2023 | Unrated (PG-13 equivalent) | Pro-Shot | starring Sarah Barreilles, Drew Gehling, Charity Dawson, Caitlin Hulahan | directed by Diane Paulus and Brett Sullivan | 2 h 24 m | 3 out of 5 stars |
We’ll start this with the same disclaimer I made with the Disney release of the pro-shot of Hamilton, that a recording of a play in which shots are curated and a screen is put between you and the performers is a vastly different experience than the wonderful experience of live theater where the eyes can take in the full activity of the stage and the acceptance of opening your imagination and suspending disbelief is heightened. These works are best scene as they were designed to be, on the stage, and we’re loosing something in this translation, however – a pro-shot capturing an original cast in an original production is better than nothing.
Which brings us to Waitress: The Musical: Sarah Barreilles’ baby of a concoction that turns Adrienne Shelly’s indie-film into a sugar-coated, high-energy, slapsticky musical with a large cast and enough moral grey areas to fill up the Broadway stage. It’s an early prototypical example of the latest Broadway trend. Just as Hollywood is hedging their bets with reliable and safe franchises, sequels and remakes, so is Broadway playing it safe turning well known movies into live musicals – and then back into musical movies as Mean Girls and Matilda can attest too. And around it goes. While stage purists may whine that Sweeney Todd is too mainstream, to watch Josh Groban and Annaleigh Ashford’s thrilling 2023 revival of Sondheim’s play is to see a distinct work for the theater in a time when Beetlejuice, Back to the Future and Legally Blonde are being retrofitted into musicals down the street.
There is undeniable talent on display with this production. For me it’s the writing that’s the highlight, with writer Jessie Nelson seeing an epic stage play of small town antics in Shelly’s story and blowing it out into a messy tale driven by the desperate desires of quirky characters and clever illusions and parallels. This is, after all, the story of a pie baker who spends the whole story with a bun in the oven. The very story-heavy book follows Jenna Hunterson (star, composer and lyricist Barreilles), a pregnant waitress at a small town diner known for her eclectic pie recipes who tries to escape her abusive husband Earl (Joe Tippett) by raising enough money to enter a baking contest and skip town, with the help of her fellow waitress friends Becky (Charity Dawson) and Dawn (Caitlin Hulahan). Performances are all top-notch in keeping with the play’s cartoony tone.
One of the big differences between theater and movies is the lower focus on efficiency between the mediums. Meaning, a movie needs to move, every song, line of dialog and action moving the story forward. Getting in and getting out. A play moves more leisurely allowing detours down the path of a side character for character’s sake, or to give the performer their musical moment. Sketching out the quirky residents of Joe’s Pie Diner and this small southern town is a high priority for Waitress, giving everyone a forbidden or unlikely romance to track through the story. Becky surprises with a workplace romance with chef Cal, Dawn making an unlikely match with goofy Revolutionary War lover Ogie and diner owner Joe (character actor Dakin Matthews) comes in for his usual breakfast with a side of life advice. At the center of it is Jenna who finds a distraction from her pregnancy dilemma in an affair with the new town doctor (Drew Gehling).
For all it’s wacky distractions (the play has a lot of fun with moody pie names), I am just not that into the story of Waitress. In any form. The play does its best to push the cuteness to the forefront while telling a story of domestic violence and infidelity. Nelson has the right adaptive instincts here. This is a story full of flawed characters acting in moral gray areas, often out of trapped desperation – it’s juicy theater material. It’s also not a story where anyone is going to confront a hard karmic lesson. Everyone is going to get off scott free, funneled into a happy ending in which love finds a way. Along the way it swings wildly between the tones of a fairy tale and an over-sexed Lifetime domestic drama. It also has one foot in the door between the traditional requirements of the story and another in contemporary social politics. While Jenna’s pregnancy drives the entire plot, the play can’t stop itself from winking and nodding to the audience that she could just as easily terminate this thing at any time. In a particularly bizarre moment, Ogie and Dawn ride across the Delaware with a pride flag after a climactic convergence of all three of the film’s heterosexual storylines without a single bit of LGBT representation in sight. Chew on this bone, I guess.
The play’s biggest issue is that there isn’t a single catchy song in this entire, overly-stuffed 4 course meal. Songs are plentiful with none of them sticking in the ears with a singable melody. The play is sluggish and gets bogged down with side character storylines that grow out of it like weeds. I like the complexity here, I think this story has been well expanded for the stage and I don’t need my characters to be “likable”. But Waitress: the Musical really pushes that line for how far we will tolerate quirky characters making bad decisions and being celebrated for it. It has it’s moments of ingenuity and sugary, buttery sweetness, but leaves a sour aftertaste.