Same old song?

Going back to Beverly for Gypsy, the first production, stirred a lot of those memories as well as some fresher highlights from North Shore productions such as Memphis, which began there in 2003 and went on to win this year’s Tony for best musical.

So after a stroll of the nicely appointed grounds and a delectable burger at the outdoor grill, I took my seat, the orchestra started up, the actors came onstage, and that 6-year-old boy . . . slowly turned into a 60-year-old curmudgeon.

Don’t get me wrong. I wish Hanney and producing artistic director Evans Haile nothing but the best. I just wish their best was better. And that production, along with much of the upcoming schedule, doesn’t exactly bolster confidence. It’s not that Gypsy was a bad show, but there was something missing ñ the same thing that was missing, more often than not, for the last 15 years I’ve been going: the sense that I was seeing something special. In the lead role, Vicki Lewis was a serviceable Mama Rose, but you wouldn’t have had to see Bernadette Peters or Patti LuPone on Broadway, or Leigh Barrett in a 2007 Stoneham production, to realize this was kind of a snooze.

But individual comparisons aren’t the point. If theater, no matter where it is, is going to survive, it can’t just play to what graying patrons want to see. Every stage company grapples with the same difficult choices, but in terms of urban vs. suburban sensibility, art vs. entertainment, and tapping local performers vs. importing talent, the North Shore Music Theatre has been on the wrong side of the equation.

For me, it’s been the musicals put on by Boston theaters over the past 15 years that have been the more interesting draw. Why travel to Beverly when you can see more engaging and adventurous efforts locally, whether it’s Assassins at the Lyric Stage Company, Sweeney Todd at the New Repertory Theatre, or Caroline, or Change at SpeakEasy Stage Company?

These shows might be considered too edgy for North Shore, but surely the theater can do better than safer offerings like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and A Chorus Line, both of which have had touring productions in Boston in recent years. And don’t get me started on its Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor “Claptrap’’ (closing today) from the antichrist of musicals, Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Perhaps the gulf between Beverly and Boston can’t be bridged. But I’d love to see them try. Here’s what I think North Shore should do: In addition to the co-productions with other organizations that it has planned, have one spot each summer that’s a transfer, perhaps with bumped-up sets, from a Boston theater. Maybe not Jerry Springer: the Opera, but what about the Lyric’s A Little Night Music, New Rep’s Ragtime, or SpeakEasy’s Light in the Piazza? All of these were better sung and better directed than the average production in Beverly.

North Shore could also take a page from Boston theaters and introduce audiences to the next generation of great local singers, many of them out of the Boston Conservatory, like Stephanie Umoh, who went from New Rep’s Ragtime to the Broadway revival without passing go -- or Beverly.

These changes would lead to a richer schedule and stronger productions. No one begrudges the North Shore its Andrew Lloyd Webber. (OK, I do a little.) It’s part of keeping a subscriber base happy. But if the theater wants to build buzz, it’s not going to be with the same old same old. We need more theaters in America, and I’m thrilled that we have this one again. But there has to be more sizzle. The hamburger alone isn’t going to get me back to Beverly.

Ed Siegel is a former theater critic for the Globe. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.