A big Broadway tour in a small Charlotte theater? ‘This has never happened anywhere.’
Like many of its A-list Broadway peers, “Waitress” has endured some notable stops and starts in New York City over the past two-plus years, in large part thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But this month, the musical based on the movie — about a freshly pregnant, Southern small-town diner waitress who pins her hopes of escaping a toxic marriage to her pie-baking skills — will start a unique new life 600 miles away from the U.S. theater world’s epicenter.
“Waitress” was last in Charlotte in 2018, when it spent five days at the 2,100-seat Belk Theater as part of the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center’s Broadway Lights Series. On Tuesday, a brand-new tour will kick off a five-week-long engagement at the center’s much-more-intimate Booth Playhouse — which seats just 442.
After its run here ends on May 22, the musical will move on to another five-week engagement, at the 550-seat Hanna Theatre in Cleveland’s Playhouse Square.
Exactly how big of a deal is it that a Broadway show with a Broadway contract will get this kind of run in this small a theater?
“To my knowledge, this has never happened anywhere,” Blumenthal president and CEO Tom Gabbard said.
And on top of that, there’s this: “It absolutely wouldn’t have happened,” he said, if not for COVID.
Here’s a look at the fluky way in which the pieces fell into place, along with thoughts on how seeing it presented in a smaller space will — and won’t — be different, based on interviews with Gabbard; with its director Diane Paulus (a past Tony Award winner); and with Sara Bareilles, who wrote the show’s Grammy- and Tony-nominated music and lyrics.
But first, a little background
If you already know about the musical’s roots, you can skip ahead to the next section. If you don’t, just a quick recap:
“Waitress” was born as a movie, a 2007 romantic comedy written and directed by Adrienne Shelly and starring Keri Russell, who at the time was best known for The WB’s “Felicity” and as having played an IMF agent opposite Tom Cruise in “Mission: Impossible III.”
Though a dark off-screen shadow was cast over the movie after Shelly was murdered less than three months before its Sundance premiere, “Waitress” received warm reviews from critics (The Charlotte Observer’s former arts writer Lawrence Toppman called it “sweet,” a “fairy tale (that) finally shows the value not only of motherhood but selfhood, too”) and it became a cult hit among indie-film lovers.
Roughly five years later, legendary Broadway producers Fran and Barry Weissler brought the idea of translating the story for the stage to Paulus.
One thing led to another, and the musical version of “Waitress” opened in August 2015 at the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University. The show reached New York the following spring, becoming the first Broadway musical in history to have four women — Paulus, Bareilles, book adaptor Jessie Nelson and choreographer Lorin Latarro — in the four top creative-team spots.
In particular, it made a Broadway darling out of Bareilles, who already had gained fame in pop-music circles for hits like “Love Song” and “Brave” but broke big on the stage with four separate turns in the lead role of Jenna during the show’s Broadway runs.
“I’m not B.S.-ing when I say that ‘Waitress’ is the great love of my life,” Bareilles told the Observer this past week during a Zoom interview. “I had no idea when I signed on to do this show that it would consume so much of my time and energy and attention. Because if I had known, I definitely would have said no. I was not interested in being consumed by something.
“But ... getting to translate this beautiful movie of Adrienne Shelly’s to the stage has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done, the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done, the single-most impactful artistic endeavor I’ve ever created.”
What role did the pandemic play?
COVID played no part in the original decision to end “Waitress” after its nearly four-year run on Broadway.
The show’s closing at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre actually was announced by the Weisslers in July 2019, with the final performance on Jan. 5, 2020 — more than two months before Broadway was shut down due to the spread of the coronavirus.
So it came as a pleasant surprise for Broadway buffs last summer when news dropped that the musical would be returning for a limited-engagement run at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, from Sept. 2 to Jan. 9, with Bareilles reprising her turn as the star for the first six weeks. It would be the first Broadway show to reopen since the shutdown.
In fact, it probably would not have returned at all without the shutdown. Though it did close pre-pandemic, “Waitress” was within the qualifying window to receive a grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration as part of its Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program. The program, designed to help bail out arts and entertainment venues that had remained closed during the pandemic, came through with a $10 million grant for “Waitress.” (In addition, the two national tours of the musical received a combined $16.9 million.)
But in advance of the planned Jan. 9 finale, which was necessitated, in part, by another show booked to move into the Barrymore, “Waitress”’s producers knew they’d have leftover money that they would need to figure out how to spend appropriately.
