Waitress - Adelphi Theatre / U.K. Tour / Cinema

Not sure I follow the post three above this one, which seems to suggest that it equally good (or bad) for the show not to be sold out? The Adelphi is a big place and not much sells out there!

Heading home from tonight's evening performance. I thought it was averagely ok when I saw it with Katharime McPhee last year, and while I'm still on the fence as to the show itself, Sara is incredible. It's a masterclass of a performance, she sings like a dream and she shines. If she'd originated the role on Broadway, she might've even snatched the Tony from Cynthia. Gavin is also brilliant and their chemistry is fantastic, they're clearly having a ball up there. Marisha has also toned her performance down a bit and she sounded great.

No disservice to Lucie Jones and David Hunter, who I'm sure are brilliant, but if you're unsure as to whether you want to see this show, now is a very very good time to go.

I was at Desi, David and Hannah’s final matinee last week - my first time seeing the show and I loved it.

I feel so lucky to have seen Desi, she was phenomenal. She played Jenna very moody and sarcastic, as if she is provoked by life beating her down and takes out her anger on others. It made for a really unique portrayal, and her voice was amazing, with extra riffs added in WBCD and SUTBM.

Marisha Wallace really impressed me, I wish I had seen her in Dreamgirls now.

I had heard mixed things about Hannah but I actually really enjoyed her - she was quirky and funny. Is she the strongest singer? No. But she did really well and got a lot of laughs.

David was lovely as Doctor P, you can tell he loves being part of the show. He and Desi worked well together, especially considering they’d only just met less than a month ago.

The rest of the cast were great, Joel Montague was hysterical, and I can’t wait to catch the tour when it’s in Scotland.

Saw the show last night too - I saw it before with Katherine and didn’t particularly feel the need to rush back. But I wanted to see Sara and see the gorgeous Gavin!

I still feel the music is gorgeous but there’s lots of uncomfortable loose ends in the show and we’re supposed to be okay that people are cheating.

Sara is just sublime, her voice is great and she fits the role of Jenna so brilliantly. She constantly seems like someone who would slip into the background - which is exactly what Jenna is.
Gavin is great too and looks like he’s loving it!

Sat in the dress circle and there were a few empty seats. Quite a few tourists and a very heavy snorer in act 1!

I love this show, it's been my guilty pleasure, I've seen it four times and will miss it when it closes. I last saw it on Thursday night, and felt very lucky to see the person, who wrote the songs, sing them!

Some spoilers follow. . .

I like that the show deals with birth and death, which makes it feel about all of life.
I like that the show deals with hurt and recovery, which makes it feel life-affirming and redemptive.
I like that its about pies, as desserts, cakes and pies are a few of my favourite things.
I like that the show is itself like a metaphorical pie, with a sweet soft centre surrounded by a crunchy comedy crust.
I like that the show is full of likeable lively funny people, who like the show, have soft centres and comedy crusts.

Of course, like a pie, the show comes in many flavours, depending on who's in it.

Here's my experience of various key cast members I've seen. . .

Jenna:

Katherine McPhee focused solely and entirely on making the song "She used to be Mine" work. She played her character like a ghost, such that every joke, even though it was in the book, fell flat. She was so numb she seemed to have clinical depression, and NOT the kind where people say afterwards, "I never knew they felt that way." You really believed that Katherine McPhee was a destroyed person, such that when she finally sings of a former undestroyed, earthy, together self who "used to be mine," it was crushingly moving. I must admitted, I cried a river during that song, like for nobody else I've seen in the role.

That said, I liked McPhee's performance the least, as I feel the book envisions a Jenna who is more reactively depressed, someone capable of quipping and joking around when Earl isn't around, and that wasn't Katherine McPhee.

3 and a half stars from me for her.

By contrast, Sara Bareilles completely gets the humour of the book! Ironically, as a consequence, I believed her "She used to be Mine" the least of the three actresses I've seen in the role, despite the fact she wrote the song, which I feel she technically sang the best, with the most meticulously beautiful modulation and hovering breathiness.

