Review: JAGGED LITTLE PILL at Gammage Auditorium

Alanis Morissette’s 1995 alt-rock album “Jagged Little Pill” as a musical? As an “integrated catalog” musical like MAMMA MIA!? I was skeptical; I might’ve cringed, maybe shuddered. May have asked, “Is NOTHING sacred anymore?” Turns out though that while the adaptation doesn’t always work, the successes outnumber the problems they couldn’t solve. 

It’s the product of extensive collaboration, development, and furtherance to the point that labeling the show a jukebox musical sells the project short, primarily due to Morissette’s highly active role in the re-authorship, something rare to the format.

She’s rewritten her original lyrics extensively. Some are slight adjustments, sometimes she's made major changes, and sometimes a song gets a whole new take. Plus, there are two newly written songs by Morissette and co-writer and producer of the original Jagged Little Pill, Glen Ballard. This show isn’t a proxy for Morissette. It’s her. Jukebox musicals don’t offer that.

It is more cohesive, more intentional than I expected. The show’s script by screenwriter Diablo Cody (Oscar winner for Juno) is an impressive feat of reverse engineering. Cody earned a Best Book of a Musical Tony Award for a universal domestic drama somewhat organically sprung out of Morissette’s career canon. It’s still limited by the trappings and shortcomings of the genre, but it is the first integrated catalog musical with meaningful artistic value.

Cody presents a TV-style character format; a main protagonist with branching characters and subplots. Mary Jane is the wise-cracking matriarch of the Dickensianly named Healy family. They’re a dysfunctional but Christmas card-perfect Connecticut set of suburbanites.

MJ is addicted to pain pills after a semi-recent car crash, her husband (Steve) is a workaholic. Her two kids are Frankie, the angsty and socially aware daughter, and Nick, the overwhelmed, micromanaged son. 

Jo is Frankie’s emotional and physical partner. They’re in an unlabeled, passionate, teenage relationship where they’ve set no boundaries and never discussed expectations of fidelity. That should go well. I see “You Oughta Know” in your future, Jo.

Cody has options. Rather than contriving a single storyline to connect the pre-existing songs, she created different characters that could sing those songs, then had them interact. 

Jo gets “Hand in my Pocket”. The helicopter-parented Nick of course gets “Perfect”. Steve gets “Mary Jane”. 

In the lightest moment of the evening, Frankie reads aloud her original poem “Ironic” to her high school English class only to be interrupted by her classmates begging to differ on the definition of irony. "That's not irony,” they insist, “that’s just like… shitty.”

Mary Jane, played superbly by Julie Reiber, represents her pill addiction early in one of the new songs created for the show, “Smiling”. It’s a mesmerizing lyrical ballad made genius by a hyper-focused several-minute slow-motion rewind staging.

The music supervisor, orchestrator, and arranger of JLP is Tom Kitt. It’s a role he served to much acclaim for Green Day’s AMERICAN IDIOT. He’s the Pulitzer, Tony, Grammy, and Emmy-winning composer of NEXT TO NORMAL and IF/THEN and his influence on both JLP and AMERICAN IDIOT is a tentpole to their success.

Without his work, these musicals would sound like cover band tributes and/or episodes of Glee. Kitt focuses on things unavailable to the original composer: a large chorus of wide-ranged male and female voices and access to epic theatricality, even melodrama in his audio.

In AMERICAN IDIOT it led to his stunning arrangement of “21 Guns'' and the haunting, sweeping backing vocals of “Last Night on Earth”. In JAGGED LITTLE PILL, it’s Morisette’s “Uninvited” that’s elevated beyond the original release as a single from the soundtrack of the 1998 film City of Angels.

It's a choreographed physical and vocal duet between MJ and an abstract avatar for her addiction and younger self. This Act 2 highlight is eclipsed only by the staging, orchestration, and performance by Jade McCloud as Jo of Morissette’s first and greatest hit, “You Oughta Know”.

The main cast is adequate to excellent, but McCloud and Reiber carry the show. Reiber balances the wit and the struggle of MJ in a compellingly acted and incredibly sung performance.

Rishi Golani as Phoenix, the new kid in school/Frankie's new love interest, was little more than a thinly drawn collection of flirty smiles. I swear I saw some of the minor characters and ensemble phoning it in.

The quick mainstream classification of Alanis Morissette is rage and disquietude. In reality, the bulk of her career is focused on introspection and healing. JAGGED LITTLE PILL feels like the product of revisiting the groundbreaking album after that introspection and healing is done.

In a landscape flooded with jukebox musicals, (Four of them in this ASU Gammage season!) JAGGED LITTLE PILL stands out as the first artistically and socially responsible integrated catalog musical. It is a gem that deserves recognition.

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