Waitress offers an outstanding, beautiful, relatable, modern musical

WAITRESS. Chelsea Halfpenny 'Jenna'. Photo Johan Persson

How fantastic to discover at last what everyone has been making such a fuss about.

Sara Bareilles’ Waitress serves up one of the very finest of the modern-day musicals, a fabulous concoction full of wit and warmth – and an array of cracking songs.

Conjuring it all from the kitchens of the diner (and indeed life itself) is a first-rate cast led by Chelsea Halfpenny who is simply outstanding as Jenna, the super-gifted pie-maker who hasn’t quite yet found the right recipe for life.

She’s stuck with an abusive husband; her only hope of escape is a pie-making competition she can’t afford to enter and doubts she will win; and then she falls pregnant after a rare moment of intimacy with her ghastly brute of a hubby.

And then, when life couldn’t possibly get more complicated, it does when into her life walks the dishy Dr Pomatter (Matt Willis – Busted, A Christmas Carol, Wicked), an awkward guy with plenty to be awkward about, as it turns out.

But he falls for Jenna just as surely as Jenna falls for him. Is this where her happiness lies?

Meanwhile, a baby’s growing inside her that she doesn’t want and she struggles to relate to – all so beautifully expressed in the show’s show-stopper, She Used To Be Mine, delivered by Halfpenny with passion and perfection.

Halfpenny brings her mixed-up, lonely and lovable character to glorious life. You can feel the warmth she has for her, and it’s infectious.

Read our interview with Chelsea Halfpenny

But oddly, She Used To Be Mine is not the night’s most haunting song when you get back home.

Take It From An Old Man is poignant and powerful, terrific from Michael Starke as diner owner Old Joe. Starke is excellent as a grumpy, demanding, rather cheeky old chap – particularly as he always leaves you suspecting there is kindness behind the gruff exterior.

And that’s what comes across in Take It From An Old Man, the night’s highlight.

It’s giving absolutely nothing away to say that Jenna finds her way. How and where she finds it is the real treasure in this lovely night at the theatre.

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