Broadway is crying out for a really good weeper. When it comes to romance on the musical stage these days, love is either tragic (“Days of Wine and Roses”) or it’s snarky (“& Juliet”). “The Notebook,” based on Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 bestseller, opened Thursday at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, and it strives to occupy that lucrative middle ground of melodrama.
Much beloved is the 2004 movie version in which an old man tries to reawaken his wife’s memory by reading aloud from her notebook. The new musical gets half the story right. Unfortunately, it’s the wrong half. Or the wrong third, as it turns out in this unusually cast production.
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