Review: Sara Bareilles' WAITRESS at the Suncoast Broadway Dinner Theatre

There are certain musicals that may have strong scores and several wonderful songs but that are eclipsed by one number that breaks away from the show and becomes legendary, iconic, in its own right.  Think of “The Impossible Dream” from Man of La Mancha or “Try to Remember” from The Fantasticks.  The title song from Hello Dolly is one, as is “I Love Play Rehearsal” from Be More Chill.  “Memory” from Cats, “I Got Rhythm” from Boy Crazy…the list goes on.  Of the past decade, “She Used to Be Mine,” the signature song from Sara Bareilles’ miraculous WAITRESS, is another and one of the best of them all.    

The song is the showstopping slow burn from Act 2, when the show’s pregnant protagonist, Jenna, looks back on her life and mourns the individual she had once been (and currently could be) if this damned thing called life didn’t get in the way.  It’s a song of lost dreams, deflated hopes and elevated disappointments, of hard reality ultimately setting in, like a 21st Century version of Les Miz’s “I Dreamed a Dream.” 

Several years ago, during the pandemic, I wrote a list of the 101 Greatest Showtunes for BWW using a special algorithm.  “She Used to be Mine,” out only half a decade at the time, landed at a strong #23, hanging around with the likes of “My Favorite Things” and “Seasons of Love.”  It would rank even higher on the list today, and if I ever decide to do a litany of the greatest showtunes of the first quarter of this century, then the song would be duking it out with the likes of “Defying Gravity” for the #1 slot.

But you better get a singer worth her salt (as well as sugar, butter and flour) who can bring this song home.  This is where the current production of WAITRESS at the Suncoast Broadway Dinner Theatre really shines.  Brielle Mae as Jenna gives a soul-aching, heart-stopping rendition of “She Used to Be Mine,” the type where you hold your breath and mourn with her for the world of could-have-beens. She starts slowly, walking us through her past, and reaches that climax that gives goosebumps and makes you thrill at the power that only few showtunes like this can accomplish. 

When she brings the song back to silence, you could hear a pin drop from the audience, everyone leaning in, holding onto her words, waiting, not daring to applaud so as not to break the spell.  As she finished this tour de force to a thunderous ovation, I could hear sniffles from the audience members around me, men as well as women, blowing their noses, wiping their eyes.  Jenna’s pain and disappointment mirror their own lives.  It’s a gorgeously written song, and in Ms. Mae’s grasp, one that I will never forget.

(My only qualm with the song in this production is that a couch is moved during it, plain as day, which momentarily takes us away from the power of the towering tune. You want them to leave Jenna and the couch alone onstage in this heartfelt glory of a number and save the set-moving for another moment in the show.)

Is there a more appropriate musical for the dinner theatre experience than Waitress? With songs about baking, and so many pies created before our eyes, it’s a show that makes us exceedingly hungry.  We desire to taste the Mermaid Marshmallow Pie that she presents to her gynecologist. But never fear, the folks at the Suncoast Broadway Dinner Theatre have got your pie-desires covered with the Jenna’s Daily Pie Specials that they offer: I Hate My Husband Silk Pie, Betrayed By My Eggs Crème Brulee Cheesecake Pie and Berry the Bullsh*t Pie (cherry and blueberry on the night I saw the show).   

With words and music by Sara Bareillas and a book by Jesse Nelson, based on the 2007 film, Waitress is quite popular for a reason: Like Jenna’s pies, it’s so damn good. And relatable. If you are an expectant mother, few musicals walk you through the realities of pregnancy as authentically, and all without schmaltz. It’s not a perfect musical—other than the aforementioned Act 2 showstopper, I don’t know how much of the musical I will take with me—but it’s vastly entertaining and moving.  It’s a joy to experience, even for the hardened men out there who are more like Jenna’s unlovable cad of a husband than they may like to think. 

The show’s premise is not complicated.  Jenna works at a diner with two other waitresses—the sassy Becky and the quirky Dawn—and finds out she is pregnant.  Earl, her husband, is an insensitive lout, but she can’t get out of the marriage, not with a child on the way, even if she is smitten and destined for an affair with her married gynecologist, Dr. Pomatter.  Jenna finds solace in baking pies at the diner, all made with a salute to her beloved mother, who lovingly taught her the pie-making skills.  Can Jenna escape from this real world of bad marriages and questionable pregnancies and find a new life? The show may sound like a drag, but it’s anything but.  It’s a hoot, funny and touching and forceful and poignant.  And the ending turns out to be quite satisfying, even wistfully happy, without being too syrupy.

