STAGE WEST: Moonlight Stage Productions' "Waitress"

Jenna (Lulu Lloyd) and Dr. Pomatter (Bryan Banville) become entangled in "Waitress."   Karli Cadel Photography

            Aug. 1 will mark 10 years exactly since the musical adaptation of Adrienne Shelly’s film “Waitress” made its stage debut at the American Repertory Theater located at Harvard University. This likable grownup musical with a book by Jessie Nelson and music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles would later run nearly four years on Broadway.
            Wednesday night in the drizzle at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista made it twice that I’ve seen “Waitress.” My first was seven years ago when the show came to the San Diego Civic Theatre as part of a national tour. As with a tasty slice o’ pie, it’s nice to have seconds.
            Ah yes, pie. You’ll want some by the time “Waitress” is over.
            There’s a connective thread between that 2018 touring presentation of “Waitress” and this one from Moonlight Stage Productions, and it’s a lulu. Musical theater performer Lulu Lloyd, a San Diegan who graduated from La Jolla High, starred as waitress/pie-baker Jenna Hunterson on that national tour (though not on the leg that stopped at the Civic). Five years after stepping aside from acting to have a family, Lloyd returns to the stage to star again as Jenna at Moonlight.
            You can see and hear that Lloyd knows this show inside and out. She’s the light and the strength of an altogether splendid cast in Vista. Welcome back, Lulu.
            Seeing “Waitress” again reminded me of the breadth and the versatility of Bareilles’ songwriting. The musical highlights two of her most touching and beautiful songs, “A Soft Place to Land” and “She Used to be Mine,” both admirably performed by Lloyd to the accompaniment of Moonlight’s “Waitress” orchestra (Stella Belauskas, Marc Encabo, Dave Fung, Michelle Gray, Robert Johnson, Don Kuhli and Josh Vasquez).
            At the same time, Bareilles flashed her gift for clever lyrics that heighten sight-gag- romps given to Jenna’s fellow waitress Dawn (“When He Sees Me”) and Dawn’s comical but sincere suitor Ogie (“Never Ever Getting Rid of Me” and “I Love You Like a Table”). Emma Nossal and Jonathan Sangster have a ball with these at Moonlight.
            The little grace notes of Bareilles’ score (like the echoey, recurring “sugar, butter, flour” that precedes the opening number “What’s Inside” and is heard most tenderly in “A Soft Place to Land”) lend this show nuance, and to an extent all of her songs for Jenna illuminate the reality that this waitress/pie baker’s life is really complicated while reassuring us that she’ll figure it out.
            Make that quite complicated. Before you can say “Order up!” Jenna’s queasy at the diner and her knowing co-workers Becky (Elizabeth Adabale) and Dawn (Nossal) are goading her to pee on a stick. Predictably, she’s preggers, and by her loser husband Earl (Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, like Nossal playing against their usual types and succeeding).
            A reluctant trip to the gynecologist’s finds her regular doc gone and a handsome but awkward Dr. Pomatter (Bryce Banville, dependably good) attending to her instead. By the end of the first act, they are more than doctor and patient (“Bad Idea” – that’s the song title, and the truth).
            Mix in Jenna’s dream of winning a piemaking contest, the $20,000 that goes with it and the chance to dump Earl’s sorry butt in the process and “Waitress” finds its heroine in a whirl.
            Meanwhile, a lot of laughter is mined with wallflower Dawn’s courtship by Ogie, a slapsticky break from Jenna’s angst and forbidden romance. (Did I mention that Dr. Pomatter is married, too?)
            Now to Act 2. The first 10 minutes or so find everyone in heat. Jenna and her doctor are getting physical. So are Dawn and Ogie. So is Becky and Cal (Dallas McLaughlin), previously just the grouchy boss at Joe’s Pie Diner. This sequence is why Moonlight labels “Waitress” PG-13. It’s also why for many this show is so popular. Adults doing adult things. Leave the kids at home.
            The trio of director Noelle Marion, musical director Tamara Paige and choreographer Katie Banville ensure that this musical is in good hands, and it’s awesome to have female artists in charge of a story in which a woman finds her strength and finds herself.
            “Waitress” tidies everything up at the end, as you might figure, though Jenna’s romantic fling doesn’t go the way of cliché. Just as Adrienne Shelly wrote it years ago. Tragically (you can research the details yourself) she never lived long enough to see her film become a musical that likely will be produced and produced for years to come.
            During Wednesday night’s performance, I overheard one patron, possibly expecting a rerun of the old “Alice” sitcom, mutter to another patron: “Well, that was different.” I don’t think it was a compliment.
            But she was right. “Waitress” IS different, and from me that’s a compliment.
            “Waitress” runs through June 21 at Moonlight Amphitheatre in Vista. (Bring a blanket.)