“May we all be so lucky”: ‘Waitress’ at Paramount and ‘Joseph…’ at Marriott
Teressa LaGamba, Michelle Lauto, and Kelly Felthous. Photo by Brett Beiner.
Of the musicals based on indie films driven more by character than plot (“Once”, “The Band’s Visit”)—where nothing really happens and yet everything happens—“Waitress” has a little bit more on its plate. It’s looking like the next freshly licensed title regional theaters are going to glom onto, so it may be on Chicagoland’s menu for a bit. Thankfully, it—and Paramount’s new production—go down quite agreeably.
Its lead, Jenna, is thoroughly stuck. Whatever she and her husband had evaporated long ago, and he’s readily filled that gap with drudgery and belittlement. Her job as chief pie baker and bottle washer at her one-horse-town diner is her one raft of normalcy, but it isn’t getting her up and out, no matter how “biblically good” her imaginative pie recipes are. And now she’s pregnant—she’s keeping the baby, but she isn’t going to like it, she makes perfectly clear. That said, nine months is a long time…
Its abundant (and crucial) levity notwithstanding, “Waitress” is a meditation on how—if—people change, whether they pry open their shells in due time or they take sudden hard left turns. Not unlike Bobby from “Company” weighing the pros and cons of commitment, Jenna clocks these different ways of being as her pregnancy comes to term. Such emotional inertness is a tricky thing to make compelling, but Michelle Lauto—armed with Sara Bareilles’s subtly revealing song suite—makes it look easy, and in a large house yet. Having heard enough karaoke renditions of the show’s standout single “She Used to Be Mine” by people who quote-unquote get the character, Lauto’s was refreshing.
For her part, director Katie Spelman has been in Indie-Film-Turned-Musical Land once before, and she adjusts well enough to a bigger stage. (Scott Davis’s set seemed a bit bulky and lumbering, however well it made its point about Jenna’s clock-in-clock-out life.) One-horse town with a wide-open horizon it may be set in, Spelman creates a palpable world up there that, storm clouds aside, you’d maybe want to live in.
It’s all yours for the taking if you can wake up and smell the pies in the oven.
Waitress runs through Mar. 30 at 23 E. Galena Blvd., Aurora. For tickets or more information, please call (630) 896–6666 or visit paramountaurora.com.
The Company, Photo by Brett Beiner.
Originally written as a shortish children’s cantata when Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber were themselves barely old enough for long trousers, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” has only gained in length and zaniness while its older audiences continue to hold it in fondness. (Lord knows I grew up with the Donny Osmond/Maria Friedman VHS; that I can still recite all the colors of that coat concerns some of my friends.)
Those older audiences were bringing their young ones in force to the matinee I attended at Marriott Theatre. Whether the tots left chomping at the bit for more, who can say. But Amber Mak’s choice to key the action as an oft-told bedtime story—Devin DeSantis as Dad/Joseph, Kaitlyn Davis as Mom/co-Narrator—creates a familiar-enough grounding for novice theatergoers to get their bearings in a musical that has often rewarded throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks.
Plenty does stick, like Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s repurposing of those lampshades cut with star shapes and Jesse Klug’s sheer walls of LED lights, as well as Lorenzo Rush Jr.’s take on the Pharaoh—costumed as spangly as Vegas Elvis, but performed a few clicks closer to James Brown. (Ryan T. Nelson ably obliges with the “Hit me” music stings.)
Not just any dream will do—those looking to hook the next generation on theater should be a little choosy. Marriott’s “Joseph….” is choice.
Joseph… runs through Mar. 30 at 10 Marriott Dr., Lincolnshire. For tickets or more information, please call (847) 634-0200 or visit marriotttheatre.com.
For more reviews on this or other shows, please visit theatreinchicago.com.