Rating:★★★★☆
A warm, cosy evening serving with a sprinkle of sisterhood, a pinch of perseverance and romance baked to 100 degrees. If you’re a mother, daughter, friend or just like a raunchy gynaecologist – Waitress the musical at the Lyceum will leave you deeply connected and satisfied.
Lucie Jones joins the touring cast, taking over from Carrie Hope Fletcher, to return as leading lady Jenna – a role she was previously nominated for as Best Performer in a Musical at the What’s On Stage Awards. She reprised this role with a natural ease like it had never really left her, and I wasn’t surprised to learn that Jones’ newborn daughter is just backstage, given how effortlessly she embodied this delicate story of a young mother-to-be.
On the surface is a endless carousel of addictive musical numbers – written by the Grammy Award winning Sara Bareilles – dressed up with smart, quick and comprehensive choreography – by Lorin Latarro – that consist of mixing ingredients (like pouring sugar at great distance into jars without spilling) live, which was so impressive and brought its theme to absolute life. Lit up by effective warm oranges, and twilight dark blues – a credit to Ken Billington – I felt wrapped up during those emotional scenes.
Under this layer is a heavy story that offers up harsh slices of reality as Jenna plots to leave her loveless, abusive marriage after unexpectedly falling pregnant. Mark Willshire plays a terrifyingly paranoid husband, but his character’s darkness is lightened by appearances of this musical’s heart-throb Dan Partridge, playing Jenna’s lovestruck Dr Pomatter, who later becomes her charming affair partner.
Partridge was hilariously clumsy, portraying his character’s nervous attempts to flatter Jenna with a cracking inability to read cues of when to flirt, or be professional… or obsessively lust over a cream pie. The scenes in his examination room were engrossingly rich with anticipation – which is a testament to Jones and Partridge’s magnetic chemistry. Paired with insane vocals in Bad Idea that meld smoothly and add the odd exhilarating flair, it sounded deliciously unique from the soundtrack. Their softer scenes, like when Jenna shows him how she makes her pies, and he watches attentively, was an incredibly moving set up to You Matter To Me – a song about allowing yourself to be cared for by somebody.
Whisking these moments together is a wonderful script – by Jessie Nelson – where each line invites golden comedic moments, or opportunities for the actors to play off the audience’s pre-laughs. The most effective at this, I thought, was ensemble member Ellie Ruiz Rodriguez playing a cynical-yet-nosy doctor with some masterfully placed one-liners that consistently had the audience in fits of hysterics.
Les Dennis captured the sometimes irritating, but soothing wisdom of Old Joe. Evelyn Hoskins as Dawn became the manic, quirky type, relatably scared of intimacy, with instinct given she’d just surpassed her 500th show in the role. Bernadette Bangura stole my attention, however, in moments between the three waitresses. She fully grasped Becky’s firm have-your-back attitude, and paired this a captivating show of cheeky personality. Her and Dan O’Brien, who played chef Cal, flooded their flirtatious interludes with pure vibrant entertainment. However, this persona crumbled away during her powerful belter ‘I Didn’t Plan It’, that spoke for Becky’s lack of shame over starting an affair of her own. She poured in such grit and confident acceptance of actively doing something morally wrong in her own pursuit of happiness, which ultimately became a heartbreaking, nuanced showstopper of an opening to Act 2.
Of course, we were all waiting for She Used To Be Mine, which did not disappoint. It is Jones’ strongest and most interesting vocal display, and felt like she finally let loose with gorgeous runs that appeared a spur of the moment. Her acting delivered relentless rounds of emotional depth – switching from fierce, to defeated, to forgiving. I discovered so much more about her character in Jones singing this song than the thousand other times I’ve listened to it – particularly during the pause from the orchestra, leaving her final note vulnerably bare and beautiful.
After this, her transition into motherhood is led with an impactful female-centered perspective.
The portrayal of anxiety, grief and apprehensiveness leading up to the birth, despite Jenna’s unmistakable maternal qualities, was brought to the forefront by Jones. I thought this was a really honest touch on the process of becoming a mother, where sometimes it felt like she’d even forgotten her pregnancy when getting caught up in a fling with her doctor, and her masterplan to escape her husband. Rather than appear besotted with the idea of motherhood, and without coming across as irresponsible, we saw a woman on stage living her own life and pursuing her own desires, and seeming like she was just coming to terms with having a child. During the scene where she began labour, I could feel mothers and grandmothers tense around me as Jones’ expressed a vulnerable trepidation and presentation of perseverance in its most relatable manner. The song Everything Changes was exactly that – a transition in Jones’ portrayal where she looked at her baby and visibly glowed.
I did think the ending of the relationship at the end felt abrupt and quickly accepted without much feeling, despite pouring their hearts out a few moments ago, so I wished for more physical cues in their reaction to translate this to us.
Overall, it was a night stuffed with steamy innuendo, aching romance, sweet comedy, and, expertly dealt with bitter realism as characters cross moral lines in order to feel alive again. And it was all topped off with its cherry of a feel-good happy ending.
Waitress the musical is performing in Sheffield up to Saturday 17 October.
Image Credits: Sheffield Theatres
