This wasn’t my first trip to Joe’s Pie Diner.

While I didn’t see the hit Broadway production of “Waitress,” I did catch the national tour. I also wrote about the live capture video that’s currently available on HBO Max.

Each time I’ve seen it, including the current run at Beef & Boards, I’ve been more impressed with Sarah Bereilles’ score and Jessie Nelson’s book (adapted from Adrienne Shelly’s screenplay). In the realm of movies-to-stage adeptations, it doesn’t reach the heights of “The Band’s Visit” or “Once,” but it certainly on the well-worth-reviving menu.

What I missed in both of those previous cases, though, was sufficient grit. Both the actress on the tour and Bereilles in the video certainly sang powerfully. Both handled the material well. And, sure, the eleven o’clock number, “She Used to Be Mine” — one of the richest inner monologue songs in recent musical theater — is going to leave me in tears in any decent production. But in both it was clear from the first dose of sugar/butter/flour that Jenna, our lead, was going to rise above their challenges.

What was clear from Beef & Board’s more intimate production is that the test of “Waitress” is whether the rest of the show is as moving.

Jenna is a young woman resigned to being the meager breadwinner in an abusive marriage. An unplanned pregnancy that could signal further resignation to her assumed fate instead sparks change.

Part of that change — in a gutsy plot point that would have been verbotten in theater not too long ago — our heroine has a passionate affair with a married doctor. And isn’t punished for it.

Side note: Maybe we don’t give the northside dinner theater’s audience enough credit: That tryst — and some borderline R-rated lines and positions — didn’t seem to make the B&B audience think any less of Jenna. I didn’t sense any tsk-tsk-ing. Also, this is the rare B&B show that doesn’t have a big dance number every fifteen minutes or so. There is some sytlized movement, but this isn’t the kind of show with a kickline or a confetti cannon. The audience I saw it with didn’t seem to miss that.

More significantly, it’s rare that a musical — particular on the B&B stage — centers on a depressed, downtrodden character. “Waitress” is a neighbor to “The Full Monty” in its treatment of blue collar realities as more than just background. And neither score not script shies away from the melencholy.

Sure, there are tropes. Jenna’s husband is just shy of moustache twirling in his insensitivity — and is only given a brief moment later in the show to give him some context. And there’s a secondary couple the beau of whom gets a big, fun song (albeit one that is a bit stalker-y this early in the relationship).

But the story is Jenna’s and Keirsten Hodgens, whose credits include Broadway’s “Six,” never showboats, instead letting the audience lean in. What even Broadway performers sometimes seem to forget is that a show is most powerful when the character, not the star, is sharing their thoughts in song. Hodgens creates an achingly believable Jenna, a woman lost and whose happy ending isn’t destined. When she gets to “She Used to Be Mine,” it’s the peak after a climb, not a mountain in and of itself. And it’s beautiful.

Like Jenna, Hodgens has strong support from her fellow apron-wearers Grace Atherholt as shrinking violet Dawn and Chanel Edwards-Frederick as brassy Becky are both the friends we should all be lucky enough to have.

And kudos to director/choreographer Stephanie Torns, an ensemble member of “Waitress” on Broadway, for understanding that — in the kitchen and the theater — how you mix the ingredients is as important as the ingredients themselves.

(Photo by Indy Ghost Light)