She has a fine singing voice and textures the role of Jenna to elicit strong emotional feelings of empathy from the audience. Her rendition of “What Baking Can Do” effectively introduces her character, and “She Used to Be Mine” helps in the exposition of her personage.Ĭharity Angel Dawson is “awesome-right-on” as Becky, the earth mother waitress with a sassy mouth and “zaftig” bosom. Pert Desi Oakley sparkles as Jenna, the pie-maker superb and waitress extraordinaire. The well-chosen cast, the creatively designed fragmentary scenery which helps the staging smoothly move along, the right stress on humor and angst, the well-played pop and indie rock music created by the on-stage six-member orchestra, and the finely tuned pacing, all work well.Įven the pre-curtain recording “turn off your cellphone” message, which was written by Bareilles, is special, setting a wonderful “smile” factor for the show. The touring production is wonderful in every way. The motion picture, which was a hit at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, was marked by tragedy as Shelly was murdered three months prior to its showing. The musical is based on the film of the same name written by Adrienne Shelly. (The same group is doing the touring production.) The posts of costume design and musical direction were also occupied by women. The original production was choreographed by Lorin Latarro and directed by Diane Paulus, making it the first Broadway show in which the four top creative spots were filled by women. To add the meringue to the top of the creation, she played the lead role in Waitress for a short time during its Broadway run. Waitress has music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles, who achieved general attention when her 2007 hit single, “Love Song,” reached number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The line was too long for me to get to taste the delicacies, but an overheard opinion was, “The pies are as good as the production…delicious!” Apple Crumble, another fan favorite, might be added to the order in the second or third week.” Simakis continues, “The day before Waitress kicks off its national tour in Cleveland, Donnelly will drive about 1,000 pies - Salted Chocolate Caramel and Key Lime - to Playhouse Square. The smell will be Cleveland, but the pies you can buy in the Connor Palace lobby are products of the Big Apple. At every performance frozen apple pies are placed in convection ovens in fireproof boxes near the theater’s entrance to put you in the right mood.Īccording to Plain Dealer writer Andrea Simakis, “A local Whole Foods, following Stacey Donnelly’s lead (she is the owner of Cute As Cake, the bakery which supplies 1500 to 2,000 pies a week to be sold at the New York production of Waitress) will provide 16 pies a week to trigger the olfactory fancies of Cleveland theater-goers.” It will then tour the country spreading cheer, and the smell of pies throughout the land, forever marked with a “Made in CLE” trademark.Īs you enter the lobby, your olfactory senses will be assaulted by the strong smell of cinnamon and sugar. Now the show’s touring company, which rehearsed here, opened this week at PlayhouseSquare’s Connor Palace Theatre for a three-week run. If you were a Broadway investor and someone approached you with the idea of producing a musical about a waitress who worked in a diner, was an expert pie maker, in an abusive marriage, who gets pregnant, has an affair with her gynecologist, and whose only way out of the mess of a life was to win a pie-baking contest, how likely would you be to plunk down your money? Oh, and the show will have an all-women development team.īelieve it or not, the money was raised, Waitress was mounted, and it became a smash Big White Way musical.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |