Waitress' director Diane Paulus talks to me about the show

Marisha Wallace, Katharine McPhee and Laura Baldwin

Waitress opens in the West End this week and I grabbed a rare, brief opportunity to chat with the musical's Tony-winning director Diane Paulus about the show.

JB:    Diane - With Waitress now such a Broadway success, what was it that drew you to the story being translated from screen to stage? 

Diane:    Well, when I watched the film, the Adrienne Shelly film, I was struck by, first of all, how theatrical it is. It's almost like a unit set in the way it's filmed, it's just in the diner. It's in a doctors office, it's at Jenna's house. Adrienne purposefully didn't really get into, you know, what town are we in? What does it look like on main street? 

It's really almost like a fairy tale and it's very quirky and the characters have a lot of personality and then you get this like sock to the gut, emotional punch of this woman's crisis of her life. And when I watched it, I saw that character and I thought, I know who that woman is because I know people who go through that.

And what struck me was quite a personal experience. One of my dearest friends growing up, is not a working class person. She's actually a woman of enormous privilege, but she had been in a terrible relationship where she had been made to feel small and made to feel like she didn't deserve: her feelings or her self.

And so I thought this thing of what happens when we lose our sense of self with really wrong things happening, like having an affair with your gynaecologist. Like, let's just say that's sort of wrong! But life is messy and that's what the show is also about. 

You know, the other thing that I loved about the story was, so she gets pregnant and she is not excited about being pregnant. So I'm a mom with two kids and I really related to that. However, I had read when Adrienne Shelly wrote the movie's screenplay, she was pregnant and she was terrified, like terrified. Like: “What if I don't love the baby?” Every other mother is going crazy, like on cloud nine pregnant. And, and so this feeling again, that’s not quite politically correct to say: “I'm pregnant and I'm like, you know, not as happy as I should be.” But, this idea of the journey of what it means to become a mother and the journey of learning to love yourself. So it's a universal story. So it was that character, the complexity of that character that interests me.

Diane Paulus

JB:    Jenna is a strong, well fleshed out character, however the three key guys in the story’s arc are, by comparison, quite thinly sketched: One, her abusive husband, is a bastard; Another, her doctor, has really questionable professional ethics; and the third one's a guy who's 100% heart and yet 100% geek. So why are Waitress' men such caricatures?

Diane:    I'm going to push back on that question because this is a story about Jenna as the central character and the next most important people around her are her sister-waitress friends.

You need to understand that the men are simply the supporting roles in this show. And when you're a supporting role, you're not given as much real estate and time as your protagonists. So we should just say that first. Right?

Now I think Sara (Bareilles) and Jessie (Nelson) and I always felt we never wanted the men to be caricatures. So you know, when you look at the film and you see Earl and you understand the decline of Earl and the humiliation he suffered by being fired and how he breaks down.

And as for the doctor’s questionable ethics, when you study the show, and we were very deliberate about this, it is Jenna who makes every first move on that doctor. That really was also quite deliberate.

JB:    Finally I want to ask you about Pippin, which I saw on Broadway and loved. When will you bring your production of Pippin over here?

Diane:    Thank you. I'll go tap Barry Weissler (producer of Waitress and Pippin) and say come on now!

Waitress is currently in previews and opens at the Adelphi Theatre on 7th March

Photo credit (London cast): Johan Persson

Waitress - Review

Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York


*****


Music & lyrics by Sara Bareilles
Book by Jessie Nelson
Based upon the motion picture written by Adrienne Shelly
Directed by Diane Paulus

Jessie Mueller

Move over Mrs Lovett, there's a new baker on the block. Waitress, Sara Bareilles' female-fuelled take on modern Americana, is perhaps the finest example of new musical theatre writing in quite some years. 

Drawn from Adrienne Shelly's 2007 movie, Jessie Mueller is Jenna the titular waitress from a southern USA town, who not only serves tables but also bakes the top-notch pies that make up the diner's daily specials. Unhappily married to the inadequate and abusive misogynist Earl (covered very well by understudy Ryan Vasquez on the night of this review) Jenna discovers early on in the show that she is pregnant with their unplanned (and, by her, unwanted) child. Following her through the trimesters, the show’s story is strong, engaging and witty and under Diane Paulus' assured direction, never dissolves into sentimentality.

Jenna's two fellow waitresses are Dawn and Becky played by Jenna Ushkowitz and Keala Settle respectively, who sustain the momentum with perceptive comic relief. Dawn desperately seeks love, while Becky, a middle aged battle-axe agonising that her breasts may be misshapen whilst trapped in her own sexless marriage, goes on to satisfy her carnal frustrations in a second half surprise. Both supporting women are cleverly sketched out, with the dynamic between all three, as they share their respective anxieties and desires, proving credible, funny and ultimately moving. There should be a mention too for Charity Angél Dawson as Nurse Norma, whose dealings with the complex cavortings at the local surgery make for a witty measured performance.

Setting aside the stereotype of woman as domestic pie-making goddess, the baking analogy makes for a clever conceit. Not just Jenna's bun in her own oven, but rather the focus on what's inside a pie - ergo what's inside a woman - makes for some honest theatre. Jenna's anguish at her impending motherhood is as contemporary as it is timeless. When Mueller sings What Baking Can Do, we see the lifeline of sanity that baking has thrown to her amidst a life of domestic misery.

If the women are cleverly devised, the men are little more than thinly fleshed out flawed caricatures, with the only admirable man on stage dying before the final curtain. Escaping from Earl's contempt, Jenna stumbles into an affair with her gynaecologist Dr Pomatter (Drew Gehling). It’s an unlikely liaison, the married Pomatter’s actions being unethical, unprofessional and adulterous, however notwithstanding Pomatter cheating on his wife, the love between the two serves to inspire Jenna in believing that not all men are beasts.

Dawn finds love online with Ogie, a geekish tax auditor who shares her love of history. Little more than a decent if two-dimensional twat, Christopher Fitzgerald nonetheless imbues the role with maniacal energy. Already recognised with various awards and nominations for his performance, Fitzgerald's fabulous physicality serves the role perfectly and it is a joy to see this gifted performer so perfectly cast.

Bareilles' writing is a long overdue example of new musical theatre that is imaginative, thought provoking and most of all entertaining. More than just a hardened pie crust hurled at the patriarchy, Waitress is a perfectly baked celebration of womanhood today.

Now booking until June 2017

Photo credit: Joan Marcus