Waitress review – sweet but underbaked Broadway musical finally arrives in Australia

Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne
Even among the notoriously thin plots of musicals, this one feels particularly underfed – though Natalie Bassingthwaighte does a reasonable job

American pies actually taste kind of weird: despite ultra-bright colours, glazed surfaces and lashings of whipped cream, they’re oddly insubstantial and unsatisfying, seemingly designed to look better than they taste. In this way, they are the perfect subject for this musical, which has very little to say but says it all in the sweetest, most strident American accent it can muster.

Waitress has had an unusual journey to the stage, having been adapted in 2015 from a 2007 film of the same name written and directed by Adrienne Shelly. Shelly – an actor known primarily for her work in Hal Hartley films – was murdered before the film was released, a fact that lends a tragic pall to the material. It might have provided the musical with a dash of profundity, or at least some pathos. Sadly, that wasn’t the way it was baked.