She is the most modern female and self-possessed of the leads I've seen, as like other singers who've owned stages, such as Barbra Streisand or Madonna, she always acts like the owns the space she's standing in. And she quips like she expects laughs, which she gets because she sports the confidence of a stand-up. I loved her in the part, as she fit in fantastically with all the other funny people on stage, and gave them line readings to bounce their performances off, which I felt McPhee really didn't. And, of course, there is a frisson in seeing the person who created the music and lyrics deliver them!

4 stars from me for her.

Lucie Jones is my favourite Jenna, as her combination of vulnerability and hurt most balances the complex and sometimes contradictory tug of war between the joke-filled book and sometimes languorous lyrics. She maintains the strut of Bareilles' more strident comic timing, but also most of McPhee's vulnerability and give. Where Bareilles' gait and gaze are insistent, Jones' are ingratiating. She plays Jenna as a compliant people pleaser who fits herself into other people's spaces in the least demanding, most supportive way. She is neither a living ghost like McPhee, nor a confident self-possessed woman like Bareilles. Consequently, she comes off as the most considerate and likeable Jenna, the one you could most trust with your love and your life, more so than Bareilles' more self-possessed Jenna or McPhee's potentially suicidal spectre.

5 stars from me for Lucie Jones' Jenna lol.

Anyway, I'll continue my ramblings about the rest of the ensemble later, in another post, as I'm off to catch a bus. More theatre to see, cos it Saturday lol!

Dr. Pomatter:

Both David Hunter and Gavin Creel are excellent in this, with Hunter being a bit more about the comedy of indulgence and Creel a bit more about the comedy of reacting.

Of the two, Creel feels the more necessary, as his Jenna (Sara Bareilles) is relatively the most alpha, prodding and poking him hard with her insistence, so Creel's energetic eye-rolling, fast-talking, mouth agape wonder at everything Jenna plays like a frenetic Jim Carrey caught in a whirlwind, while struggling to stay connected.

4 stars from me for both Hunter and Creel.

Dawn:-

The casting of Dawn has been up there with the best casting I've seen in a musical. Both Laura Baldwin and Evelyn Hoskins milk HUGE LAUGHS out of her disconnected gawkiness, and singular obsessions.

Seeing understudy, Sarah O'Connor try to ape Baldwin's zaniness was instructive. While she superbly replicated a good-natured, fast-talking, swivel-eyed facsimile of Baldwin's staccato line deliveries, she could not capture Baldwin's sheer unpredictability, her unhinged explosivenness, her comic timing.

I felt Baldwin irreplaceable until Hoskins took the role. Astonishingly, Hoskins goes even bigger with the unhinged wild and crazy of it all, and I found myself laughing even louder than I did for Baldwin.

Hoskins is not better, mark you, just different, as Baldwin's Dawn was more real, a nasal high-pitched loveable ball of need. Hoskins sacrifices some of that human relatability for even more wild and crazy extremity. The result is less connection, bigger laughs, a comic tour de force.

3 stars for Sarah O'Connor from me, and 5 stars for both Laura Baldwin and Evelyn Hoskins for two unique and memorable comic performances!

Ogie:-

This show changes Ogies more regularly than most parents changes nappies, it feels like lol, as I have seen a different Ogie on every one of my 4 visits.

Jack McBrayer was easily my least favourite Ogie. He couldn't sing, and his Ogie was easily the most intrusive and thoughtless regarding Dawn's personal space. I found him stalker-like, and consequently, unfunny in his "Your never getting rid of me" song.

2 stars from me.

Compared to McBrayer, Joe Sugg was a breath of fresh air. His singing was competent, and his zany spinning bubble head of an Ogie came across as no more threatening than a yapping poodle. His comic timing was solid, and he played off Laura Baldwin well.

3 and a half stars from me.

In Joel Montague, the show has found a great Ogie. The best singer by a league of the Ogies I've seen (he even shows off his voice at one point), his more explicitly mildly autistic Ogie avoids eye contact on every lyric that is mildly stalkery. His characterisation is reminiscent of the slow talking, well meaning Forest Gump portrayal by Tom Hanks.

