Ten years after it first opened on Broadway, Waitress rolls into Stoke-on-Trent this week as part of its ongoing UK and Ireland tour, bringing Sara Bareilles’ warm, pie-obsessed score to the Regent Theatre stage.
Jenna is a waitress and a genuinely gifted pie maker, stuck in a small town and an even smaller marriage. Her husband Earl is controlling and unpleasant, and when Jenna discovers she’s pregnant, the prospect of motherhood only sharpens her sense that she’s trapped. A local pie-baking contest, with a life-changing cash prize, gives her a flicker of hope for escape. Around her, her fellow waitresses Becky and Dawn wrestle with their own romantic entanglements. It’s a show that wants to be about self-worth, friendship and the courage to choose a different life, all wrapped in an awful lot of pie metaphors.
Waitress began life as a 2007 film written by Adrienne Shelly, and was adapted for the stage with some divine music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles and a book by Jessie Nelson, directed by Diane Paulus and choreographed by Lorin Latarro. It opened on Broadway in April 2016 and ran until January 2020, before transferring to London’s Adelphi Theatre in March 2019. A decade on, it has become a genuine global property, with productions across North America, Japan and the Netherlands, French and Spanish language versions, and an Australian production opening this year. This current tour marks its second journey around the UK and Ireland, and this week it’s at the Regent Theatre in Stoke.
Carrie Hope Fletcher leads as Jenna, and she’s excellent. It’s a role with a certain pedigree behind it, having previously been played by the show’s own composer, so there’s always a temptation to measure any Jenna against that, but Fletcher makes the part entirely her own. Her vocals are a real highlight, controlled and conversational in the quieter, confessional numbers, then let loose fully when the score demands it, with a belt that fills the Regent without ever tipping into strain. What’s most impressive is how much emotional work she manages to do in both the music and the gaps between songs. This is a book that moves fast, often jumping from scene to scene and number to number with barely a breath in between, and in a lesser performance that pace could easily flatten Jenna into a run of pretty vocal moments rather than a person. Fletcher resists that. She finds real vulnerability in the character, letting the exhaustion and quiet resignation of Jenna’s marriage show even in scenes that aren’t explicitly about it, so that by the time she reaches her big Act Two numbers the payoff feels earned rather than simply cued up by the orchestration. It’s a performance that carries the emotional throughline of the whole show, and does so almost single-handedly given how little time the production otherwise gives itself to build that groundwork.
Sandra Marvin and Evelyn Hoskins, as Becky and Dawn, are perfect support, and their long history with these particular roles pays real dividends. Both have played their parts in the West End as well as on the previous tour, and that familiarity has bred a kind of ease and precision that’s hard to fake. Marvin’s Becky is sharp-tongued and worldly, delivering her one-liners with a dryness that never feels like it’s reaching for a laugh, and vocally she brings a real power to her big number that lifts the whole auditorium. Hoskins, meanwhile, finds all the nervy, awkward comedy in Dawn without ever making her a caricature, and her scenes opposite Ogie are among the funniest in the whole show, built on a rapport that clearly comes from experience and expertise. Together the two of them anchor the diner scenes with a warmth and chemistry that makes Jenna’s friendships feel entirely believable, and their comic timing in particular lands with a precision that newer casts would do well to study.
Mark Anderson’s Ogie is one of the real pleasures of this production. Ogie is a tricky part to get right, an oddball suitor whose persistence could easily read as charming or as genuinely unsettling depending on the choices an actor makes, and the West End production leaned towards stunt casting the role, bringing in names for novelty value rather than for what they could bring to the character itself. It’s genuinely pleasing to see this touring production avoid that trap. Anderson finds real nuance here rather than playing Ogie as a single joke, building a performance that’s hilarious and, eventually, deeply endearing, even though the writing of his first entrance does lean a little uncomfortably towards stalkerish before the show pulls the character back from that edge. His physical comedy is well judged, and he times his big comic numbers with real skill. Dan Partridge, meanwhile, does a great job as Dr Pomatter. It’s a role that could very easily tip into sleaze given the character is a married man having an affair with a patient, but Partridge plays him with such fumbling, genuine warmth that he comes across as thoroughly loveable rather than predatory. His chemistry with Fletcher is gentle and believable, all nervous energy and half-finished sentences, and that likeability matters a great deal given the moral tightrope the character, and the show around him, is walking.
Mark Willshire’s Earl deserves a mention too. It would be easy to play Jenna’s husband as a straightforward sleazeball, all controlling bluster and cheap nastiness, and there’s plenty of that here, the character is genuinely difficult to warm to. But Willshire finds moments of real nuance underneath it, hinting at the insecurity and stunted emotional development driving Earl’s behaviour rather than letting him become a pantomime villain. There are flashes, particularly in his quieter scenes, where you catch something closer to a wounded, frightened man than a simple bully, and that shading makes the character’s damage feel more human and more uncomfortable, even if the production never quite goes far enough in exploring what that damage costs the people around him.
The ensemble work hard throughout and do a great job, though at times the choreography feels a touch over-egged and becomes distracting rather than additive. Les Dennis is also in this production as Joe. The set is functional and manages the frequent changes of location well enough, but it leans heavily on the ensemble physically moving pieces around, which occasionally undercuts the polish elsewhere. Lighting design is a genuine strength, doing excellent work to contrast the warmth and brightness of the diner with the claustrophobia of Jenna’s home life.
Pace is where this production is most divided against itself. It moves quickly, and that’s both a strength and a weakness. Scenes fly by and songs follow one another in rapid succession, which keeps energy high, but it comes at the cost of character development. Becky in particular feels thinly drawn, especially when it comes to her home life, which the show gestures at without ever really exploring.
That pace also feeds into the deeper issue I have with the show’s morality. Waitress touches on domestic and marital themes that deserve real weight, but too often it feels like the production doesn’t fully reckon with them. There’s an implication running through the story that infidelity becomes acceptable once the circumstances are difficult enough, and in leaning into that romantic framing, the show rather neglects the innocent people caught up in these affairs. It’s a tension baked into the source material as much as this production, but it’s one that nags at me every time I see the show.
Even with those reservations, this touring production of Waitress has plenty going for it: a lead performance from Carrie Hope Fletcher that carries real emotional weight, strong support from Marvin and Hoskins, a genuinely well-judged Ogie, and lighting that does a lot of quiet, effective work. It’s at the Regent Theatre in Stoke until Saturday 11 July, before continuing its run around the UK and Ireland well into next year.
Waitress plays at the Regent Theatre until Saturday 11th July 2026 where it continues its UK tour.
Photography throughout from Matt Crockett.
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