‘Waitress’ @ The Dallas Theater Center

Production photos by Karen Almond, courtesy of Dallas Theater Center

—Martha Heimberg

If you’ve never had a slice of bacon blueberry pie, you’re in for a delicious experience. Just grab a table at Joe’s Diner, a quirky cafe drenched in southern charm, juicy gossip and grab-and-go sex—all recreated in Waitress, the Broadway hit now onstage at Dallas Theater Center’s Wyly Theater. The musical, with a book by Jessie Nelson and a moving score by singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles, is based on the 2007 film by Adrienne Shelly about the hard-knock life of waiting tables for a living.

Directed with comic, tender pacing by Ashley Wells, the songs rise seamlessly from the snappy dialogue. A dozen actors, outfitted in Jeffrey Meeks’ richly detailed costumes, move swiftly from diner to doctor’s office to bedroom on Kimberly Powers’ clever dynamic set, perfectly complemented by Jason Lynch’s mood-setting lighting design. Even I could make a decent pie with that tidy rack of kitchen supplies.

Our town’s go-everywhere, do-anything musical director Vonda K. Bowling—and her six-member onstage band—wrap us in a vibrant orchestration of sound, ranging from folk opera to twangy honky-tonk vibes. Anywhere’s a dance floor when this gal gets going.

The production is built around Jenna (Tiffany Solano), an inspired pie-baking waitress in an abusive marriage who feels even more trapped when she finds out she’s pregnant. “I do stupid things when I get drunk—like sleep with my husband,” she says. She’d hoped to divorce Earl (swaggering Ian Ferguson), a dead-eyed Bubba who takes her tips and says her pies are okay, but that she’s “no Sara Lee.” Good-humored, generous Jenna listens to her coworkers and customers, and keeps on keeping on. We follow her pregnancy—from that first helpless, dismayed reaction right up to the birth of her daughter.  She’s been through the exhausting mill of making a human in her tummy—and believes she just might be able to make a life for both herself and the baby on her own.  

Solano is a heart-rending Jenna, wise around the eyes, but with an ever-ready smile that makes people almost as happy as her divine baking. When she sings about “What’s Inside” her seductive pies, she’s not only singing about “flour, sugar and butter,” but recalling how she baked with her late mama, back when her daddy used to come home (all too often) in a bad mood. Her mama’s brave love is part of Jenna’s decision to keep the baby, though at first she’s unhappy about the whole thing.

Solano’s Jenna is all joy and living in the moment in big numbers like “Opening Up,” in which she’s serving breakfast and dancing with a sharp ensemble around the tables of the diner—stepping to Amy Reynolds-Reed’s get-down choreography. Solano delivers every poignant, telling song with a sincerity that reaches right into your heart and belly. (Hey, the way to my heart is definitely through a fantastic peach pie.) Along with a sold-out opening night audience, I shouted and clapped my hands for Jenna and all the folks who make Joe’s Diner feel like home.

Jenna’s two kookie co-workers lift her up, straighten her out when she needs it, and keep everybody laughing. Becky (bossy, busty Ayanna Edwards) is tough as leather and loyal to the end—no matter what that may be. Becky’s wisecracks. fired at the diner’s  “happy enough” cook/manager Cal (Brian Gonzales), establish her hilarious command of crude language in the first scene. “Does your ass ever get tired of the crap that comes out of your mouth?”she asks him. Later we see there’s more than wordplay going on between these two bad-marriage veterans.

Waitress Dawn (Christina Austin Lopez, sporting huge glasses and awful bangs) collects turtles—and lives for reenactments of the American Revolutionary War. She’s terrified that the guy she’s met on a dating app isn’t going to like her when he sees her. Then Ogie (maniacally compelling Blake Hackler), a bouncy tax auditor, turns up at the diner—and it’s an explosion of passion and laughs at first sight. Hackler enters prancing, springs straight up and down, does push-ups,  and generally steals the show from the time he sets foot onstage. He wins Dawn’s’ heart declaring she’s “Never Getting Rid of Me,” and has everybody howling with his graphic song “I Love You Like a Table.” I want a slice of what he’s having.

On Jenna’s first visit to the OB/GYN, Dr. Pomatter (sweetly appealing tenor Jonathan Bragg) is totally taken in by her “biblically good” pie. By the second visit, lonely Jenna returns the bumbling doctor’s advances, kissing him passionately and jumping astride him on the examining table. Superb deadpan comic actress Liz Mikel, as the doctor’s seen-everything nurse, simply grabs Jenna’s gift pies when she arrives for her daily “exam,” and leaves the interrupted lovers scrambling to cover themselves.

Jenna’s intense sexual attraction overcomes her deep-down sense that this affair between two married people is “A Bad Idea.” She also hears the heartbeat in her stomach, and begins to feel something special between this unwanted baby and the deepest part of herself.

Things are rough at home with Earl, and waiting tables all day is no party, despite the redeeming joy of baking. The diner’s retired owner Joe (Bob Hess, a grouchy mix of Colonel Sanders and a horny old grandpa) comes to the shop every morning, keeping an eye on things and ordering special sides. Jenna listens to all his stories, and begins to believe Joe when he says he thinks she could win the $20,000 pie contest he’s heard about. She starts saving money to leave Earl and open her own shop. Joe advises Jenna “To Take It From An Old Man” and “bet it all on yourself” because, win or lose, “it’s a hell of a ride.” That it is.

By the time we’ve made it to the delivery room, Jenna has searched her soul, singing “She Used to Be Mine.” She finds, once more, the will to believe in a future she can create on her own terms for her daughter and herself —with a little help from her friends, of course.

So, go get a ticket! Believe me, you want a piece of this yummy show.

WHEN: March 29-April 20, 2025
WHERE: Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre, 2400 Flora Street, Dallas
WEB: dallastheatercenter.org