Waitress

Jenna is a waitress at a small-town diner with a gift for inventing pies that turn her feelings into recipes, stuck in a marriage to a controlling, insecure husband who has never given her much reason to stay. When Jenna discovers she is pregnant, she throws herself into the hope of winning a regional pie-baking contest, seeing the prize money as a possible way out, and finds unexpected comfort in an awkward, married new doctor in town even as her diner coworkers deal with their own romantic messes around her.

The musical has music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles and a book by Jessie Nelson, based on the 2007 film written and directed by Adrienne Shelly. It opened on Broadway in 2015, and was notable for its entirely female-led creative team of composer, book writer, director and choreographer, a first for a Broadway musical.

The score is contemporary pop-folk in Sara Bareilles' own songwriting voice, warm and conversational rather than big and brassy, and its best-known songs include She Used to Be Mine, Jenna's raw, unadorned ballad about losing herself, and Bad Idea, her comic duet about a relationship she knows she should not be in. Watch for the pie-making woven into the staging, with pie names doubling as song titles and punchlines throughout, and for the easy camaraderie among the diner's waitresses. It suits audiences who enjoy a character-driven, singer-songwriter-style score more than a traditional Broadway sound, and it plays especially well for adults.