Waitress (Mini Movie Musical Review)

Waitress has really beautiful music, and I’ve never met a musical proshot I didn’t like so needless to say I was very excited to watch the (semi) recently-released Sara Bareilles vehicle. It’s excellent, unsurprisingly. There’s a magic to live musicals that cannot be denied, even when you see it through a screen. I’ll take a proshot over a movie adaptation any day of the week, and while I know it isn’t financially feasible, I deeply wish that every show got recorded, even if it were just a single stationary camera. As long as you can see the stage and hear clearly, I’m happy. Waitress, having been done with multiple angles and cameras, is a professional affair, which is even better. I’ve listened to the cast recording many times, and it was interesting to actually see it, comparing the actual show with what I’d constructed mentally between publicity performances and the Wikipedia synopsis.

What’s it about?

Jenna is an extraordinarily talented pie baker whose life is turned upside down when she gets unexpectedly pregnant after drunkenly sleeping with her husband. She begins an affair with her (married) gynecologist and, encouraged by her friends and coworkers, hopes to get the money she needs to leave her abusive husband by entering a baking contest.

What’d I think?

Waitress is a far darker affair when you actually watch it. I knew Earl was abusive, but knowing it and seeing it is different. There’s one scene of physical violence but far scarier is the scene when Earl manipulates his wife by preying on her emotionally. It’s harrowing, and that manipulative cruelty doesn’t come through nearly as clearly in just the audio form. There are enough other emotions that the whole show doesn’t just feel miserable—the overall takeaway is optimism and hope for better tomorrows, and there is a sweetly silly subplot that digs us out when things start to get too dark—and on the whole it feels very well balanced. For what it’s worth, though, my mom—who wasn’t familiar with Waitress at all beyond knowing it was a musical and that my sister had liked it—was very surprised by the darkness.

The production is quite good. I doubt quite so much flour is used on nights when the show isn’t being filmed—when Jenna bakes, she appears to really toss ingredients together—but the stage transforms seamlessly from the diner to Jenna’s home to the doctor’s office, and every scene maintains the viewer’s attention whether through lighting, dancing, or just the strong vocals. This is a real-to-life musical so there aren’t any insanely elaborate set pieces or action choreography of anything like that. It is all very simple but very effective.

Unsurprising considering that the music is what brought me to this, the music is the best part of Waitress. When I first read a description of the show, I assumed it wouldn’t be for me. Then I heard some of the songs and they pulled me in. Like all the best musicals, Waitress has a variety of songs; are songs that get your toe tapping (“Opening Up”), songs that make you laugh (“Never Ever Getting Rid of Me”), songs that make you smile (“When He Sees Me”), songs that make you want to sing along (“It Only Takes a Taste”) and songs that put you through the emotional wringer (“She Used to Be Mine”). There are ballads, duets, group numbers, and more. Some are upbeat and others slow, some elaborate and others stripped back. There is a variety, but they fit well together and there’s an emotional core that runs through it all. Of course, everyone is going to have preferences and I’m no different. “Never Ever Getting Rid of Me,” a humorous song sung by a secondary character wooing his eventual girlfriend, was my favorite part of the cast recording, and having seen the whole thing staged it is still my favorite song. I’m very predictable: give me an uptempo, comedic song sung by a winning secondary character and it will be my favorite nine times out of ten, particularly when the entire cast gets swept up in the fun. There’s a reason why “She Used to Be Mine” is Waitress‘ signature song. It is a gorgeous, heartshattering song and there’s a reason that there are a million versions of it available on YouTube. Of course everyone who puts on Jenna’s apron chooses that song to have immortalized. I also love the sweetly, shyly romantic “When He Sees Me,” the awkward if contextually inappropriate “It Only Takes a Taste,” and even the deeply inappropriate but highly catchy “Bad Idea.” I was especially impressed by “I Didn’t Plan It” because, as many times as I’ve listened to the OBC that one has never particularly stood out to me, but in Charity Angél Dawson’s hands it was incredible. There are a couple of songs I didn’t pay much attention to before and that still haven’t changed my mind (“Soft Place to Land,” “Club Knocked Up,” “Take it From an Old Man”), but it’s a rare musical that is made entirely of 10/10 songs and Waitress has far more hits than misses, and even a few bullseyes.

