Scott Purvis-Armour reviews ‘a surprisingly half-baked musical’ with strong performances.
Waitress has been cooling on the windowsill of musical theatre for a decade now and is ready to celebrate the sugar, spice and everything nice of what it is to be a woman. Love. Romance. Refined carbohydrates.
But what presents as a heart-filled anthem for womanhood quickly becomes a somewhat saccharine and evasive piece which fails to adequately express the unfairness of womanhood in dusty prairie borders where feminism hasn’t stepped.
Based on the little-known 2007 film by Adrienne Shelly, Jessie Nelson’s book follows some well-thumbed recipes and stirs in some unexpected flavours. Down-on-her-luck pie-shop baker Jenna is trapped in her own apron, desperate to flee from a life with her abusive husband. She finds escape in the sugar, butter and flour of her culinary creations, singing a songbook of mellow country-pop bops which simmer along sweetly without much impact.
But just as she is dreaming a dream of winning a lucrative baking competition, she discovers she herself has a bun in the oven… and falls in love with her gynaecologist. This is a Mississippi Mud Pie of a plot which forces characters to walk a rocky road before their redemption. Sarah Lee could never.
Writer Sara Bareilles is “not gonna write you a love song” but she is gonna you a two-and-a-half-hour musical with forty minutes of songs about pie crusts. The gluten of every possible cookery analogy is stretched, firmly pressing the lid on a Tupperware show which keeps everything too fresh, too sanitised. There is no discussion of reproductive rights, no discussion of divorce and no discussion of the reality of domestic abuse. No one is calling for an inquest when a middle-class doctor is pursuing sex with his vulnerable pregnant patient. Is this really what theatre was saying about the experience of women one year before #metoo?
Although the content seems dated and Bareilles’ songs are mostly forgettable, the performances are typically excellent. Lucy Jones’ voice shines through Ken Billington’s lighting with a beautiful tenderness. Her rendition of “She Used to Be Mine”, a hymn to all the lost ambitions of a pregnant woman’s life, is beautifully well-acted. Dan Patridge, too, delivers perhaps the best male vocal on a Glasgow stage this year with a country and western twang that hitches its blue jeans up and demands that everyone in the audience falls in love with it.
Despite strong performances, Waitress is a surprisingly half-baked musical when the oven dings. Whilst it never becomes a Betty Crocker nonsense, it all feels a bit mild, too consumed in the long vowels of its midwestern drawl to explore the drudgery of life as a poor woman in the United States and not brave enough to offer bite.
Waitress performs at Glasgow’s King’s Theatre until 10 October 2026 before continuing its UK tour. For further details, go to the production’s website.
Photo by Johan Persson.
RSS