The concept is simplicity itself. Take three female singing icons of the target Baby Boomer generation and put their music onstage, sung by a trio of local performers. That is what The Plaza Theatre has done and the result is a crowd-pleasing entertainment, in a three-week engagement in Manalapan through this weekend.

The icons in question are Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler and Carole King, each of whom rose to prominence in the 1960s and have remained in the spotlight ever since on sheer talent, determination and charisma. As the between-song patter in the revue Don’t Rain On Our Parade puts it, their song hits comprise the soundtrack of most of our lives.

Director Kevin Black has wisely not asked his three cast members — Melissa Boher Jacobson, Shelley Keelor and Missy McArdle — to attempt an impersonation of the three celebrated inspirations for the show. They all sing well and it is enough that they wrap their vocal cords around these mostly familiar musical numbers without begging direct comparison with the women to whom they are paying tribute.

If McArdle is the standout of the evening, it is because she has plenty of personality as well as the singing chops for the assignment. Of the three performers, only she has natural comic gifts, which she employs to full effect on Streisand’s Fanny Brice homage, Second Hand Rose. And she can switch gears effortlessly to dramatic ballads like Before the Parade Passes By (from Hello, Dolly!) or Midler’s inspirational Wind Beneath My Wings.

Jacobson’s vocal timbre brings to mind Streisand’s sound without stepping over the line into mimicry. True, she does not quite convince us of the unique qualities needed to put across I’m the Greatest Star — Streisand’s opening number in Funny Girl — but she later lays a little claim to the mantle with a bravura rendering of Papa, Can You Hear Me from the film Yentl.

Keelor has a more mellow singing voice, well suited to the light rock hits of King’s like Natural Woman and I Feel the Earth Move. One of the show’s more interesting detours is a medley of songs she wrote for others to record, like Some Kind of Wonderful and Chains of Love.

The two-act show is front-loaded with Streisand material, mostly ballads, though it is nice to hear the less-well-known comic number Nobody Makes a Pass At Me, which she recorded on a studio cast album of the 1937 revue, Pins and Needles. King material dominates the beginning of the second act and eventually Midler gets her due. If the show is least successful at invoking the her song trunk, it is because this segment too favors ballads and excludes Midler’s “trashy” side.

Then again, these three women have a profusion of material associated with them and choices had to be made. Don’t Rain on Our Parade succeeds because it does not try to do too much and it knows the value of simply entertaining its audience for a couple of hours.