Review: Waitress UK Tour at the Royal Concert Hall, Nottingham

Going into last night’s performance of Waitress the Musical at Nottingham’s Royal Concert Hall, I knew only two things about this show: first, that it contains the glorious ballad “She Used To Be Mine” and second, that it is rather divisive in terms of its content, with some hailing it as a feminist masterpiece and others claiming it falls short of the mark. (Okay, I also knew it was about a waitress, hence the title.)

So it’s fair to say I went in with an open mind and a good deal of curiosity to see what it was all about.

The set of Waitress pre-show. Photo: mine.

What’s it about?

(Please note: review will contain plot spoilers.)

Jenna is a baker and waitress at Joe’s Pie Diner, where she regularly invents new pie flavours and gives them whimsical names according to what’s going on in her life (“Getting Out of the Mud Pie”, “Betrayed By My Own Eggs Pie”, and so on). Her husband Earl is verbally, physically, and financially abusive. When Jenna finds out she’s pregnant, it’s not exactly welcome news but she decides to keep the baby even so.

Joe, the curmudgeonly owner of the Diner, suggests that Jenna enter a pie-making contest with a large cash prize. She realises that winning would give her the money to leave her husband. She also begins an affair with her married gynaecologist, Dr. Jim Pomatter.

With a little help from her friends, can Jenna triumph in the pie contest and escape her marriage before her baby arrives?

Any content notes?

Domestic abuse is a major theme in this show. We see Earl grab and manhandle Jenna, verbally abuse and belittle her, steal her money, and pressure her into unwanted sex. He also throws things and destroys property in a rage. It’s extremely difficult to watch and could be triggering to survivors of similar abuse.

There are also scenes of stalking, in which a man refuses to leave a woman alone despite her saying she does not want to see him again. This is portrayed as cute. It’s not cute.

This show has a lot of sex references including sexual innuendo, sexual humour, and some moderately explicit simulated sexual activity on stage. Affairs also feature heavily as a theme.

Venues are recommending an age guideline of 13+ for this show but honestly, I’d be inclined to say that 15 or 16 would be more appropriate.

Waitress the Musical: My Review

Since I try to be positive, I’ll start out by saying what I did enjoy about this show.

First, it contains some legitimately great songs. Sara Bareilles’s score and lyrics are emotional, memorable, and occasionally just plain catchy. Aside from the signature song “She Used To Be Mine”, other highlights include the bittersweet love song “You Matter To Me”, “Bad Idea” (which anyone who has ever slept with someone they really shouldn’t will relate to), and the wacky and surreal “I Love You Like a Table”.

The recurring motif of the pies, with their increasingly creative fillings and names, is cute. It works well in framing baking as Jenna’s safe space amidst the turmoil going on in her life.

Every one of the leads, bar none, was exceptional. Chelsea Halfpenny (of Byker Grove and Emmerdale fame) delivered the perfect combination of vulnerability, quiet strength, and sass in the lead role of Jenna, and her performance of “She Used To Be Mine” was tear-jerkingly sensational.

Left to right: Wendy Mae Brown, Chelsea Halfpenny, Evelyn Hoskins. Official production photo.

I also really enjoyed David Hunter (who I also saw as Charlie Price in Kinky Boots way back in 2017) as Dr. Pomatter, and Wendy Mae Brown and Evelyn Hoskins as Jenna’s friends and coworkers Becky and Dawn, respectively. Brown’s singing voice, in particular, is divine. I truly cannot fault a single performance from any of the leads or ensemble.

There are two really strong positive messages in this show. The first is a testament to female friendship, with Jenna, Becky, and Dawn supporting each other at every turn, even culminating in Dawn giving Jenna and baby Lulu a place to live after she leaves Earl. The second is that a woman doesn’t need to end up in a romantic relationship to be happy and fulfilled. Jenna finds joy in her daughter, her friends, and her passion for baking, with no husband or boyfriend in sight at the end of the show.

Unfortunately, some of the other messaging and treatment of the themes really troubled me.

Firstly, there’s the affair between Jenna and Dr. Pommater. The existence of an affair in the plot is fine, and actually serves to imbue Jenna with sexual agency and give her some well-deserved affection from someone who cares about her. But… could it have been literally anyone else but her gynaecologist? Isn’t “don’t have sex with your patients” on the very first page of Medical Ethics 101?

Though I’m glad that Jenna leaves Earl at the end of the show, I wish the writers hadn’t chosen to buy into the narrative that having a baby is a saviour for a woman or that becoming a mother fundamentally changes or erases who a woman is. (“…And who I was has disappeared / It doesn’t matter now you’re here”, really?)

Jenna is pretty clear that she doesn’t want to be a mother and, while I appreciate that if she had an abortion the rest of the plot would fall apart and the entire show would be fifteen minutes long, I think it’s harmful to suggest that a woman who is unhappily pregnant will necessarily feel uncomplicatedly wonderful about motherhood when the baby is born.

I also don’t think the show fully acknowledges the reality of how hard leaving an abuser can be. When Jenna finally tells Earl she’s done, it’s all of about a minute before he slinks away in defeat. In reality, the point that they try to leave is statistically the most dangerous time for survivors of abuse. Jenna’s triumphant “f*ck off, Earl” speech is cathartic, but it’s an excessively simplistic portrayal of what getting out of an abusive relationship is actually like.

There’s also a deeply alarming subplot involving the character of Dawn. New to online dating and unsure about the whole thing, Dawn goes on one online date with a man named Ogie and tells him she doesn’t want to see him again. Instead of moving on like a reasonable person, he stalks her to her workplace and refuses to leave, ignoring all her pleas to be left alone and serenading her with a song called “Never Ever Getting Rid of Me”.

Evelyn Hoskins as Dawn and George Crawford as Ogie. Official production photo.

Please consider, for a moment, these lyrics:

“I will never let you let me leave
I promise I'm not lyin'
Go ahead, ask anybody who has seen me tryin'
I'm not goin'
If it seems like I did, I'm probably waitin' outside”

Those are not the words of someone you want to be in a relationship with. Those are the words of a stalker, a control freak, and an abuser. The catchy, upbeat melody and George Crawford’s admittedly endearingly charming performance were not enough to entirely mask the sheer creepiness of this entire scene.

So Dawn calls her big, beefy, slightly scary-looking manager, Cal, and has this weirdo ejected from the premises, right? WRONG. Reader, she marries him. This is passed off as a sweet love story, but it’s not. The entire scene made my skin crawl and is likely to have the same impact on anyone who critically examines it for more than three seconds.

Overall, unfortunately, Waitress was more miss than hit for me and I doubt I’ll see it again. Great performances, a lovely score, and some enjoyable moments… but taken as a whole, it says some really concerning things about women, relationships, consent, and motherhood. Though it only came out in 2015, it really doesn’t hold up well in 2022.

Where to get tickets

Waitress is in Nottingham until this Saturday and then continues its tour to Bradford, Canterbury, Southend, and Norwich, running until 20th August. Get tickets on the official website here.