Here’s a tip: If you missed ‘Waitress’ a few months ago, catch it this week at Bass Hall

Great moments in bad timing: Dying the same day as Michael Jackson (as Farrah Fawcett did); getting accused of sexual impropriety just before your next movie comes out (we’re talkin’ ‘bout you Kevin Spacey, Louis CK and, well, tons more); and being an acclaimed Broadway musical that debuts the same season as Hamilton. That’s what happened with Waitress, the sweet, low-key musical that marked pop star Sara Bareilles’ bow as a composer/lyricist for musical theater. Hamilton became a cultural sensation, sucking up all the oxygen (and awards) and leaving less showy productions as also-rans.

On the other hand, you can still get a ticket — now — to Waitress, which opens this week at Bass Performance Hall, instead of waiting nearly a year for the hip-hop Founding Fathers to freestyle into North Texas. Thank goodness for small favors.

Small, perhaps, but not insignificant. The origins of Waitress are prosaic: Based on a screenplay for an indie film starring Keri Russell, it’s about Jenna, a woman in a small town trapped in a marriage to an abusive layabout. Jenna’s skill at baking pies keeps her employed at the local diner, and she tries squirreling away tips so she can dump her hubby, without much success. Then the town gets a young, charming new doctor, and the attraction is almost instantaneous. As it turns out, the romance is more problematic than Jenna realizes. It’s a fairly simple story — one that seems especially relevant in an era when women’s empowerment is an actual movement, not merely one that flashes across the pages of magazines and disappears — but one told with such heart and affection that it charms the pants off you.

The national tour — an intimate affair, with about a dozen cast members and a clever but basic set — stopped through Dallas for two weeks in April; if you missed it then, it’s back for a week in Fort Worth with the same cast. Desi Oakley is winsome as Jenna, and Bryan Fenkart appropriately loveable as the new doc. But it’s Jeremy Morse as the goofy Ogie and Charity Angel Dawson as Jenna’s wisecracking buddy Becky who steal the show, which is chockfull of lovely musical numbers. You’ll wanna come back for seconds.            

Arnold Wayne Jones