Beaches is what Iris Rainer Dart is best known for, and if its all she ever did, her career would have reached an enviable high tide.

The 1985 novel followed an urchin showgirl and an aristocratic tyke, best girlfriends for life till death claims one of them too soon. The book begat the 1988 Hollywood hit with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, a multi-hankie picture immortalized by a modest little tune called The Wind Beneath My Wings.

Now Beaches is washing ashore again as a brand-new musical starting Tuesday at Arlingtons Signature Theatre. That might give you the impression that Dart has been a re-purposing one-hit wonder, but multi-purposing is more like it. Dart turns out to be a showbiz kid from way back a tap dancer, a sitcom writer, even an old hand at musical theater lyrics.

I have written in every format but fortune cookies, cracks Dart, whose early professional gigs were writing for Sonny and Cher.

Start with musicals, since song and dance have brought Dart to town. Dart, 69 and petite, her hair in dark bangs and her wrists adorned with bracelets, is writing the lyrics for Beaches to a new score by emerging composer David Austin. Shes also co-writing the script with Thom Thomas, based on her novel rather than the movies screenplay (by Mary Agnes Donoghue).

Only three years ago, Dart had another project on Broadway. The People in the Picture, based on Darts Jewish European forebears, starred Donna Murphy and featured music by Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Mike Stoller. But its mixed reviews were part of why she wanted to premiere Beaches away from New York.

It was pretty high pressure, Dart says. She praises the low-key atmosphere at Signature, which she describes as safer I wish Id had that for the other show.

Her first musicals? Hardly. In the 1960s, Dart dashed off varsity shows at Carnegie Mellon (then the Carnegie Institute of Technology). Her composing partner was Stephen Schwartz, soon to be famous for Godspell and eventually the box-office titan of Wicked.

To hear her talk, it sounds like musicals have always been the goal. She was a child actor growing up in Pittsburgh, and as a teen she taught tap classes to help pay for her own dance lessons.

Shes turning 70 next month, so Mara Davi now playing what audiences will think of as the movies Barbara Hershey role (even though the characters name and back story are different in the book and musical than in the movie) asked what she could give the writer. Dart asked for a tap session.

Originally posted here:

Iris Rainer Dart on Beaches at Signature