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

“You paid to see Waitress, you saw Waitress”  as you-know-who says 🙃

Oh wow, I hope this happens! She would be fantastic in that role!

I don't think it's simply a case that she took up a better offer when it came along mid tour. I think it's that the producers wanted her for the Waitress tour, and enough so that knowing Wicked (if that is the future project) was in the pipeline, were happy for her to leave if/when that happened.

It works both ways though: Waitress put her out of the show for a period during the London run for Sara Bareilles to come in, which was also the case for several of the original London cast during the run.

So yes, I'm fairly sure the producers knew this was a possibility all along. But since when have the Waitress marketing team really cared about accuracy?

Dont forget, Nikki Bentley was announced to be in the Priscilla tour in 2019, and then vanished from all their press releases and marketing and was then announced as London Green Gal...

I saw it in Sunderland last week and it did not sell well (both top tiers were closed), so this does not surprise me.

I was pleasantly surprised though. Lucie was great and Charlie made her Dawn debut.

Manchester run looks very sparsely sold...a two week run a bit ambitious added to the high tickets prices....I'm looking forward to seeing it though

Stoke has been cancelled unfortunately.
Lucie's last dates are now Aberdeen.

They announced at 6:15pm that it had been cancelled - irresponsibly late in my opinion.

I can't answer that, but understudy Aimée Fisher was good as the lead. Eveylyn Hoskins, Sandra Marvin and Michael Starke stood out for me, (if indeed it was Michael Starke, as I didn't recognise him from his Brookie Sinbad days).

I never caught Waitress in the West End having already seen the Broadway production in 2016, which I rated as three-stars. A half-price Black Friday offer tempted me back, and I am glad I did. While the Northampton Derngate is a terrible venue for acoustics (and a lot of the lyrics were lost), I enjoyed this version more, and, unlike on Broadway, I found it quite moving in places.

I am still not overly sold on the "Sugar" motif that pops up periodically, which, in any case, seems to be a steal of Sondheim's "Bobby" from Company. Otherwise, the music is likeable, and the whole shebang, while somewhat predictable and caricatured, is an enjoyable watch.

Four stars.

Act 1: 19:32-20:45
Act 2: 21:07-22:12

Centre of stalls row G. The mid-range sounded high on the music compared to the vocals, and I couldn't hear much bass in the mix. However, I think the problem is that the room has too much natural echo, which makes any dialogue/vocals difficult to catch when there are other sounds/music over the top. The Royal always sounds wonderful, but the Derngate has always been bad for musicals. Maybe there's some compensation/equalisation a clever sound engineer can do.

There is a similar problem at the Odeon Leicester Square screen 1, which also suffers from lots of reverberation. It was never good enough for THX certification when that was a thing. The Dolby experts have done their best in the conversion to a "Dolby Cinema", which has improved things, but it's still not great.

It’s doing Woking where there are £13 ATG price promise tickets; looks like the back two rows of the upper circle. If it is a successful production and they’re only left with single seats ATG normally knock them out for £25 each.