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The actors all kill it, but Christopher Fitzgerald stood out to me as the highlight, probably in large part because Ogie is the funniest character. He is hysterical in every scene he appears in and gets the extra points for alleviating some of the emotional anguish whenever he steps onstage. He’s definitely become an actor whose name and face I recognize now; I recently watched a GMA performance of Company that he was a part of and I was like “it’s Ogie!” even though Katrina Lenk was right there. In general I try not to be not super snooty about original casts in proshots though admittedly that can sometimes be difficult when I’m already attached to the recording (for instance, Wesley Taylor is brilliant in the Spongebob proshot despite not being in the show’s original cast or the official recording, and ditto for Matt Henry in Kinky Boots who I absolutely wouldn’t trade for Billy Porter despite the latter being far more famous; on the other hand, I would have been devastated if the Hamilton proshot hadn’t had Leslie Odom, Jr. or if they’d filmed Newsies without Jeremy Jordan), but occasionally I get super attached to the original voice on the recording I’m familiar with and can’t help wishing that the filmed version would have the same performer. That’s the case with Waitress. Jessie Mueller absolutely owns the role. As I said above, there are countless videos of various Jennas singing “She Used to Be Mine”—Katherine McPhee, Jordin Sparks, Soshana Bean, etc.—but the raw pain and power in Mueller’s voice hasn’t been matched in my estimation. Bareilles nailed it with the songwriting and she is a very talented singer and performer, and while she is obviously a bigger name outside of Broadway circles, I personally prefer a more powerful voice for this role specifically. Bareilles is an excellent Jenna, but if she hadn’t written the show I don’t think she would be considered amongst the best.

The only downside of Waitress the proshot is that seeing it all played out rather than just listening to it does hit it home that I disagree with the show in one large, fundamental way that is impossible to ignore. In my mind, I’d always added some context that smooths it out for me, but it’s entirely imagined. When Jenna gets pregnant, she is terrified and horrified. Despite praying in desperation for a negative pregnancy test and knowing that a child will tie her to her abusive husband forever, Jenna keeps the pregnancy. She tells Dr. Pomatter that she’s keeping the pregancy in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. There’s no indication of why. No “I’m unable to get an abortion.” No “I don’t want an abortion.” No “I want a baby but not like this.” No “I’m too shellshocked and afraid to make that kind of decision right now.” No “the government is restricting abortion access and I can’t afford to travel out of state.” Just “for plot reasons, I will be having this baby.” I get that the original movie was from 2007, but still. The musical is newer, and these days that conversation needs a little more than a handwave. In any case, when the baby is born, Jenna does the immediate one-eighty: she is entirely changed because she is a mother, the future looks bright because of how much she adores her new child, and all the hardships she endured along the way are made instantly worth it. As someone who aggressively does not want kids, I’m very over the person-who-doesn’t-want-a-baby-has-one-and-immediately-changes-their-mind plotline. It’s overdone and it is a particularly troubling perspective to put out in a world that is restricting reproductive freedom the way ours currently is. It feels gross and disingenuous to wash away all of Jenna’s previous doubts and fears and desires in one moment, even if “Everything Changes” is admittedly a pretty song.

I’d always assumed (or, I supposed, hoped) that there was an indication that Jenna wanted to be a mother in some vague future. The relationship between Jenna and her mother is a major driving force of the show, so much so that Jenna’s first moments onstage reference the relationship, and a parallel showing that she had always wanted to teach her own child to bake someday would fix just about every issue I have with the plot. If Jenna didn’t feel ready for a baby now, or was afraid to have one with Earl, but in the grander scheme of things did want to be a mother, I would feel a lot better about it. As is, Jenna waves off the possibility of an abortion for no real reason; Jenna, clearly miserable about the pregnancy and with no objections to abortion generally, would clearly be better off terminating a pregnancy that keeps her tied to a man who hits her. If Jenna had acknowledged maternal desires, at any point in the show, it would both fix her total about-face and remove the implication that she is only having the child because women should have children whether they want them or not (Dawn being pregnant in the final scene, something else I didn’t know about, strengthens the women should have children idea that underpins the show because there is literally no reason for it except to play into the happy ending=children thing that I’m so sick and tired of). If I had written the show, I probably would have added a quick line that indicated that Jenna had always wanted a kid in the future but had worried that she wouldn’t get the chance for some reason (fertility issues, her age, Earl being a bad partner, etc.) to establish that it is the circumstances of the pregnancy and not the pregnancy itself that is making her miserable.

Still, the pregnancy thing aside, I thought Waitress was extremely well-done. The acting is great. The singing is great. The songs are catchy as heck (Ogie’s songs get stuck in my head all the time, but they’re so fun I don’t even get mad about it), and I’m really happy to have gotten to see it after COVID denied me the chance to catch it live (it was supposed to come through my theatre, but it was one of only a handful of shows that never got rescheduled). I’m not sure how Waitress did financially, but I’m hoping well so that we can get some more quality proshots released. I’m still waiting on Six!

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Show information:

Based on Waitress (2007)

Written by Jessie Nelson and Sara Bareilles

Directed by Diane Paulus

Starring Sara Bareilles (Jenna), Charity Angél Dawson (Becky), Caitlin Houlahan (Dawn), Drew Gehling (Dr. Pomatter), Dakin Matthews (Joe), Eric Anderson (Cal), Joe Tippett (Earl), and Christopher Fitzgerald (Ogie).