REVIEW: Waitress at the Lyceum, Sheffield
It’s Bake Off light, it’s sugary, it’s surprisingly bittersweet… and, if Nigella was judging, she’d be taking great big no-cares-given loaded spoonfuls of Waitress, on the Lyceum menu in Sheffield.
A slice of theatre perfection, Waitress is a warm, comfort-food, American pie tale of love, motherhood, friendship and life… and it turns out there’s something very moreish about a musical that combines mouth-watering pies with delicious harmonies, and a sweet story emotional enough it leaves you hungry for more.
The melting-middle centre is Jenna, a gifted pie-maker with a bun in the oven, trapped in an unhappy marriage to abusive Earl, a controlling brute whose chest tattoo of his own name – “in Medieval font”, no less – tells you all you need to know.
The songs are unmistakably the work of US singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, whose score gives the production its distinctive contemporary sound.
Gloriously clashing duets meet searing solos meet riffs that slide up and down through the octaves in the space of one amazing breath.
West End darling Carrie Hope Fletcher had led the show until September for its 10th anniversary tour of the UK – but, for October, it’s Lucie Jones who stars, and it’s hard to imagine how she could ever have been bettered.
The former X Factor and Eurovision hopeful brings star quality to her role, with incredible vocals that are nothing short of impeccable.
Jones’ Jenna is vulnerable yet resilient, fun but flawed, and her singing is sublime.
There is equally impressive support from Bernadette Bangura as Becky, whose warmth and worldly wisdom provide a reassuring presence, and Evie Hoskins as kooky Dawn, whose awkward charm provides plenty of laughs. Meanwhile, TV treasure Les Dennis has an almost cameo – yet, ultimately, pivotal – role as old Joe, the owner of Joe’s Pie Diner, where Jenna toils to bake 27 different varieties of pie fresh each morning.
The show is based on an original 2007 film, and discovering the tragic story of Waitress creator Adrienne Shelly, who wrote, directed, and appeared in the movie, lends its motifs of motherhood an awful poignancy.
Adrienne, mother to a little daughter aged just two-and-a-half years old, never got to know her ode-to-motherhood movie was to premiere at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.
Horrifically, she was violently murdered by a random killer, who almost got away with concealing his crime as a suicide.
So beneath the sugar-light dusting of fun and frothiness lies a deep heartache.
Memory and fantasy sequences lend the production a sometimes dreamlike quality, blurring the boundaries between Jenna’s everyday struggles and the possibilities she imagines for herself.
Her entanglement with Dr Pomatter (Dan Partridge plays an extremely engaging hot doc, even if their involvement feels uncomfortably morally sub-optimal) adds another layer of complication to Jenna’s already messy life.
Unusually for a musical show, the first half is perhaps better than the second.
Act Two sees the menacing Earl dispatched too willingly. Joe provides a solution to Jenna’s struggles too suddenly. Jenna herself undergoes a lightning bolt metamorphosis that wraps things up just a little too quickly and easily.
But the show manages to bake in enough perfect moments – musically sumptuous, funny, life-affirming and unexpectedly affecting – that, ultimately, it doesn’t matter.
Waitress is a heartwarming story about strong women finding their voices, supporting one another, and discovering life can offer more than the circumstances into which they have been locked.
And, with Jones at the diner counter, it serves up a generous portion of everything a great musical should be: flawless vocals set against a superb score and a story with genuine heart.
Second helpings, please.
- Waitress is at the Lyceum, Sheffield, until Saturday, October 17.