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

Regardless of everyone's opinion about her, I think KMP is the real MVP (see what I did there?) for doing all 100 shows so far, in such a vocally demanding role, especially since every other principal has already had days off.

I booked this a couple of days ago purely as a way to tick this show off the list, and because, you know, they will give me a free programme and ice-cream since I used that code. Wasn't really excited about the show itself. But seeing Laura Baldwin's performance just made this a lot more exciting. Marisha Wallace was also great, but I was expecting that.

Any rumour who’s replacing her as Jenna?

Oh cool, I think Nicole is great! Talking of her twitter this vid of a drunk Kat dancing along to Twentieth Century Fox Mambo at the surprise hen party the cast and crew threw for her is giving me life! 😂 #bringbacksmash

http://instagram.com/p/BxFs-t-nON1

Agreed. I actually think she was pretty great when I saw her early in previews, and the whole backlash or people not liking her I don't really get. 100 shows and not missing one is great for a role of that size!

Frankly I think Kat McPhee is by far the best thing about this show! Fabulous voice, and I think her acting fits the character perfectly. She was a lot better in that respect than I expected judging from some of the reviews on here.

I didn't find an awful lot to like in the rest of the show though - Laura Baldwin does her best with a character that gets annoying within the first 2 minutes, and Marisha Wallace milks the bawdy humour she gets as well as she can but over-sings her big solo. They're the best of the rest really - the nurse is annoyingly over the top and the less said about all the men, the better.

It just isn't my kind of humour at all, which made for a long couple of hours when McPhee wasn't singing the big powerful numbers. The lyrics for most of the songs are cringeeorthy, the story is even worse and the sets and choreography looked amateur at best.

There's a good story in there to be told if they really took the domestic violence aspects seriously and treated them properly. But they don't, it's bubblegum and pies the whole way through and the end result is really just a bit of a cheesy slapstick mess. McPhee is worth the (discounted) ticket price but that's about it for me I'm afraid.

For those who are keeping an eye on these things, the Dress Circle was about two thirds full at most tonight. The cheaper seats at the back were full, the premiums practically empty. Stalls looked fairly full and the Upper Circle seemed to be open but no idea how full it was. Barely any queues to get served at the bars/snack stands before the show or in the interval though, if that is any indication.

To be fair, backlash or people not liking her in the show has been a small minority of people, even on these boards. People can have whatever opinion about a performance, that’s fine, but what has bothered me here has been people making the bitchy, nasty and unwarranted personal attacks (which do seem to have died down now to be fair seeing as the main culprit no longer seems to post here) and it does seem some people were just determined to hate the moment she was cast, and weirdly hate the show also. I think Waitress London has been lucky to have her, just as it’ll no doubt be lucky to have whoever they cast next as Jenna! 

^ I really enjoy David as Dr P, he’s super charming and goofy, and he and Kat do have good chemistry. I’ve so far seen 5 Dr Ps 😆 - all good in their own ways!

- Drew Gehling (with Jessie) - the goofiest

- Chris Diamantopoulos (with Sara) - the most serious but nice voice

- Erich Bergen (with Kat) - the funniest and good chem with Kat

- Henry Gottfried (with Kat) - I don’t know how old he is but he played a bit too young for me and he didn’t have great chem with Kat, but boy did he have a lovely voice!

I don't think it's unfair, it's my opinion that they were all poor.

Yes, I know David Hunter can sing, but honestly I didn't think he sang that well at all last night. Either it was written that way, or there were some rather dodgy harmonies with Ms McPhee last night, and she was on form. I didnt think he was charming at all, in fact his character really just made my skin crawl, which didn't help - it was an over the top performance, I didn't find it funny and the character has no redeeming qualities whatsoever as far as I'm concerned.

Jack McBrayer can barely hold a tune and his performance was so over the top that it made me cringe. The other male characters are just so unlikable, and although the pie shop owner sort of redeems himself at one point, it isn't when his character is onstage and his solo song was just about bearable in terms of tunefulness and tone. I get that the male characters are predominantly not meant to be likeable, and in that sense they've achieved that, but none of them worked for me.

I didn't think there was much chemistry between any of the couples, though the fact that almost all the characters were either irritating or just unlikable probably didn't help that aspect.

Much of the set looked as if it was made from something not much stronger than cardboard, and I couldn't understand why there was a huge expanse of black space unused at the top of the stage - from the circle things like the ceiling light hanging down in the house looked ridiculous, and you'd think they would have had enough money to construct more than one wall of some of the sets!

And in terms of the lyrics - there was so much about pies, or using metaphors about pies, that it just got to a point of over-saturation on the saccharine front. The musical score is perfectly serviceable from a melody perspective, but I found the lyrics rather cringeworthy quite often I'm afraid.

I get that others like the show, and that's obviously fine, each to their own. But it's definitely not for me - it's too sugary and lacking in substance, and the humour is really not my style at all - that sort of slapstick gets very old very quickly for me.

Who says I’m not believing your report? The top tier is always the one that sells the best because it’s the cheapest seats. If the top tier is closed, as it often is midweek, it’s not that that tier hasn’t sold well, it’s just that those 400 seats are distributed into the gaps in the dress circle and stalls. But it was open last night and so of course there will be more gaps elsewhere as a result. 

That's great! Hopefully will be able to see this again soon!