World Tour 2026
Waitress
The Smash Hit Romantic Musical Comedy
Sunderland Empire
Monday 4 – Saturday 9 May 2026
Feature · Sunderland Empire
Durham-born actress Emma Lucia is set to make a homecoming to remember this May, stepping into the leading role of Jenna in the touring production of Waitress — the beloved and award-laden musical that has captured hearts around the world since its Broadway debut a decade ago. The show arrives at Sunderland Empire for a six-night run from Monday 4 to Saturday 9 May 2026, brought to the North East by producers Barry & Fran Weissler and David Ian for Crossroads Live.
For Lucia, this engagement carries a deeply personal significance. Having trained and built her career performing on stages across the UK, returning to lead a major touring production at the very theatre where she spent childhood evenings watching shows feels nothing short of full circle. It is the kind of story that the musical itself — warm, resilient, rooted in the power of finding courage within oneself — might have been written to tell.
"I'm very excited to take on the role of Jenna in the Northeast. I grew up watching shows at the Sunderland Empire, so it feels like a full circle moment to be back on home soil leading this wonderful and heartfelt production."Emma Lucia
Emma Lucia is no stranger to stages of scale and ambition. Her theatre credits span the breadth of British musical performance, including Perdita in the Regent's Park Open Air Theatre's production of 101 Dalmatians, Kolokolo Bird in Just So at the Watermill Theatre, Girl in the national tour of Once, and Marilyn in the national tour of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, in which she also understudied both Carole and Cynthia. The role of Jenna represents her most prominent leading turn to date — and the prospect of delivering that performance to a hometown audience makes the occasion all the more charged.
The production marks the tenth anniversary of Waitress on the world stage. It opened on Broadway on 24 April 2016 at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, where it ran for nearly four years before closing in January 2020. The show crossed the Atlantic to open at London's Adelphi Theatre on 7 March 2019, garnering rapturous reviews and earning its place as one of the most celebrated musicals of the modern era. Since then, the production has toured North America, Japan, Holland, and seen French and Spanish language productions in Canada and Mexico respectively. Spring 2026 brings a major Australian run in Melbourne and Sydney — testament to the show's extraordinary global reach as it enters its second decade.
The Story
Based on the 2007 film written by Adrienne Shelly, Waitress tells the story of Jenna, a gifted pie-maker working in a small-town diner, who dreams of escaping a loveless and difficult marriage. When a baking contest in a nearby county and the arrival of the town's new doctor each offer the possibility of something new, Jenna must find the courage to seize her chance. All the while, her fellow waitresses — the forthright Becky and the sweetly awkward Dawn — provide friendship, solidarity, and their own recipes for happiness.
The show is, at heart, a celebration: of female friendship, of the tenacity required to remake one's own life, and of the quietly extraordinary comfort of a well-made pie. It is funny, tender, and deeply felt — and has a score by Sara Bareilles that is among the finest of any musical in recent memory.
The Cast
Leading Role
Emma Lucia — Jenna
Becky
Sandra Marvin
Dawn
Evelyn Hoskins
Joe
Les Dennis
Dr Pomatter
Dan Partridge
Ogie
Mark Anderson
Earl
Mark Willshire
Cal
Dan O'Brien
Company
Will Arundell, Yochabel Asante, Alice Croft, Jamie Doncaster, Daniel George-Wright, Will Hardy, Bayley Hart, Olivia Lallo, David Mairs-McKenzie & Ellie Ruiz Rodriguez
The production boasts a company of remarkable experience and pedigree. Sandra Marvin, who returns to the role of Becky having played the part in both the West End run and the previous tour, is a genuine powerhouse of British musical theatre, her credits encompassing Sister Act, Show Boat, and Hairspray. Audiences familiar with Emmerdale will recognise her as Jessie Grant/Dingle, while music fans may know that she performed alongside Kate Bush during the celebrated Before the Dawn concert residency, and sings the title track on the Grammy Award-winning soundtrack to George Clooney's Gravity.
Evelyn Hoskins likewise returns to the role of Dawn. Her stage work ranges from originating the role of Thea in the London premiere of Spring Awakening to most recently playing Carol Van Deusen in 42 Balloons at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. The role of Dr Pomatter falls to Dan Partridge, best known for his turn as Charlie Price in the UK and European tour of Kinky Boots, while the beloved elder Joe is played by the inimitable Les Dennis — a figure whose career spans half a century of British entertainment, including West End stints in Chicago, Spamalot, and Hairspray alongside Michael Ball at the London Coliseum.
The Creative Team
Music & Lyrics
Sara Bareilles
Book
Jessie Nelson
Direction
Diane Paulus
Choreography
Lorin Latarro
Original Story
Adrienne Shelly
Producers
Barry & Fran Weissler / David Ian for Crossroads Live
The creative team is led by Tony Award-winning director Diane Paulus, the Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theater and a Professor of the Practice of Theater at Harvard University, whose Broadway productions have amassed multiple Tony Awards across productions including Pippin, Porgy and Bess, and Hair. Choreography is by Lorin Latarro, a Drama Desk, Lortel, and Chita Rivera nominee who trained at Juilliard and has brought her inventive movement vocabulary to shows on both sides of the Atlantic.
The score by Sara Bareilles — Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter and recording artist whose songs have been streamed more than 3.5 billion times worldwide — is among the most distinctive in contemporary musical theatre. Warm, witty, and emotionally precise, her music gives Waitress its particular character: a sound that feels both deeply rooted in American idiom and entirely, unmistakably her own. The book by Jessie Nelson, herself an accomplished director and writer whose credits include the film I Am Sam and the Apple TV series Little Voice (co-created with Bareilles), ensures that the story never loses its beating, human heart.
Together, Bareilles and Nelson made history when Waitress opened on Broadway in 2016 as the first Broadway musical to have been created by an all-female team — a milestone whose significance resonates as strongly now as it did a decade ago.
Tickets
General tickets for Waitress at Sunderland Empire are on sale now. Don't miss the chance to see this extraordinary production — and to welcome Durham's own Emma Lucia home.
* A £3.95 transaction fee may apply to online bookings.
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