Curve, Leicester
20th July, 2026
“Big ol’ slice of live your life pie”
Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Sarah
Bareilles and Jessie Nelson’s musical is hitting the road again on a UK tour. Based
on Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 film, Waitress, which opened at Curve last
night, offers a sweet slice of Americana, well-balanced with fleshed-out,
morally-compromised characters and topped with a number of standout songs.
The story follows Jenna (Carrie
Hope Fletcher), a waitress in a small, southern US town whose skill of
inventing delicious pies provides an escape to her unhealthy marriage. Pregnant
and scared of how her life might change, she finds herself having an affair
with her doctor and dreaming of making something new for herself. The result is
that Waitress swings from frivolous
comedy to more serious fare quickly thanks to Nelson’s pacy book. Four years after
I first saw it, it struck me that these tonal shifts are balanced by Bareilles’
songs skilfully setting the tone of each moment.
The diner scenes led by Jenna,
Becky and Dawn highlight the chemistry between the three waitresses. Fletcher makes
for a likeable Jenna, capturing her strength well. Sandra Marvin and Evelyn
Hoskins return to the roles they’ve previously played on tour and in the West
End, providing comedic relief as Jenna’s best friends. There is much to enjoy
about their scenes including the awkwardness of Ogie (Mark Anderson), a
clog-dancing, history-loving poet who clicks with Hoskins’ equally kookie Dawn.
Furthermore, the scenes in the gynaecologist’s office between Jenna and the
awkward New England Dr Pomatter (Dan Partridge) climax to a funny montage
involving a number of different pies and positions! Les Dennis also gives a turn,
albeit rather one-note, as the diner’s owner, going from irascible customer to
a paternal figure who ultimately gives Jenna the keys to her new life. On the
other hand, outside the safe confines of the diner, there is a clear sense of
Jenna being trapped in an abusive marriage to Earl. In fact, suggestions of alcohol
problems, unemployment, and a host of unhappy marriages sprinkled across the
town show that life is not always sweet as apple pie.
The result in these shifts is that several
lines don’t land as well as you might expect and some plot strands don’t get
properly resolved. But this refusal for pat endings is admirable. There’s often
a danger with this scale of Broadway musical for the shifts in tone to be
overproduced, the emotional points carefully and mechanically timed to pull at
heart strings. However, in Waitress,
as in life, the contradictions of comedy and drama sit alongside each other
like blueberry and bacon in a deep-dish pie. As Jenna says, she is “imperfect
but she tries/ She is good but she lies” and she’s “all of this mixed up/ And
baked in a beautiful pie”. The result is that Waitress, ten years on,
still has its pie and eats it.
Bareilles’ country/pop-ish score is
hugely enjoyable and the ‘Sugar Butter Flour’ motif nicely signifies the
flights of fancy where Jenna imagines what her life could be. And the eleventh-hour
number ‘She Used To Be Mine’ is a bona fide belter of a ballad. It contains a
moment where the scruffy living room set rolls off and the stage opens up to
leave Jenna singing out to the auditorium with the open sky behind her. The
blue sky and open road backdrop of Scott Pask’s set conveys a sense of American
optimism. It’s surely one of the most iconic moments of musical theatre in the
last decade, and Fletcher had the theatre (many of them ardent fans) in the
palm of her hand.
Diane Paulus’ direction (restaged
here by Abbey O’Brien) keeps the show slickly moving forward and embraces the
messy fun of baking. Go grab yourself a slice of red, white and blueberry pie.
Waitress plays at
Curve, Leicester until 25th July as part of a UK tour. For further
dates, please visit Waitress
the Musical UK Tour | Official Site
 |
| Carrie Hope Fletcher as Jenna in Waitress. Credit: Matt Crockett |
