In a long and glittering musical theatre career, Rob Mills says he’s only ever truly hoped for two roles.
The first was Prince Fiyero in Wicked, the himbo-turned-revolutionary love interest for both female leads. Mills originated the Australian role in the 2009 production, dancing through life and into the hearts of the nation’s musical theatre fans.
The second, he says, is that of Dr Jim Pomatter, the gynaecologist and love interest – yes, you read that correctly – of the titular pregnant pie baker in Sara Bareilles’ Waitress. He saw the original Broadway cast on a New York holiday 10 years ago and was smitten.
“I like to go see shows when I’m over there, it’s always like, ‘Could I be in any of these?’ And I saw Waitress, and I just fell in love with it,” Mills says. “It’s funny. It’s a dramedy, I suppose, but with the perfect music.”
He’s been treading the boards for more than 20 years, and Mills is a musical theatre person – that is to say, he believes wholeheartedly there are just some things that can only be expressed through the power of song.
“I’d already been a fan of Sara Bareilles – my friend Ben Abraham had already performed with her and toured with her and written with her, and I just love her music,” he says. “Anyway, she just knows when to write the songs. I’ve got a thing with musicals, and a good musical always knows when you can no longer say the words you need to say, you move into a song. And she does it perfectly with this.”
Mills, of course, has landed his second dream role and will bring Dr Pottamer to life in the first Australian production of Waitress – a production that almost didn’t happen. It was meant to open in 2020 and, of course, that became impossible due to COVID-19.
For anyone who hasn’t been fortunate enough to travel to London or New York and is hazy on the details from the 2007 Kerri Russell movie it’s based on, the plot follows Jenna, a talented pie baker, who works at a diner and dreams of escaping her abusive marriage and turning her passion for pie into a career. After Jenna discovers she’s pregnant, escape seems impossible – but things take a turn when she turns up to a prenatal appointment to discover her regular gynaecologist is away and the very dishy Dr Pomatter is filling in.
A married gynaecologist having an affair with his married patient would raise some pretty serious red flags – and potentially send him to the ethics board for a licence review – but somehow, in this context, it’s not just romantic but downright empowering for Jenna. “We’re in a post-MeToo world,” concedes Mills. “They’ve obviously done some work on this script over the years. She kisses him! Everything is on the line for him – his marriage, his licence.”
She in this case is the incomparable Natalie Bassingthwaighte, who is stepping into Jenna’s sensible sneakers and flour-dusted apron. Bassingthwaighte really does have to bake pies throughout the show – the ovens on stage really work, and the scent of sweet baking pie wafts through the audience. Mills and Bassingthwaighte have known each other for a long time – they were in an arena production of Grease in 2005, but were not in the same numbers and didn’t know each other well.
Before this show, “I wouldn’t say we were friends, but certainly not enemies,” says Mills.
Wait. Does Rob Mills have enemies? Is there a dark interior lurking behind those twinkling blue eyes and thousand-watt smile? Is the ultimate nice guy persona just an act?
He laughs. “I don’t have any enemies,” he says confidently, then pauses to consider, furrowing his brow and considering the question. “No, no enemies.”
Whew.
He and Bassingthwaite have graduated from work colleagues to friends, after spending so much time together. He spots her headed into rehearsals as we are leaving the noisy building for our interview and stops for a friendly hug and a chat about their weekends. For her part, she’s charm personified, offering her hand and a welcoming smile. “Hi, I’m Nat!” she introduces herself, as if she were not one of the most famous people on our stages.
It’s not just Mills and Bassingthwaighte who have grown close – the entire cast have embraced Waitress′ uplifting sense of community.
“We did a great exercise last week, which they’ve done in every cast [of Waitress],” Mills says. “I’ve never done this in a musical before – it felt very drama school, but in the best possible way.
“We did a character presentation. Everyone had to get up and do a presentation about their character. Only six questions were given to us that we were allowed to use as our presentation, and everyone did it in a different way, and talked about how they got here to the town, their greatest strength, greatest weakness.
“And I’ve got to say, it was one of the best things I’ve ever done. I had so much fun. And I think every person, ensemble and the leads, all found another gear, or 10 gears, of depth in their character and fun and playfulness.”
Fun and playfulness is at the heart of Waitress, which for all its risque romance is really about Jenna’s friends and diner colleagues, who lift her up and support her to follow her dreams.
“We like to call this show beautifully mundane,” Mills says. “It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of a Moulin Rouge, but you’ll go away feeling so much for the characters – seeing one of your friends in the characters, or seeing yourself. I think that’s why I like it. It’s a very human story. Obviously, it touches on love, lust, friendship – infidelity is in there, but it’s nuanced. We have this weird thing with cheating in Australia – we are, I think, quite conservative in our nature. It’s quite a taboo thing. I’m always like, you don’t know their situation. And with this one, it’s very it’s nuanced, and it’s very human.”
Jenna’s husband’s abuse is shown to the audience on multiple occasions, but not much is known about Dr Pottamer’s wife, Francine. So how to portray a romantic hero who is crossing ethical boundaries, without knowing what his home situation might be?
“This is not in the script, but maybe there’s a little lack of communication between Francine and Dr Pomatter, because if he was getting everything he needed from his partner, there’d be no need to…” he says.
Mills is the perfect person to find this side of the character, as he has quite literally written the book on male communication. After the death of two friends, Mills wrote a book in 2022 about male mental health, called Putting on a Show: Manhood, Mates and Mental Health. It’s a sensitive and thoroughly researched look at masculinity, and why men struggle to express themselves, with sometimes deadly consequences.
“I think a lot of men, my research from my book a few years ago [shows], we don’t ask for what we want. Or it’s the extreme, we’re over-demanding. And, dare I say, in the manosphere, those kind of crazy guys, saying, ‘this is what I want you to do’,” Mills makes a face and points a finger in his mouth – the universal Millennial gesture for gross. “Yuck! And then there’s the other side of it, like we don’t say what we need because we don’t want to hurt our partner’s feelings or friends’ feelings.
“I feel like maybe Jim falls into that category a bit. Instead of saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want to not eat sugar. I don’t want to just work all the time, I really want to do some fun things’, I think that’s probably what has transpired here. And Jenna is very straightforward and there’s a kindness to her.”
Waitress eschews an overture, and the first notes of the show are actually a capella: “Sugar … sugar … sugar, butter, flour…” That first voice heard is actually Bareilles herself in a recording, soon joined by Jenna’s ode to pies: “It’s down with the recipe, and bake from the heart.”
That certainly describes Mills, who gets teary even talking about hearing the show’s music. When the cast finished their first run-through, they all sat together, moved by the beauty what they’d just created. “One of the guys in the show said, ‘Let us never forget this moment, because in a long-running show you sometimes can forget the feeling that you get, and it just becomes a job … But if ever it feels like, you’re forgetting the sentiment or the heart of the show, just remember this moment’.”
Waitress is now playing at Her Majesty’s Theatre, Melbourne; and opens at Sydney Lyric Theatre on August 1.
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