4 stars from me.

Of the 4 Ogies I've seen, I loved Blake Harrison the best. His head seemed in the fastest spin of thoughts, his emotions felt the most real, his giddiness echoed and mirrored Dawn perfectly, and when he sang your "never getting rid of me," he sang it as if he feared the exact opposite. Instead of foisting himself on Dawn, his posture and line-deliveries put this Ogie at Dawn's service, and when Dawn picked him, his ecstacy was the greatest, because it never felt guaranteed, and was earned.

5 stars for Blake Harrison's Ogie from me.

Becky:-

Sandra Marvin got some good solid laughs from her reactions of surprise to various plot developments, but Marisha Wallace goes further, getting the laughs but also projecting a fierce protectiveness of Jenna and Dawn. Both actors belt terrifically.

3 and a half stars from me for Sandra Marvin, and 4 and a half stars for Marisha Wallace.

Cal:-

In the small part of the Pie shop manager, Richard Taylor Woods and Mark Wilshire both get the job done, but neither come close to the immense charisma and timing of former School of Rock lead, Stephen Leask. Only he felt like a worthy match for Marisha Wallace's Becky, in his fierceness, gruffness, School of Rock sexiness and comic chops. To be honest, the smallness of the part was spoiled by the sheer talent of Stephen Leask.

3 stars for Taylor Woods and Mark Wilshire from me, 4 and a half stars from me for Stephen Leask.

But no matter who was in it, I loved this show every time, and hope to see it once more to say my personal goodbye.

I’ve always found it interesting how people have different reactions depending on which Jenna they see. That’s why when you see these favorite Jenna conversations there’s so much variety. That’s what makes her a fascinating character to me, because fundamentally Jenna is a fairly uninteresting person, and so her personality ends up being whatever spin the particular character puts on her as a result of the emotional and physical abuse she’s suffered.

So for example, what Steve loves about Lucie’s Jenna I personally didn’t enjoy so much, because she’s just too upbeat for me, and I couldn’t relate so much (and I say this as an American but her accent is just not that great lmao). But I draw from personal experiences too of being in a toxic relationship in my past where I ended up just going in on myself and that’s why Katharine’s performance really hit me the hardest. I also cried at her sutbm more than any other. I didn’t find her to be a ghost though. She was still super engaging and funny in the lighter parts, but everything about her performance is a lot quieter and introspective, but purposefully so. Except Bad Idea though, because hers and David’s Bad Idea was LIT! 🔥😆

I saw Sara in New York and am seeing her again next week. and can’t wait. She does plays her Jenna more for laughs in an obvious way like Steve mentions, and it’s a choice acting style which I wasn’t sure would be for everyone, but she seems to be getting raves here which is good! 👍

One thing I will say, regardless of which portrayal people prefer, you’d have to go a long way I think to have 3 leading ladies with as good a voice as Katharine, Lucie and Sara! Honestly my time watching Waitress has given me some of the best vocals I’ve ever heard on the stage 😍

For anyone interested, Sara's 'What's Inside' concert of her singing all of the songs from the show is on YouTube 😀

This was my main problem with the show.  I could see why Jenna would stray (and even sympathise with her), but I couldn't get past the fact that the doc and his wife seemed to be ok and she was even there to support Jenna.  It just made me ultimately dislike both the characters as I just couldn't get past the cheating.

Hi,

Sorry if this has been asked before, but has anyone sat in Dress Row A seat 7 before? Looks to be white on theatremonkey website but just after any reviews really.

Many thanks x

That's awesome thank you! Helped me immensely, have booked the seat! Thanks again! x

Some very good stalls seats currently available for Waitress in the final week of the Official London Theatre New Year Sale, Monday - Wednesday 10 -12 February including the Wednesday matinee.

I've just booked central row E for £40 instead of £79.50. Added recently as I've been checking regularly.