And they wound up with even a little more than anticipated, because then came another COVID-induced plot twist, in December: Two weeks before its limited engagement was set to end, multiple members of the cast and crew tested positive for the virus and the show closed immediately.
“We are heartbroken,” the musical announced in a tweet on the evening of Dec. 23.
As it turned out, by that point, the wheels were already in motion to try to bring a Broadway equity tour (i.e. one in which actors and stage managers are paid according to union contracts) to smaller venues as a way to utilize the leftover SBA funds.
Gabbard said he was initially approached about the possibility on Dec. 16.
“The producing team ... called me and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this interesting situation,’“ he recalled. “The grant is really about getting people back to work. And so they said, ‘How ’bout if we keep people working by coming to Charlotte and Cleveland?’”
The producers tapped Gabbard for the unusual opportunity, he explained, for a couple of key reasons.
One, because he has a significant connection to “Waitress,” having been among the original investors in the show. (Gabbard is widely considered within the industry to be a major player in American theater, having co-produced or invested in dozens of Broadway and off-Broadway shows.)
Two, because the Blumenthal has a national reputation in the theater community for being nimble. “There are a lot of venues,” he said, “that would not have been able to turn around a situation like this quickly.”
“I just said, ‘Let’s roll up our shirtsleeves and figure this out,’” Gabbard continued. “It was an easy yes.”
He said it took about a month to clear out the Booth’s schedule, and explained that the producers “specifically wanted to play a smaller venue to have a longer run;” in other words, clearing out a big venue’s schedule on short notice would have been nearly impossible. The show was announced Feb. 1, and tickets went on sale later that week.
Part of the reason for the urgency, in case you were wondering: Grant funds must be spent by the end of June.
The Cleveland engagement of “Waitress” ends on June 26.
Different ... but still the same
Paulus, speaking to the Observer by phone as she navigated Manhattan on her way to a recent rehearsal, was quick with a reminder that the musical got its start in a small theater: the 556-seat A.R.T. at Harvard, where she was — and still is — the artistic director.
Following a path trod by many Broadway success stories, “Waitress” progressed from there to the Brooks Atkinson, which seats just over 1,000, and then went on to be performed on national tours in theaters built for 2,000-plus.
“So in many ways, we’ve all been saying, it’s almost like returning ‘Waitress’ to its roots,” said the director, who won a Tony for her mounting of the 2013 revival of “Pippin.”
Added Bareilles: “Building something that is bespoke and uniquely tailored for smaller spaces, to me is in right relationship with the chamber-musical essence of this show. It is an intimate story. And that’s what I love about it: It can be on a big stage, but it doesn’t have to be. And ... in a smaller venue, you can see the expressions on the faces of the actors and the storytellers and the musicians, and you’re watching hands make music.
“It’s beautiful to see something in a big theater — I am not disparaging of that at all — but this feels very exciting to me.”
And with the smaller venue comes smaller prices for premium seats:
In 2018, the least-expensive tickets for the Belk production cost $25, which is $10 less than the cheapest tickets to see the show this spring at the Booth; however, it will cost only $109.50 to sit right next to the stage for upcoming performances of “Waitress,” compared with $175 for similar seats four years ago.
But Gabbard said theatergoers shouldn’t expect to get a scaled-down production for their money.
Though the Booth has less than a quarter of the seating compared with the Belk, the Booth’s stage is actually almost as large as the Belk’s — so audiences, Gabbard said, “will have the full, complete experience.”
Paulus, meanwhile, said any touring show has to make adaptations.
For this show, “we have a smaller version of that pie rack that comes out,” she said, before quickly pivoting. “I think to focus on that —” and by that, she meant on what might be different from the Broadway incarnation of the musical “— would be a disservice, to be honest. There are still so many pies in the show, and we’re still gonna do the famous smell. We bake a pie in every theater we go to, so the smell of the pie envelops the audience when they walk in the theater. All of that will be there.”
At the same time, Paulus acknowledged, this “Waitress” will be different — in perhaps the best way possible.
“I think is gonna really be a special opportunity for the audiences in Charlotte,” she said, “to be so up-close with this particular story and this music. It’s a rarity.
“It never happens.”
‘Waitress’ in Charlotte
When: Opens on April 19 with a 7:30 p.m. performance, followed by 39 additional performances through May 22.
Where: Booth Playhouse, 130 N. Tryon St., at Blumenthal Performing Arts Center.
Tickets: $34.50 and up.
Details: 704-372-1000; www.blumenthalarts.org/events/detail/waitress-1.
This story was originally published April 14, 2022 at 10:24 AM.
