review

milt thomas

If you saw the 1988 Rom-Com movie starring Julia Roberts, you will love this tasty musical adaptation now playing at Riverside Theatre. I am one of the few who did not see the movie, so I went into the show blind (so to speak). Mystic Pizza takes place in a small town pizza joint and the story revolves around three young waitresses trying to figure out a path through life but not quite ready to choose one.

It opens in a church with a wedding ceremony gone awry when Jojo (played by Deánna Giulietti) is about to marry her long-time beau, Bill (F. Michael Haynie), but she faints at the altar not ready to face the prospect of a lifelong commitment.

The other two waitress-friends are sisters, Kat and Daisy Araújo. Daisy (played by Krystina Alabado), like Jojo, just wants to have non-commitment fun, while sister Kat (Alaina Anderson) is an aspiring astronomer, has been accepted to Yale University, and works three jobs to save money for school. Ok, the astronomer thing might be bit of a stretch but just go with it.

One of Kat’s three jobs is taking care of a rental home for absentee owners and there she meets a new renter, Tim (played by Ben Fankhauser), an architect and Yale graduate, designing home upgrades for the owners. She lets the stars cloud her vision and falls for him, only to find out he has a wife back in New York. Is the budding relationship doomed?

Sister Daisy meets Charles (Vincent Michael), a rich young man, at a bar, and they begin having fun together. He invites her for dinner to meet his family, but they do not approve of her or her family’s lineage. Charles makes a scene and Daisy doesn’t think it is fun anymore, but will she come around?

The two sisters are polar opposites and do not get along through much of the show, but -spoiler alert – they ultimately make up to deal with the love crises facing both of them.

The gluten that binds all their lives together is the restaurant and its wise mother-figure owner, Leona (played by Jennifer Fouché). But she isn’t exactly rolling in the dough and thinks of selling. This is the crisis that focuses the three waitresses on their future. When Leona is just about to sign away the business, a haughty, big-city food critic enters the scene. A pizza joint is far below his restaurant review standards, but he buys a slice, takes a bite, and leaves. Will he or won’t he write a good review? Will the restaurant survive? Will the waitresses file for unemployment? Yadda yadda.

Well, much to everyone’s surprise the big city writer pens a great review and it turns out, the one thing that tickled the reviewer’s taste buds was Leona’s famous Secret Sauce.

For this show, however, the Secret Sauce is the music. Every song is a standalone hit from that era, all of them songs we know and love. “Small Town,” the John Mellencamp hit, is a theme song for where the show takes place and Cyndi Lauper’s hit, “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” a theme for the three main characters. All 20 songs perfectly meld into the story lines. If you just emerged from a time warp, you would easily believe these songs were originals written specifically for Mystic Pizza (especially the Van Morrison tune “Into the Mystic”).

All the performers sing, dance, move furniture and sets on and off stage while background props descend from above and the lighting changes, all seamlessly as the show progresses from scene to scene. The music is outstanding with musicians onstage, at times taking the spotlight, other times in the shade.

BTW,  If you saw the movie, Jojo and Bill were played by Lilli Taylor and Vince D’Onofrio, Daisy was played by Julia Roberts and another character, Steamer, was played by Matt Damon, all early in their careers. You probably also know that Mystic Pizza, the restaurant, is still open in its original Connecticut location where writer Amy Holden Jones was vacationing one summer and decided to write the story.

Keep in mind that Vero Beach is the first stop on what will become a 2026 national tour. It was put together right here in our ‘small town’ by the best professionals in the business.

This is a Mystic Pizza Supreme and you should definitely get your slice of it before the show goes on the road. It plays from now until January 26^th on the Stark Stage at Riverside Theatre. Tickets start at $45 and can be purchased by calling the Box Office at 772-231-6990 or online at www.riversidetheatre.com . Performances are Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays at 7:30pm; Fridays, and Saturdays at 8pm; with matinees on Wednesdays, select Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays at 2pm.