‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Elizabeth Stanley. Photo: Matthew Murphy

JAGGED LITTLE PILL
Lyrics by Alanis Morissette
Music by Alanis Morissette & Glen Ballard
Book by Diablo Cody
Directed by Diane Paulus
Broadhurst Theatre
235 West 44th St.
212-239-6200
https://jaggedlittlepill.com/

By Scott Harrah

Back in 1995, Alanis Morissette became a superstar with her seminal album Jagged Little Pill. Alanis, then just 20, defined emotionally raw music for a new generation of young women with the album’s iconic smash hits, from “You Oughta Know” and “Hand in My Pocket” to “Ironic.” Alanis’s music was highly personal, neurotic, hauntingly poetic and angry—all things we’d never heard before from a female artist so young and unapologetically feminist. Her music sounded so genuine because the pain she sang about came from such an organic place. Perhaps that’s why Jagged Little Pill on Broadway is so, well, hard to swallow. With a book by Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (Juno), this jukebox musical only uses Alanis’s songs as the soundtrack for a story about a dysfunctional suburban family in Connecticut.  The story, while told with intelligence and a multi-talented cast of actors with good voices, is all too familiar and strained at times. Alanis’s classic songs are all here, performed with panache and with new added nuances, but they often seem out of place with such heavy-handed material.

Mary Jane Healy (Elizabeth Stanley)—cleverly named, of course, after the song “Mary Jane” on the Jagged Little Pill LP—is referred to by the nickname MJ. She pretends she and husband Steve (Sean Allan Krill), a workaholic attorney, have the perfect family. Their son Nick (Derek Klena) has just received word that he’ll be attending Harvard University when he finishes high school, but he hates the pressure to succeed this puts on him. The family also has an adopted African American daughter Frankie (Celia Rose Gooding). Of course, nothing is as idealistic as it seems. MJ was in a bad car accident and has since developed an addiction to opioid painkillers and has lost interest in sex with her husband. Steve, she discovers, has a secret addiction as well—to internet pornography. Daughter Frankie is hiding a shocking secret as well: She is bisexual and has been carrying on a lesbian fling with friend Jo (Lauren Patten). Trouble arises when Frankie meets new boy in town Phoenix (Antonio Cipriano) and falls for him.

Ms. Cody spins quite a tangled yarn here, covering enough controversial topics to fill a whole season of TV’s “Movie of the Week.” In two and a half hours (with an intermission), Jagged Little Pill covers topics ranging from rape and opioid addiction to bisexuality, marriage counseling, and so on. Despite its attempts to be “woke,” Jagged isn’t exactly original. The recent teen musical Dear Evan Hansen handled similar subject matter better because its narrative was more focused and less contrived.

The setting is 2019, but some of the characters still wear 1990s-style Seattle grunge gear. Alanis fans will love the way many of her classics are presented. For example, “Ironic” is performed during a high school writing class and characters stop to say what people said back when the song first topped the charts: Many of Alanis’s examples of “ironic” things like “a black fly in your chardonnay” or “rain on your wedding day” aren’t ironic at all. Regardless, “Ironic” is a great song.  “You Oughta Know”—the scorned woman’s anthem that made Alanis a household name, with its lyrics like “would she go down on you in a theater? —takes on a whole new meaning as sung by Lauren Patten as Jo.

Some of Alanis’ later hits are also included and used in clever ways to weave their way around the narrative. “Hands Clean” from Under Rug Swept—a song about sexual abuse Alanis encountered when she was a teenage pop singer in Canada, years before Jagged Little Pill—is used to tell the story of the rape of a teen character, Bella (Kathryn Gallagher). The infamous yet catchy “Thank U” is also here—the 1998 hit in which Alanis thanks India, terror and silence.

The Alanis songbook nearly 25 years after the release of Jagged Little Pill is still influential and groundbreaking in its own right. Alanis was always “real” and truly ahead of her time. She was singing about abusive men and helping to empower women years before the “#MeToo” movement.

Diablo Cody’s turgid story is overwhelming at times and so full of “issues” that it becomes absurd.  An experienced director like Diane Paulus should have been able to fine-tune the story much better, and Sidi Larbi Cherakaoui’s choreography is literally all over the place.

There are many fine performances in Jagged Little Pill, particularly Ms. Patten as Jo. However, despite all the talent on the Broadhurst stage, it is unfortunate that Alanis’s music could not have been used for a more satisfying musical.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published December 12, 2019
Reviewed at December 11, 2019 press performance.

