There were a lot of them about...
I have never seen the film of WAITRESS but I believe it has that most tenuous of trappings flung at it, a 'cult' movie. It had been written and directed by Adrienne Shelly who had become an immediate indie darling through her first two screen roles in THE UNBELIEVABLE TRUTH and TRUST, both directed by Hal Hartley who was all the indie cinema rage at the start of the 1990s but whose career has dwindled ever since. Shelly found herself in the low-budget indie world so diversified into television and directing; as well as some short films WAITRESS was the third feature film she directed.
But by the film's release, 40 year-old Adrienne Shelly was dead. Initial police announcements of suicide were re-examined after protests from her husband and further examination of the room revealed she had been murdered by a construction worker working in her building. A grim, brutal shadow which hangs over her whimsical, quirky screen persona and films. I do not have to have seen WAITRESS to know what the film would have entailed however as the genre was formulaic: quirky, off-centre characters who muddle through life being nice to each other, natural lighting, cinematography featuring empty buildings with one person featured in the corner of the shot, you get the etc.
But the musical WAITRESS is a bigger, more bombastic incarnation, although it too also - like it's source material - fits neatly into tropes of it's genre. I wanted to use the word cookie-cutter somewhere there but thought better of it. The musical's publicity is based around that the four main creative roles - director, writer, composer and choreographer - are all female. But are they any good? For the most part I would say yes... the only real offender being Jesse Nelson's basic, unimaginative book.
Jenna is a waitress and baker of pies (or 'paaas' as they are relentlessly called) for Joe's Diner in the American South. Beloved at work by her colleagues and customers, Jenna has a harder time at home with her moody and chauvinist partner Earl When Jenna discovers she is pregnant, she keeps it secret from Earl as she knows he will demand she stop working and baking paaas. She visits her doctor, Jim Pomatter, and brings him his own paaa - one bite and the married doctor is smitten by both Jenna and her baking. Earl is fired and turns abusive with Jenna, only stopping when she blurts out her pregnancy, to which Earl demands she never loves it more than him. Even Abanazar at his most hissable is less of a scumbag than this character.
Joe - of Joe's Diner fame - is, of course, an old curmudgeon but who appreciates Jenna's wonder paaas and tells her to enter a national paaa-making competition; Jenna decides to enter and to run away from Earl if she wins the prize-money. In the meantime she starts a steamy relationship with the very-lovable - and very-married - Doctor Jim, mainly as he doesn't ask her to love him more than her paaas or baby. In the meantime her two waitress colleagues are finding their own pleasure: one with the chef, the other with a goofball she met off the Internet who is into American Civil War reenactments - only in indie films... and Broadway.
And so it moves along until Earl discovers the cash that Jenna has been hiding to make good her escape but she mollifies him by telling him she was saving it for baby expenses. Jenna has her baby and, when confronted with the reality of a real little human to care for, finally has the strength to ditch Earl. But the getting of wisdom and a dollop of good luck can come in all shapes and sizes, just like paaas...
Diane Paulus' direction keeps the action moving at a steady pace from diner to doctor's examination room to Jenna's living room and is helped by the interesting choreography of Lorin Latarro which snakes itself around both Jenna and Scott Pask's sets. But I kept coming back to the same problem - the musical simply looks stranded on the huge Adelphi stage, the action is concentrated in the centre of the stage which just looks strange on that large space. A show that tries so hard to hang onto that cameo-style essence of it's source material looks beached. I really do think it's the wrong theatre for this show, a more intimate house would have drawn you into it's small story rather than sit back and watch the gaps at either side of the stage.
By far it's most interesting component was the score by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles whose American success has been slightly less so here. Her score is suitably slightly whacked and off-centre with interesting orchestrations and tones running under the songs which do make you concentrate on the song itself if not the intent to push the show along.
But where the score goes wonky is the more obvious book numbers - there are nice enough songs for the cartoonish antics of fellow-waitress Dawn and her odd boyfriend Ogie but they tend to outstay their welcome, particularly the vaguely irritating wedding song "I Love You Like A Table" - you kinda have to see that in context. The other waitress Becky is given a big number at the start of the second act when Jenna catches her married friend having sex with the chef Cal, but the "in your face" finger-snapping and hands-on-hips attitude is only there to give the black actress playing the character a chance to have a Jennifer Hudson-style number and after the song ends, they are best buddies again.
Bareilles also gives Jenna two big pop ballads at the climax of the show which certainly gives Katherine McPhee as Jenna a chance to blast off into her previous 'American Idol' territory but ends the show on a rather too-obvious 'That's worth a Standing Ovation surely?' note.
As I said Katherine McPhee certainly has the belt to put across her numbers but apart from some nice playing with David Hunter's lovesick married doctor, I found her oddly anonymous, I was left wondering what a real theatrical powerhouse performer like Sheridan Smith would have done with it. The rest of the cast perform well enough but the characters in Jesse Nelson's book are simply too thin to be involving, in particular the ridiculous character of the lousy boyfriend who does everything but leap onto the stage twirling his moustache and swirling a cloak. It is worth seeing for 30 ROCK's Jack McBrayer who invests the odd Ogie with just the right amount of anarchic goofiness.
WAITRESS reminded me of the Samuel Goldwyn review of a family film which had 'charmth and warmth' but I fear it's over-sweetened paaas were just a bit too sugary for me.
