Waitress - The Musical (UK Tour), New Wimbledon Theatre, ★ ★

Didn’t know anything about the musical Waitress before I was faced with the latticed cherry-pie front curtain, at the New Wimbledon Theatre. What was I going to see, once the pie had been sent to the sky? Was this another sickly-sweet music-box musical? Was it really just a musical about a waitress, working in a restaurant?

When the first number was blasted out, completely drowning every hope of trying to understand a single lyric, I was none the wiser. It was clearly set in a typical American diner, complete with a kitchen, tables, fridges and customers. And there she was, the waitress in question, Jenna (Lucie Jones) baking cakes between her banter at the tables, accompanied by her two co-workers Becky (Sandra Marvin) and Dawn (Evelyn Hoskins).

Soon, my worst fears were realised that this truly was just a musical about a waitress, that finds out she’s pregnant. Trapped in an unhappy marriage with her bully of a husband, Earl (Tamlyn Henderson) she seeks solace from her gynaecologist at the hospital, Dr Pomatter (Matt Jay-Willis) and before the bun in the oven has risen, she’s fallen-in-love with this handsome doctor. 

Naturally, I was taken back by this realisation, and began to think about plots of other musicals I’d seen over the years; about flying cars or flying nannies; about Cats or Lion Kings; Phantoms, historical figures, Carousels, Showboats or Cabarets… I’d even seen musical adaptations of TV shows and films, set in prisons, antique shops, with a singing pig or horny muppets! But why, oh why, was a story about an apparent unhappy waitress, (far more suitable as a plot for an episode of a tv drama), deemed worthy of the Broadway stage?

During the interval, cramped in my 1910 seat in the gods at the oxymoronic New Wimbledon Theatre, I did a quick Wikipedia search about the history of the show. It was all based on a low-budget movie, that had blasted all box office expectations, with its success. I thought about the similar story of the musical Grey Gardens, which evolved from a cult 1970s documentary about a conflicting mother and daughter, trapped in a derelict mansion. Apparently, the original Broadway Waitress musical production was also glorified for having an all female creative team, and I couldn’t stop feeling that this was clearly a female oriented show, that had ridden on a feline fan-base, over the waves to the West End. Despite all my deepest feminine genes, and the masculine of my gay critical mind, I just didn’t get-it. 

The second act continued with this pretty ordinary story, with the big revelation that the gynaecologist in question was married! Shock-horror! A devastated waitress, with all her dreams shattered. I’d clocked his wedding ring in the first few seconds of their meeting, and despite her hormonal state, and all the shenanigans in his surgery, I found it hard to accept that she hadn’t! Furthermore, to push our acceptance of this reality even further, she was a fellow student-doctor, who turns up as the waitress is about to give birth! Yes, we were clearly back in the TV sitcom mode.

I just couldn’t believe how mundane and bland this developing plot was, with no saving-grace of a musical score, to lift it up, and worthy of a stage adaptation with lavish production values. At times, the live band drowned out any life on stage, and left me feeling even worse.

The only big number, that justifies this show as a one-hit-wonder, came in the second act, and it was a song that I recognised as a firm favourite in numerous musical theatre showcases. To give Lucie Jones her deserving praise, she did deliver a beautiful solo, but ‘She used to be mine’ stood-out like a glacé cherry on top of a dull-gray iced cake!

I left the theatre before the curtain call, as disappointed as all the customers who came to her diner. They all seem to order a meal, were lavishly served a plastic plate of food, but left without tasting or eating any of it! 

Waitress - The Musical (UK Tour), New Wimbledon Theatre,  ★ ★