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Elizabeth Stanley & Kathryn Gallagher. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Elizabeth Stanley & Celia Rose Gooding. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Celia Rose Gooding, Lauren Patten & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Derek Klena & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Derek Klena. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Elizabeth Stanley & Heather Lang. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Lauren Patten & cast. Photo: Matthew Murphy

‘JAGGED LITTLE PILL’: Celia Rose Gooding & Antonio Cipriano. Photo: Matthew Murphy

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SAILORS’ DELIGHT: (left to right) Jay Armstrong Johnson, Tony Yazbeck & Clyde Alves. Photo: Joan Marcus

ON THE TOWN
Music by Leonard Bernstein
Book & lyrics by Betty Comden & Adolph Green
Based on an idea by Jerome Robbins
Directed by John Rando
Choreography by Joshua Bergasse
Lyric Theatre
213 West 42nd Street
(877-250-2929), www.OnTheTownBroadway.com/

By David NouNou

On The Town is a tribute to a New York of yesteryear. Based on Jerome Robbins’ ballet Fancy Free, about three sailors on a 24-hour shore leave and the adventures they encounter on this one memorable day. To say this is the best revival of the dated musical would not seem much of a compliment, considering the two that preceded it. The 1971 version had Phyllis Newman, Bernadette Peters and Donna McKechnie as the female leads; Claire De Loone, the anthropologist; Hildy, the taxi driver; and Ivy Smith, the dancer, respectively.  The males/sailors were forgettable and negligible.  It was somewhat cute and barely ran three months at the Imperial. Then came the hubristic George C. Wolfe 1998 fiasco with Lea DeLaria as Hildy and Jesse Tyler Ferguson (pre “Modern Family” fame) as Chip, one of the sailors; now that was an odd pairing. It lasted less than a month at the Uris Theatre, now named the Gershwin. I am sure the theater has recovered from that ill-fated bomb since Wicked has landed there.

This version has been magnificently orchestrated and makes the score come alive; it is fresh, vibrant and nostalgic. Musical aficionados will recognize the sharp musical notes that later appeared in Leonard Bernstein’s 1957 masterpiece, West Side Story. The same can be said of Jerome Robbins’ choreography and ballet.  You will be able to recognize his signature moves of the leaping dancers, with their arms in the air and ballet steps that were electrifyingly used in West Side Story. Joshua Bergasse has splendidly captured and recreated Robbins’ movements, none better than in the ballet sequences.

We have the three sailors: Gabey (Tony Yazbeck), the shy dreamer; Ozzie (Clyde Alves) the ladies’ man; and Chip (Jay Armstrong Johnson), the tourist who wants to see all of New York in 24 hours. Let me say all three are charmers with great voices and certainly can dance. Their female interests ultimately will be Ivy Smith/Miss Turnstiles for June and Gabey’s Miss Ideal, the beautiful Megan Fairchild, making her Broadway debut.  Elizabeth Stanley is the anthropologist, Clair, who forgets she has a fiancée and goes ape for her Neanderthal man, Ozzie. Last but not least is Hildy, the man-hungry cab driver (Alysha Umphress), who has found her bait in Chip. The three women are lovely, enchanting and know how to belt a song. My favorite couple has to be Gabey and Ivy; their ballet together is simply sublime.

John Rando, the director, and his team have certainly taken a dated dodo of a musical and remastered it to be enjoyed for its dancing and singing merits by contemporary audiences and overlook its wobbly book. He fine-tuned most of his cast except for one. I must question his taste and sense of humor when it comes to Jackie Hoffman and giving her all that free rein on that stage. Ms. Hoffman, in various roles, doesn’t just chew up the scenery; she inhales the wings as well. She has been doing this “hit and miss” shtick since Xanadu and The Addams Family and lately it’s more of a huge, annoying miss than shtick.

Beowulf Borritt, the scenic and projection designer who was such a sensation earlier this year in anchoring LCT’s Act One, for which he won a Tony for its magnificence and intricacy, here has a set that is just representational. Although he uses names and places of the 1944 era by way of projection designs, the time represented might be 1944 but the projections we see are 2014. For this cavernous theater, the show needed a more grounded set to anchor this show instead of just to represent it. However On the Town is represented, it still shows New York as being “One Helluva Town.”

MISS TURNSTILES: Megan Fairchild (center) & the cast of ‘On the Town.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

LADY CAB DRIVER: (left to right) Jay Armstrong Johnson & Alysha Umphress in ‘On the Town.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

GUY ‘ON THE TOWN’: Tony Yazbeck. Photo: Joan Marcus

THEY’LL TAKE MANHATTAN: The cast of ‘On the Town.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

GIRL MAGNETS: (left to right) Clyde Alves, Tony Yazbeck & Jay Armstrong Johnson & the ladies of ‘On the Town.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 22, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on October 21, 2014

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