Stage Review - The Spitfire Grill (Lakewood Playhouse)

Stage Review - The Spitfire Grill
Presented By: Lakewood Playhouse - Lakewood, WA
Show Run: July 11 - July 27, 2025
Date Reviewed: Thursday, July 10, 2025 (Preview)
Run Time: 2 Hours, 10 Minutes (including a 15-minute intermission)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman

We’ve all come across the age-old story of a small town where everyone is content to go about their day to day only to find their existence turned upside down by the arrival of a newcomer, a stranger that doesn’t just disrupt the orderly manner in which the town’s citizens go through their routines, but one that in doing so also exposes some of the harsher truths that have been residing just below the surface among its people. In The Spitfire Grill, the 2001 musical that is based on the 1996 film of the same name and currently on stage at Lakewood Playhouse just outside of Tacoma through July 27, the newcomer is a young woman, Percy Talbott, just released from prison and arriving into the small town of Gilead (not THAT Gilead, thankfully) armed with the clothes on her back and a clipping from a travel guide advertising the village’s autumn colors along a Copper Creek. Percy first meets the local sheriff, Joe Sutter, her de facto parole officer and local tour guide, who gets her setup with room and board, along with a job, at The Spitfire Grill, an established diner owned and managed by local Hannah Ferguson. Among the townsfolk, Percy finds it hard to fit in, initially. The folks of Gilead are set in their ways and their patterns and don’t take kindly to the newcomer, especially the town gossip and postmistress Effy, but it’s with Hannah’s nephew Caleb’s wife Shelby where Percy’s loneliness and second-guessing takes solace. But as time passes, and Percy becomes more comfortable, and the town becomes more acquainted with her, especially when she devises a plan to help the struggling Hannah with a solution to the Grill’s financial woes, the sheen comes off of just about everyone, exposing old wounds and prejudices while shining a light on a number of social issues, such as wealth distribution and the treatment of veterans coming home after the Vietnam War. But by being exposed, it allows the town, and Percy, to heal these wounds, to look for hope, healing, empowerment, and redemption by each citizen giving themselves, and each other, permission for a second chance.

A unique characteristic about The Spitfire Grill is how character driven it is, more so than a lot of other musicals out there. Each character here has a unique and full story arc, each with a redemption story that relies on the other characters in the story to help strip back their personas to reveal raw and real foundations on which they can then build themselves back. This is something clearly that the director of the Lakewood Playhouse production, Maria-Tania Bandes B. Weingarden, understands and in her casting she’s put together a collection of actors who don’t just sing, and sing well, the show’s songs rooted in Americana and the folk tradition, Bluegrass, and contemporary musical theatre, but who understand the nature of the story and its characters. The group is led by Brookelyne Peterson as Percy, and between her ability to capture the hope and determination of the character throughout and deliver musically, beginning with “A Ring Around the Moon”, in which she captures the emotion of Percy while showing her range and her ability to carry a song regardless of the volume, her low volume work in this opening number is especially good. Brookelyne does a nice job bookending her performance with “Shine” in Act 2, a showcase for her power in which her Percy expresses her pain and longing for freedom and healing. She’s also got one of the most engaging moments in “Into the Frying Pan”, which both explores Percy’s misgivings at taking on her new life and provides platform for choreographer Ashley Roy-Simpson’s work, with Brookelyne managing the musical part of the song while negotiating the chaos of the kitchen at The Spitfire Grill. Ashley has done very nice job here, creating movement that makes sense in a relatively small space that is filled by the set pieces from Blake R. York’s design. In the musical, actors move in and out of implied doorways, between and around tables and other furniture, and up and down the stairs among the theatre’s seats. Maria-Tania’s blocking and Ashley’s choreography are fluid, there’s a lot of motion, and the cast does nicely to execute their steps with precision and avoid the plethora of potential traps they could run into.

