“Sugar. Butter. Flour.” are the primary ingredients of any good pie, we’re reminded throughout Waitress: The Musical, as the words are the sung heartbeat of this marvelous show with exactly the right ingredients to make something far more creative and delicious than the mixture of its parts at Saugatuck Center for the Arts.
The theatre here, as it turns out, was once the freezer of a pie factory, and Crane’s Pie Pantry, a celebrated local institution, donated the pies featured onstage, and sell them in the lobby.
This delightful show with real and symbolic pies at the center of it couldn’t be a more perfect fit in Saugatuck. The 2016 Broadway hit with book by Jessie Nelson and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles based on the 2007 film written by Adrienne Shelly is is a largely woman-centered story that focuses on small-town American working-class life—shot through with fantastic songs and big characters. And Director Kurt Stamm’s vision of this world is beautiful, sassy, quirky, and full of heart.
Pie baker and diner waitress Jenna is the show’s heroine. With an abusive husband and an unexpected pregnancy that makes her want to change her life, she escapes her wretched reality dreaming up and creating unusual pies (inspired by the skills her mother, also a domestic abuse survivor with a creative outlet baking pies, passed down to her) as well as having an affair with her gynecologist. Encouraged by the diner’s owner, Jenna aspires to win the $20,000 prize in a pie baking contest and start a new life.
Both romance and comedy, part of Waitress’s terrific appeal is that it unflinchingly looks the very real difficulties of women’s lives square in the face, making the most of the unavoidable hilarities and vulgarities therein—without diminishing either the highs or the lows.
The narrative arc follows Jenna primarily, and Becca Andrews captures her motivations, drives, desires, humor, and emotional changes magnificently—through big gestures, such as her gorgeous singing and interpretation of Bareilles’s beloved songs (bring tissues) as well as her terrific physical comedy, but also with marvelous subtlety and depth, often through how much she says with her eyes that go dead when her husband is around and sparkle when she’s dreaming up pies.
Though Andrews is the powerful driving force to this multilayered show with many impressive moving parts, every one of the actors on stage brings realness and humanity to characters that, as written, could otherwise come across as cartoonish. The other waitresses, Gina Milo as nerdy, quirky Dawn, and Carla R. Stewart as the in-command, trash-talking Becky, are exceptionally funny and real, and the women’s friendship and enduring support for one another are central to this show’s charm.
The men, too, are powerful characters, and a delight. Pete Winfrey is perfectly neurotic and goofy as Dr. Pomatter, and a beautiful match for Andrews vocally and in terms of comedic timing. Their chemistry is weird and wonderful, their marvelously choreographed (with pie!), acrobatic sex scenes a hoot.
Neil Stratman pulls out all the stops as persistent, awkward, spontaneous poet and historical reenactment enthusiast Ogie. His endearingly strange romance with Gina Milo as Dawn is laugh-out-loud funny.
And Christian McQueen is such a skillful comedian, one smack of a spatula or turn of his head has the audience in stitches. The tensions that fly between him and Stewart as Becky can’t help but turn passionate. They’re marvelous together.
Jonathan Cable strikes all the right unlikeable notes as Earl, the narcissistic man-child husband who demands a kiss, steals Jenna’s tips, threatens violence, and makes her promise not to love the baby more than him. Yet Cable manages to make this villainous wretch human. And William Thomas Evans embodies the cranky curmudgeon with a heart of gold as Joe, and his “Take It From An Old Man” tugs at the heart strings.
The ensemble, too, play their parts to bring to life the diner, the kitchen, the hospital, the doctor’s office, and Jenna’s reveries, all beautifully choreographed by Jay Gamboa. So much of the storytelling is in the movement, remarkably so—including the incredibly efficient scene and set changes (set design by Eric Luchen) with excellent lighting, from dramatic shadows and overhead spotlights to signify memory to dramatic sunset colors on the cyclorama and the neon frame for the diner, by Jennifer Kules.
Musically, too, this show is superb; with excellent music direction from Tom Vendafreddo and a marvelous orchestra, these powerful songs are especially evocative, inspiring emotional release from the characters as well as the audience.
Jenna’s story, the ways life surprises her—even when history repeats itself—cause her to make mistakes, to grow and change, with her friends and lovers and ghosts and child yet-to-be-born alongside her.
And what buoys her most are the implicit legions of women—ancestors or otherwise—who have also survived if not thrived through the same heartbreaks and sufferings she endures. She is not alone.
And through it all she changes, and maybe changes the story for generations to come. Ultimately, Waitress is a powerful love story. But not perhaps in the ways we might think.
Waitress at SCA reminds us there is sweetness and joy amid it all and reflects back to us what’s possible with remarkable artistry and beautiful collaboration, put together with the right recipe, highest-quality ingredients, and a whole lot of heart.
Waitress
Saugatuck Center for the Arts
Aug. 8-31
https://sc4a.org/event/waitress/
