Waitress – Birmingham Hippodrome

Book: Jessie Nelson

Music and Lyrics: Sara Bareilles

Director: Diane Paulus

Joe’s Pie Diner is not, on the face of it, a place where life-changing things happen. People eat. Pies are made. The day passes. The recipe sounds simple enough – and in less assured hands it might stay that way. But this is Sara Bareilles’ Waitress, and the ingredients here are anything but ordinary.

Based on Adrienne Shelly’s 2007 film, Waitress follows Jenna, a waitress at the diner alongside her friends and colleagues Becky and Dawn. Stuck in an abusive and loveless marriage to Earl, she channels her frustrations and her considerable talent into baking pies of extraordinary invention. When she discovers she’s pregnant and meets her new gynaecologist, Dr Pomatter, recently arrived in town, things become considerably more complicated. Her two colleagues, meanwhile, are busy finding their own kinds of happiness. The show’s genius is that it holds all of this together – the raw and the funny, the heartbreaking and the joyful – without letting any one element tip the balance.

Scott Pask’s set design is a delight: spare and fluid, with few pieces that can be rearranged almost invisibly, it keeps the show in near-constant motion. Scene changes are choreographed around and behind the action, becoming part of the storytelling rather than interruptions to it. A backdrop of a road stretching into the distance, framed by silhouetted telegraph poles, shifts character through Ken Billington’s lighting – deep pinks and oranges for dawn and dusk, bright and flat for the unforgiving daylight of the diner – echoing the emotional tone of whatever is unfolding in front of it.

Lorin Latarro’s choreography is excellent – sharp, well-conceived and precisely executed, establishing the show’s tone from the opening What’s Inside and sustaining it throughout. Bareilles’ score has by now taken on a life of its own beyond the production, and hearing it in context is a reminder of how well-constructed it is – at times funny, tender and emotionally forceful, often all three at once.

There’s a uniformly strong supporting cast. Dan O’Brien brings excellent comic timing to Cal, the diner manager whose gruff authority conceals a warmth he’d rather not admit to. Mark Anderson’s Ogie is a masterclass in controlled physical comedy – delightfully over-the-top, and his scenes with Evelyn Hoskins’ Dawn are among the show’s funniest. Mark Willshire is suitably menacing as Earl, the threat in his performance understated but never in doubt. In smaller but no less crucial roles, Les Dennis brings a quiet wisdom and observational warmth to Joe, the diner’s elderly owner, while Ellie Ruiz Rodriguez’s nurse is a knowing comic gem – all sidelong glances and audience asides, apparently aware of rather more than she’s initially letting on.

Dan Partridge is an engaging Dr Pomatter – endearingly awkward, a man visibly wrestling with an attraction he knows perfectly well he shouldn’t act on. The production handles the affair with a light comic touch that never quite lets you forget the authenticity of it. He is in fine voice too; the chemistry between them makes the relationship entirely credible, and their scenes together carry a real tenderness alongside the comedy.

The three female leads are the heart of the production, and the chemistry between them is genuine and warm. Hoskins, reprising a role she has now played across multiple productions, including the original West End run, brings a quirky comic energy to Dawn that never feels stale – her timing with Anderson is particularly good. Sandra Marvin, also reprising her role as Becky, is all swagger and straight-talking, not about to take anything from Cal or anyone else, and her performance of I Didn’t Plan It – the big Act Two opening – showcases her well-known vocal skills superbly. Both feel completely at home in roles they have made entirely their own.

Carrie Hope Fletcher’s Jenna is, however, something special. Confident and open in the warmth of the diner, she almost visibly contracts in Earl’s presence – a woman who has learned to make herself small, and who pours everything she cannot say into her baking. Fletcher tracks Jenna’s emotional journey with precision and without sentimentality. The comedy is light and assured, the more painful moments entirely believable, and the transitions between the two handled with a confidence that makes the whole performance feel seamless. Vocally, she is superb throughout, but it is She Used to Be Mine – the show’s emotional centrepiece – that shows her at her best. The audience is almost entirely still, drawn into her emotions.

That the show is written and directed by women, based on a film made by a woman, and built around three female characters with genuine emotional lives and genuine agency, still feels significant. Jenna’s story – of dreams deferred, of a talent that deserves better than it has been given, of the slow work of finding the courage to change – is told with intelligence and empathy. Becky and Dawn offer counterpoint: their relationships are lighter, funnier, but no less honest. The whole thing is, in the best sense, a story told from observation and experience.

This production has all the right ingredients and is perfectly baked.

Runs until 2 May 2026 and on tour