Waitress

Curve, Leicester

20^th 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 25^th 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