Waitress - Adelphi Theatre / U.K. Tour / Cinema

I saw Come From Away last week and Waitress tonight. Other than a rough synopsis, and ‘You Matter To Me’ on Rachel Tucker’s album (which I loved even without any context), I’d seen or heard nothing of either of them beforehand. But I was so blown away by Come From Away that I was fully prepared to be somewhat underwhelmed by Waitress - surely there coldn’t be two shows opening within days of each other that would tick all my boxes?

But I loved it. It engaged me from the off - I was interested in the three female leads’ stories, which is far from a given in MT land - and in the second half it tapped deep into my emotions. ‘She Used To Be Mine’ was my standout but Katharine McPhee’s voice throughout was a thing of beauty. Marisha Wallace’s voice was a thing of rawwrrr (I never saw Dreamgirls!), while Laura Baldwin’s was less to my personal taste, but that’s just me and female voices - finding two in a show that I really enjoyed is unusual. The men left me rather less whelmed. They were fine, but largely peripheral. As intended, presumably.

I really liked the music for a first listen, but remember very little of it - again, that’s just me. Having the band on stage (though they were rather less integrated) worked as well for me as it did in Come From Away. There were some whoopers in the audience, mostly of the ‘you go girl’ variety, though one was clearly a BIG fan of Mr Hunter (which is something I just don’t get, sorry - I refer you to my earlier comment re the men!). And a pretty full (couldn’t see the upper decks) ovation at the end, though it was a spreader rather than the springer I was very happy to be part of at Come From Away.

If you’d asked me at the interval, I’d have said.’very happy to have seen it, won’t be rushing back’ but by the end it had moved quite a long way up my ‘repeat visit’ list. Time will tell if it does in fact demand space in my now more limited visits to London.