This production, directed and choreographed by Joshua Buscher, is just what the doctor ordered.  With Brielle Mae as Jenna, who has such charm that you don’t question why the good gynecologist falls for her, the show soars.  She has an abundance of talent but she doesn’t use it to show off like, say, a Janet Van Der Graaff; she brings the part to earth and keeps Jenna grounded and amiable. She’s called “the queen of kindness and goodness,” and you sense this without getting schlocky.   Jenna’s dreams become our dreams, and we root for her the entire time.

As Becky, Jenna’s close waitress friend, the indomitable Bessie D. Smith is full of attitude and snark.  She knows how to deliver a one-liner better than anyone.

Juli Biagi is otherworldly as the third waitress, Dawn, a walking anxiety attack.  She snorts when she laughs and is like a melding of Lisa Loopner and Mary Katherine Gallagher.  An incredible performance.

The trio are like something out of a musical version of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (which spawned the TV series "Alice," with Jenna as Alice, Becky as Flo, and Dawn as the drippy Vera). And when they sing, their harmonies are, to quote someone about Jenna’s pies, “Biblically good,” especially in the songs “The Negative” and “A Soft Place to Land.” When they sing the words “So pure, so pure, so electric/So sure, so sure, so connected,” they might as well be singing about their harmonies and camaraderie.

Brynoch Rammell steals the show as Ogie, the amateur magician and clog dancer who is also Dawn’s equally nerdy lover (imagine Sheldon Cooper and McLovin on steroids). In the song “Never Ever Getting Rid of Me,” he pulsates with spasms of nerdom, jumping hysterically, using the stage like his very own trampoline. Even the mere use of an inhaler had the audience in stitches (he makes Little Shop of Horrors’ Orin Scrivello, sucking in laughing gas, look positively sane). And he's just as goofily good in his duet with Dawn on "I Love You Like a Table."

Dean Marino as Cal, the diner’s cook, knows how to make an exit and unabashedly drips every bit of passion from his larger-than-life persona when he looks at his love, Becky. (I like how “Afternoon Delight” is scrawled on the chalkboard menu during this part of the show.) He also gets one of the key quotes from the show: “Well if you're asking me a serious question, I'll tell you: I'm happy enough. I don't expect much, I don't give much, I don't get much I'm generally enjoying whatever comes up. That's my truth.”

The solid Rand Smith shows so much heart and good-natured grit as the diner’s older owner, Joe.

Truman Griffin holds his own as Dr. Pomatter, though some sound issues got in the way in certain scenes and songs (either no mic in one scene or a microphone too loud and echoey in another). But his vocals were stellar, and the moment the good doctor eats a pie with his stethoscope is one of the show's highlights. 

Terry Farley plays the thankless role of Earl, a lout who’s the closest thing to the villain of Waitress.  He plays him well enough, trying to elicit some sympathy, but he gets none. Mr. Farley is mighty talented, but the unlikability of the part is too much to overcome sometimes, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.  We need to root for Jenna, and the worse Earl is, the more we pray she makes her escape; with this in mind, Mr. Farley plays it just right.   

Two ensemble members were not in the performance I experienced, but you would really not know it with the rest of the cast taking over the missing pieces; maybe it was a bit messier and loosey-goosey without the tightness of the absent members, but the rest of the ensemble handled it beautifully: Isabelle Archer, Noah Marcus, Samntha Ringor, Kyle Channell, Rachel Knowles, Chris Monell and the wonderful Andi Garner (who brings so much heart in the small but important role of Jenna’s mom). Three children play Little Lulu on different nights: Bella Brennan, Isabella Monticciolo and Presley Othouse.

Music Director Zachary Ryan does an amazing job with his small orchestra, with his keyboard work, Keith Meek on guitars, Irv Goldberg on bass, and Marcio Buendia on drums. Even with some mic issues, the vocals were strong and the band was tight.

The set design is another standout by Tom Hansen (you really get the sense of a diner here), aided by Dalton Hamilton’s wonderful lighting design.  God is in the details, as Stephen Sondheim would like to say, and I love such details as Earl’s posters projected on the walls, from Def Leppard and Guns N Roses to Poison’s “Talk Dirty to Me.” 

Director Joshua Buscher has guided a surefire winner here.  That said, when asked my thoughts on it during intermission, I said, “It’s really good, but I don’t know if I’m taking it with me.”  But then Act 2’s big moment happened, with Jenna lamenting her life choices in “She Used to Be Mine,” and I will never be able to shake that. Ever.

Waitress is an ode to motherhood, to making both pies and the good choices in life, and to joyously dive into the moments that matter because we only live once.  "You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred,” one character states in it.  Thank goodness we don’t have to give up American musical theatre and the blisses of shows like Waitress.  We only go around once.  And even though this production of Waitress closes today (Sunday, April 6th), its unencumbered joys will live on. 

Photo Courtesy of @dhlightingdesign

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