Jagged Little Pill
Opening Night: December 5, 2019
Theater: Broadhurst Theatre
The Healys appear to be a picture-perfect suburban family—but looks can be deceiving. When the cracks beneath the surface begin to show, they must choose between maintaining the status quo or facing harsh truths about themselves, their community, and the world around them.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
December 5, 2019
The great news for “Jagged Little Pill,” and for us, is that its creative team, led by the director Diane Paulus, did more than just fiddle with a show that, though blurry, was already entertaining. The overhauled version that opened on Thursday at the Broadhurst Theater is fully in focus: clear in its priorities, rich in character, sincere without syrup, rousing and real. It easily clears the low bar of jukebox success to stand alongside the dark original musicals that have been sustaining the best hopes of Broadway in recent years.
READ THE REVIEW
December 5, 2019
Still, there are thrilling emotional peaks and urgently relatable contemporary issues that should generate a passionate audience for Jagged Little Pill among young theatergoers who responded to musicals like Next to Normal and Dear Evan Hansen. The messiness of the show’s craft is even somewhat justified by its focus on “perfectly imperfect people, just like you.” Whatever the weaknesses of the creative team’s work, they deserve credit for breaking the jukebox mold and building a story that wrestles with real feelings and takes a stand against complacency.
READ THE REVIEW
December 5, 2019
Nearly 25 years after “Jagged Little Pill” hit the shelves of record stores, Alanis Morissette’s innovative 1995 album has arrived on Broadway under the muscular direction of Diane Paulus, who launched this galvanic production at the American Repertory Theater. The show’s supportive book by screenwriter Diablo Cody interprets Morissette’s musical idiom as a universal domestic drama — with strong emphasis on the kids and their friends — recounted in heart-wrenching song. It would be an insult to call this stage adaptation a jukebox musical, because unlike most specimens of that theatrical genre, the story seems to emerge organically from the music. Both structurally and thematically, comparisons to the 2008 musical “Next to Normal” by Brian Yorkey and Tom Kitt are probably inevitable. (In each show, an all-American family is profoundly challenged by a mother suffering from a debilitating condition.) But Morissette’s youthful perspective and the rocking-good score make “Jagged Little Pill” feel very much of the moment — this moment.
READ THE REVIEW
December 5, 2019
Still, as harsh as its realities get, Jagged Little Pill, with its we can work it out ethos, doesn’t have the heart to suggest intractable, long-term consequences for its tribulations, moving to the inevitable year-later Christmas letter that contains an improbably tidy ending for the family and all of its skeletons. Jagged Little Pill can’t resist polishing itself and smoothing out every one of its prickly shards, reducing each microcosmic social issue to a future anecdote recalled at the holidays, told by one big happy family.
READ THE REVIEWDecember 5, 2019
A more positive way to spin the situation is to say, Jagged Little Pill is an embarrassment of riches, just heaped in an ungainly pile. In many areas, it is. The cast is enormously appealing, with Stanley doing outstanding work as a mother who can be narcissistic, shallow, and horrid, but whose journey to the bottom is truly heartbreaking. How an actor so healthy and fresh can grow gaunt and haggard on command is a marvel. Gooding, as the brash, no-wave feminist in search of herself, is pure charisma with a pop belt to die for. Patten (whose DNA was clearly spliced from Laurie Metcalf and Bebe Neuwirth) is an instant star. Klena and Krill have less to do, but they do it quite well.
READ THE REVIEW