Tap Broadway role in “Waitress” life-changing for Sara Bareilles.
‘Waitress’ changed Sara Bareilles’ life
Writing the songs for “Waitress” and playing its leading character on Broadway “has totally reoriented my life,” said Sara Bareilles, the singer-songwriter whose hits include “Love Song” and “Brave.”
That’s only fitting for a musical whose central figure, the waitress Jenna, longs to change her life through her creative gift, making wonderful pies.
The national touring company of “Waitress” will perform Tuesday to next Sunday at Milwaukee’s Marcus Center, with Desi Oakley as Jenna, the role Bareilles has played and will perform again in New York.
Fans know that the musical was adapted from the 2007 film “Waitress,” written and directed by the late Adrienne Shelly, starring Keri Russell as a small-town waitress stuck in an abusive marriage, who hopes her pie-making skills will take her to a better life. After discovering she is pregnant, Jenna impulsively starts an affair with her gynecologist, complicating everything.
Among its many charms, the movie was remarkable for its stunning cinematography of pies and for the brilliant casting of Andy Griffith as the crabby owner of the diner where Jenna works.
Director Diane Paulus recruited Bareilles to help her create the musical adaptation. Watching the film, Bareilles “found so much charm and oddity and delight in it,” she said during a telephone interview.
Bareilles said that Shelly’s film created something beautiful that was as strange, complicated and messy as the world is.
“Everyone is multifaceted,” Bareilles said, noting that each character makes mistakes and messes, but they have good hearts. Even Earl, the abusive husband, she added. The musical tries to depict him as a complicated man, she said.
“We try to honor the legacy of Adrienne. We really hope we made her proud,” she said.
Shelly, who also performed in the movie as waitress Dawn, was murdered in 2006 before the film was released; she was survived by a grieving husband and young daughter.
The musical has drawn attention for its all-female creative leadership, including book writer Jessie Nelson. “It was an accident; we didn’t really pay attention to that until after the fact,” Bareilles said.
“It was a very organic coming together of people who were at the top of their field, built on the right kind of chemistry as collaborators.”
Writing songs for the “Waitress” characters meant a change of perspective for Bareilles, who previously as a songwriter “defaulted to telling my own stories.”
The first song she wrote for the show was “She Used to Be Mine,” the sad one Jenna sings in Act Two, pondering the girl she used to be and who she is now:
“She’s imperfect, but she tries/She is good, but she lies/She is hard on herself/ She is broken and won’t ask for help/She is messy, but she’s kind/She is lonely most of the time/She is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie/She is gone, but she used to be mine.”
Writing that song was her window into “Waitress,” Bareilles said.
Bareilles said she had some swings and misses with songs that didn’t make it: “It wasn’t a precious kind of process. One of the great things I learned from how cooperative theater is, you can’t be too precious about your ideas.”
Selfishly, Bareilles admitted, she also decided to record the songs herself. “What’s Inside: Songs from ‘Waitress’ ” (2015) is the album she made of the songs she wrote, arranged the way she would perform them in concert.
This year, Bareilles stepped into Jenna’s shoes on Broadway for 10 weeks. She’ll return to the role for six weeks beginning Jan. 16, including two weeks opposite Jason Mraz as the gyno Dr. Pomatter.
“This project has totally reoriented my life,” Bareilles said. “Over the past five years, everything about my life has changed,” she said. The California native even moved to New York.
When she puts on Jenna’s costume, little things help her slip into the familiar character. For example, Bareilles doesn’t wear a watch, but Jenna does.
While she noted with a touch of humor that she doesn’t bring a Method approach to the character, Bareilles can draw on past experience waitressing for a few years after college. She called it “a sweet time in my history,” remembering the friends she made, free food, free beer and a boss who would let her take nights off for gigs.
When asked which of the “Waitress” waitresses she was like as a waitress, Bareilles replied, “I was probably a little more like Dawn,” blending a touch of OCD with the rhythms of the job, remembering “the games you play with yourself as a waitress,” saving steps here and there.
Bareilles enjoyed bonding with her mother, Bonnie, an actress herself, over studying the script. The singer loves that she got to do this for a show that is strongly about motherhood.
Oh, and the woman who wrote and sings Jenna’s songs has pie experience, too. Growing up, Bareilles, her mom and her sisters made blackberry pie from berries gathered in their backyard.
Two local girls will share the role of Lulu, Jenna’s daughter, during the Milwaukee performances: Margot Kabara, 4, of Oconomowoc and Charlotte Rhodes, 5, of Nashotah.