Brighton Theatre Royal Review: Waitress

Summary

Rating: ★★★★★
Running Dates: Monday 6th April- Saturday 11th April
Where to see it: Brighton Theatre Royal
Duration: 2 hours 30 minutes (incl. interval)

Review

In honour of the 10th anniversary of this iconic musical, Waitress returns to Brighton’s Theatre Royal. Relive the retro magic for a night of sparks, dreams, and a whole load of pie.

The musical, directed by Diane Paulus and adapted from Jessie Nelson’s book, is a story of love, friendship, sticky situations, and settling for being ‘happy enough’.

Photography by Johan Persson

Jenna (Carrie Hope Fletcher), is a waitress in a pie shop. Baking reminds her of her late mother, who taught her all her best pie recipes and would often give wild names to each of her delicious creations. Jenna uses her pies to express herself and work through her relationship struggles, feelings of entrapment, and lack of contentment. Putting them ‘on someone else’s plate’ offers some sort of temporary relief. Alongside the sometimes daredevil, imaginative, and potentially award-winning pies, here comes the names that signposts her every thought: “Deep (Shit) Dish Blueberry Pie”, “Old Joe’s Horny Past Pie”, and “Fallin’ In Love Chocolate Mousse Pie”. 

The show opens with the musical number “What’s Inside” to introduce the complex lives of those who surround Joe’s Pie Diner. The production was brought to life by the use of real ingredients: the blowing of flour and the mess created by split sugar made the diner and baking scenes feel immersive, and imperfect just as it would be in real life. My favourite prop was the plastic eggs that ‘cracked’ and spilled real egg white and yolk. 

The star musical number was the performance of ‘When He Sees Me’ by Dawn (Evelyn Hoskins), who overthinks both the good and bad outcomes of a date. Inevitably, she meets her twin flame, Ogie (Mark Anderson), who matches her freak perfectly. Some of my favourite scenes included this pair, who were brought together by their love of history, and the role-playing of such. Even at their wedding, their colour scheme matches the American flag, they dress as pioneers of the country, and run across the stage with an American flag overlaid with the pride flag. 

The performance received a well deserved standing ovation. This would have been apt for Jenna’s amazing vocals solely, let alone the rest of the cast who brought the musical to life, whose chemistry felt real and onstage presence perfect.

Some Waitress fans even told me they enjoyed it more than when they saw it in the West End. Since then the musical has evolved, growing in popularity, and the cast growing in confidence.

You should definitely see it for yourself. 

Written by Isabel Meszaros

We were kindly gifted these tickets in exchange for a review