Skylight’s ‘Waitress’ Has Big Voices, Thin Script

Skylight Music Theatre’s Waitress. Photo by Mark Frohna.

Waitress, which opens the Skylight Music Theatre season, at first seemed to hit the right buttons on romantic anxiety, kitchen friendships and domestic abuse. Then the rest of the two and a half hours disintegrated into musical comedy exaggerations, with dreamy pie moments giving way to bawdy imagery.

The main fault is not the melodic and sugary musical confections of composer-lyricist Sara Bareilles, particularly her matter-of-fact poetic lyrics, but an internal dispute never solved by this production’s creative team between the style and the purpose. There are co-directors as well as co-choreographers at work, which yields a brisk pace as settings fly down from the sky or slide in from the side, plus some nice efforts to turn diner patrons into dancing partners and some strange efforts to alternate synchronized Broadway arm flutters with Lamaze childbirth movements.

The central story is about a sad waitress, Jenna, with a gift for pie-making caught in an abusive marriage. Faced with an unexpected pregnancy she then falls into sex with her gynecologist, the married Dr. Pomotter, all the while surrounded by pals at the diner where she works, each with problems of their own but plenty of time to address hers.

It’s based on a 2007 Sundance movie turned into a musical years later which ran on Broadway for nearly four years and also became a movie in 2023. It’s a bittersweet tale of human issues – domestic abuse, surprise pregnancy, refuge in cooking, unwanted passion – that dives headlong into the demands of old-fashioned musical comedy theater.

Here we have the lovable but sarcastic cook, the glowering but lovable fellow waitress, the wallflower waitress caught in a ridiculous romance of her own, the exasperating elderly diner, the self-centered husband, the knowing sarcastic nurse and a parade of complications that extend our adventure far longer than the central story can carry. (The recent death of singer Kris Kristofferson reminded me that there was a better movie in 1974 about similar human dilemmas, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.)

Curiously enough, there are passages from Jesse Nelson’s book that hit the right conversational nerve and there are the always melodic or bouncy tunes plus obvious Broadway familiarity by noted pop music star Bareilles, who has also played the lead role of pie-maker Jenna on Broadway. Even more curious, Bareilles’ pop ballad instincts often deserve more sensitivity from the performers than the “America’s Got Talent” trick of building power through long-held notes and vibrato.

The Jenna here is new to the Skylight, Julia Levinson, who clearly has the big miked voice but sometimes shows it to the detriment of the heart-pulling. There are moments when a touching side of Jenna struggles forth and her better comedy instincts show up in songs like “Bad Idea,” but these moments are followed by doubts of how seriously the actress understands the emotional and technical challenges of the role.

As the doctor seduced by Jenna’s pies, and then part of a mutual seduction, Matthew Kacergis (also as Skylight newbie) has a penetrating song style and then tries too hard to make us like his boyish manner (though I also blame the script). As Earl, the husband we love to hate, Jared Brandt Hoover is a needed earthy presence, making even his singing seem like a clenched fist.

Raven Monique Dockery, a Skylight veteran and always important voice, over-grimaces as Becky the waitress confidante, but she anchors many numbers and has one of her own (“I Didn’t Plan It”) to compensate for her acting vagaries.

Veteran regulars may be surprised at how a baritone favorite from past shows like Kiss Me Kate, Sweeney Todd and Evita, Andrew Varela, has no solo turn of his own but constantly amuses in his comedic turn as the grubby smart-ass chef Carl.

Bareilles has written some catchy comedic numbers like “When He Sees Me” and “Never Getting Rid of Me” – the latter allowing Brade Bradshaw to cut loose as the nerdy, clownish character Ogle and justify Alex Merkel’s giddy excesses as waitress Dawn.

The small orchestra onstage above the actors, led by keyboardist Janna Ernst, conveyed Bareilles most important ballads such as “She Used to Be Mine” with the intended poignancy, perhaps as a counterpoint to the big voice preference of the cast.

There are suitable costumes designed by Lisa Quinn, hard-working extras onstage to shifts props and help make pies, piecemeal scenery from Jonathan Berg-Einhorn and, for the record, the co-directors are Trey Compton and Lisa Shriver, and the credited choreographers are Shriver and Katy Tabb.

Robert Zimmerman also deserves attention, though his small role is fairly typical in musical theater as a deus ex machina to help the main character find her future. This was also Zimmerman’s Skylight debut as actor and singer after some four decades on Wisconsin stages – he is the garrulous old diner who sings “Take It from an Old Man,” another side-trip by Bareilles into the old soft shoe side of her Broadway memories.

Though the Broadway Waitress went on a national tour five years ago (and came to the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts), the Skylight production is billed as the Midwest premiere, through Oct. 27 at the Cabot Theatre in the Broadway Theatre Center. For tickets and other information on the 65^th season, visit www.SMTMKE.org

Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here.