The rest of the cast is good as well, both vocally and in the way they portray their characters. Shelby, who quickly becomes Percy’s best friend after becoming her co-worker at the grill, is played by Serah Haugse. Serah’s performance in “When Hope Goes” is excellent, it’s a song that is both sweet and sad, and one that features her wonderful voice as Shelby explains the story of Gilead’s past, as well as what has led the grill’s owner Hannah (played by Michelle Blackmon) to be as hard and standoffish as she is. Shelby’s husband, and Hannah’s nephew, Caleb is played by Ty Halton in a role that requires a bit of angst out of the performance. Caleb is both concerned that his aunt may be selling the grill, but also that his wife is putting her own happiness above his. It is a good performance from Caleb, though I would love to see a bit more anger out of him in the scenes where his character is truly despicable in how he treats his wife. A little more emotion in those scenes will make Shelby more sympathetic than she already is and will present Caleb as he is, the instigator of their conflict. Speaking of conflict, I can’t say enough about how much I like Madelaine Katz as the town gossip Effy Krayneck. Effy loves to stir up trouble, and Madelaine is so good at the sideward glances and the expressions that make her character as hilariously cringy as she is. Michelle as Hannah and Darryin B. Cunningham in the role of Sheriff Joe Sutter round out the main cast, while Zack Fowler has a small role, albeit one of the crucial ones in the musical. As Hannah, Michelle plays a character that has a tough and walled-off exterior, but once the wall is brought down, and and the audience learns more about the character and her past, the more sympathetic she becomes, and the more her underlying sadness comes to the surface. Darryin’s character is a local, born and raised in Gilead and in line to inherit the acres of wooded property that his father owns. This is one of the more complete performances I’ve seen from him, it’s a given that he can sing from a technical perspective, but as his character navigates his feelings for Brookelyne’s Percy, the tenderness he brings to Joe Sutter and the heartfelt emotion he infuses into his performance I’ve not seen before to this degree. Well done!

The Spitfire Grill is an entertaining story. It’s a serious story that deals with serious issues, though it’s never preachy, and is told in a sort-of Mark Twain way in that it uses humor in a smart way to address more serious issues. The cast understands the type of humor that they’re being asked to deliver, but they also understand the assignment, the more intellectual side of the story. And musically, this group, led by music director Elijah Bellis, delivers, belaying my concerns, some of which I expressed in my earlier review of Lakewood’s Godspell. Here, the vocal balance is just about perfect, from the crisp harmonies delivered by Brookelyne and Serah to the larger ensemble numbers that are wonderfully performed. Further, the balance between the live band, with Elijah on piano, Micah Curtis on guitar, and Steven Moncado delivering some of the more poignant musical moments through his cello, and the vocalists on stage is spot on, something that wasn’t quite there in Godspell. Finally, there is Michelle Weingarden-Bandes’ lighting design. The Lakewood Theatre space to some may seem to provide limitations, both in its size and configuration. Add to this the amount of movement among the actors and the disparate locations all presented on the same set, and one could excuse Michelle if the design was simple, but it’s not, and in doing so she’s put together a lighting configuration for this show that has as much movement and variability as the characters do. This design, as well as the contributions of the entire team, including costume designer Sage Stevens and sound designer Vanessa Cat, who has a lot to do what that musical/vocal balance, is excellent from top to bottom.

The Spitfire Grill is a musical that tells the story of a small town and a newcomer that nobody wanted but everyone needed, a stranger with a past who, through her own hard work and open heart gives each of the town’s citizens permission to deal with their own pain in a most constructive way. It’s a story of redemption, healing, and empowerment that is told through humor and music in a manner that is both enjoyable and relatable. The Lakewood Playhouse production is filled with all of the heart anyone familiar with the story through its film or stage versions will recognize, and presented by a cast that not only understands the story’s messages, and how best to deliver them, but does so with beauty and precision. It’s the perfect way for Lakewood Playhouse to close out its season, a season that has steadily improved the quality of its storytelling as the year has progressed, stating without a doubt that, after a change in direction over the past year or so, the theatre’s creative team under the leadership of Joseph C. Walsh, has not just found its footing, but it’s built a foundation on which to build for years to come.

The Spitfire Grill runs on stage at Lakewood Playhouse through July 27. For more information, including ticket availability and sales, visit https://www.lakewoodplayhouse.org/.

Photo credit: Ashley Roy-Simpson