The North American tour of Jagged Little Pill began a brief but memorable visit to the Fox Theater on Friday, January 19. The musical is ambitious, gripping, and moving. The touring production is marvelous.
The musical was inspired by Alanis Morissette’s 1995 album of the same name. The show’s music by Morissette and Glen Ballard, the lyrics are by Morissette, and the book is by Diablo Cody.
The show is far more serious than most jukebox musicals. At the outset, Mary Jane Healy is composing an annual Christmas letter as she and her family are posing for a portrait. That letter paints a rosy but misleading picture of the family. Mary Jane has become addicted to painkillers that were prescribed for her after a traffic accident. She and her husband, Steve, are no longer intimate, and he has turned to internet pornography.
The family’s adopted daughter, Frankie, is black. She is in a relationship with another woman but is attracted to a boy in one of her classes. Frankie worries that she doesn’t fit in with the family and that she isn’t measuring up to her older brother, Nick, who has just received early admission to Harvard. His string of successes ends, however, when he fails to act after witnessing a rape at a party.
Cody’s book forthrightly explores challenging questions involving addiction, sexual assault, and gender identity. The characters undergo trying journeys before arriving at a hard-won but hopeful conclusion.
The fit between the book and the music is astonishing even though Morissette wrote only two new songs for the show. The rest are from the Jagged Little Pill album and elsewhere in Morissette’s catalog. Musical supervision, orchestrations, and arrangements are by Tom Kitt.
The music numbers have enormous impact thanks the emotional power of the songs, the compelling choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and the stellar performances. The cast is headed by Julie Reiber as Mary Jane, Benjamin Eakeley as Steve, Teralin Jones as Frankie, Dillon Klena as Nick, Jade McLeod as Jo, and Allison Sheppard as Bella.
The action moves at a blazing clip under Diane Paulus’s brilliant direction. The production’s remarkable fluidity would not be possible without the synergy of Riccardo Hernandez’ scenic design, Justin Townsend’s lighting, Lucy Mackinnon’s video, and Jonathan Deans’s sound. The contemporariness of the story is established by Emily Rebholz’s costumes and J. Jared Janas’s hair, wigs, and makeup.
At this writing, only two performances of Jagged Little Pill remain: January 20 at 7:30 p.m. and January 21 at 1 p.m. The Fox Theatre is at 527 North Grand Boulevard.
—Gerry Kowarsky
From the left, Dillon Klena (Nick), Teralin Jones (Frankie), Julie Reiber (Mary Jane) and Benjamin Eakeley (Steve) in the North American tour of Jagged Little Pill. Photo by Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade.
