Review: WAITRESS starring Carrie Hope Fletcher, New Wimbledon Theatre and on tour

Waitress has been in the oven on a high setting for ten years since its Broadway debut. Now, baked hot by an enthusiastic fanbase and led by Carrie Hope Fletcher, the Nigella Lawson of Musical Theatre, it’s off round the country. So does this slice of apple pie and mamas still get the taste buds grooving or is it getting just a bit crusty and past its sell-by date?

We open on a diner somewhere in the vast interior of the USA with its plains, its strong flat sunlight and rising gas prices. Actually, scrub that last one. This diner is more like Al’s in Happy Days, one that exists in a bubble of bonhomie, joshing and mutual self-support, with an undertow of solidarity forged in adversity that keeps the crew together. Nobody has mobile phones, so that places it in the 20th century, but there’s a 21st century sensibility underpinning in the approach to issues, especially as they affect women.

As is evident in a look around the house, in the onstage cast and, incredibly still something worthy of noting, an all-women creative team (book by Jessie Nelson, music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles, directed by Diane Paulus, choreographed by Lorin Latarro), this is a female show if not quite a full-throated feminist call to arms. Unlike the pies, the gender politics proves to be not quite the full fat option.

Jenna, played with her usual brisk efficiency and immaculate vocals by Carrie Hope Fletcher, is the genius of a pie-maker whose endlessly inventive crust-covered combos brings in the customers and, later, a bit extra too. Somehow, she is also a full-time waitress, which, even for a multi-tasking heroine, feels a bit much. 

Circling round her are fellow workers, ballsy Becky (Sandra Marvin), dreary - at least at first - Dawn (Evie Hoskins), who also serve tables and cantankerous manager, Cal, who takes the orders in the kitchen and barks a bit. Old Joe is the fussy owner bossing the kids around, but, as he’s played by Les Dennis (who still can’t sing or dance), we know he’s going to turn out to have a heart of gold. Not so Earl (Mark Willshire), Jenna’s entitled thug of a redneck husband whose penchant for controlling behaviour puts the first stone in the hitherto plummy pie.

That’s an edge of realism the show needs which brings a plaintive, tragic quality to Jenna’s plight, trapped in a small town and in an abusive marriage and now unexpectedly pregnant. Salvation presents itself in the form of a halfhearted subplot about a pie-making competition and more interestingly in the form of a charming out-of-towner, Dr Pomatter (Dan Partridge), who takes a shine to her. Now what one makes of the ethical maze we enter when a gynaecologist hits on a somewhat vulnerable patient (okay, she hits on him, but still), I can only park in the “Don’t think too hard, it’s a musical!” file. It may not be quite a parallel for Eliza and Professor Higgins, but…

The best of the show is in the songs belted out by our three hardworking loveless women. Sassy Sandra Marvin goes into Dreamgirls mode nailing her big second act opener, “I Didn’t Plan It” and Evie Hoskins maxes out the kooky qualities of Dawn in “When He Sees Me”. CHF gives the house what they came for. dialling the emotions up to 11, appropriately with her 11 o’clock number “She Used To Be Mine”, show suitably stopped.

Bareilles’s score is varied and pleasant enough but, like Scott Pask’s set, it’s more technically proficient than truly inspired, and it’s a shame that Dan Partridge doesn’t get a song of his own as his voice is definitely up to it.

For all the foregrounding of women on both sides of the fourth wall, it’s hard not to feel just a little deflated by the fact that all three women are rescued by men boosting their self-esteem and finances. Of course, it’s pleasing to see Earl get his marching orders at last, but the message that it’s a good idea to quit on a criminal, feels a low bar to clear in 2026. 

There’s a thread that runs through the narrative that working class women like these still need the permission of a coterie of male white saviours - the doctor, the boss, the capitalist and the geek - to achieve (to use the deathless phrase) self-actualisation. 

Now that may be true in Hicksville USA, with its Trad Wives movement reported so gleefully in the media, but it felt just a little dispiriting to be thinking such thoughts on the bus home.    

Waitress at New Wimbledon Theatre until 4 April and on tour