t help but wonder how the show got this far.

The creative team — music by Mike Stoller, lyrics by Iris Rainer Dart, book by Dart and Thom Thomas — try to level expectations by claiming the musical is based on Rainer’s novel, but it’s the 1988 film version of Beaches that made the title memorable. And those memories are tinged with nostalgia, as the movie wasn’t particularly well received at the time, mostly because it wasn’t very good. (Its Metacritic score stands at 46, and at Rotten Tomatoes it smells not fresh at 41%.)

But it did have Bette Midler, a young Mayim Bialik (as a young Bette Midler), and two beloved songs, the classic Benny Goodman tune “The Glory of Love” and “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” the latter of which became utterly ubiquitous on the airwaves and eventually won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of the Year.

Alas, “The Glory of Love” is inexplicably missing, and one song does not a show make. Stoller, one half of the legendary songwriting team of Leiber and Stoller (“Hound Dog,” “Stand By Me,” “Yakety Yak”) has composed a bouncy, pleasant enough score, but nothing stands out like “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” which he didn’t write.

The music might have been sufficient if the libretto supported it, but the script instead flails and thrashes about, crying out for sharks — critics and disappointed ticket buyers — to devour it. Beaches is ostensibly about a lifelong friendship between Cee Cee Bloom (Jessica Vosk) and Bertie White (a valiant Kelli Barrett), who meet as young girls on a beach, become pen pals, then navigate a lifelong friendship through thick and thin.

Cee Cee is a fiery, scrappy singer-dancer who eventually earns her own variety show, and Bertie is her opposite, a demure and wealthy woman who wants to become a lawyer but whose parents want to marry her off to the right kind of man, someone wealthy who’ll support her as she pops out the expected grandbabies. As time passes, they each go through underwritten men (the film had the same issue) but have each other, at least until tragedy hits. Cue hit song.

That’s all that’s driving this enterprise, and it could possibly work if their opposites-attract relationship was built on more than flimsy, clichéd scenes, but the characters are never developed beyond the obvious. Unlikely friendships have been the basis of many terrific plays and musicals — Lettice and Lovage, 4000 Miles, Wicked, and even this season’s Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) — but in this show it’s never clear why these two would remain friends once puberty hit, much less adulthood.

Fortunately it’s not all flotsam and jetsam, as Beaches does have one brassy reason to recommend it: Jessica Vosk, who has amazing stage presence, superb comedy chops, and a great belt. This show is her first opportunity to originate a Broadway role, and she has the goods; it’s just that here her wings have too little wind in the material to lift her. She deserves better, and one hopes the tide turns for her next time.