Theater review: 'Jagged Little Pill' flips the playbook on jukebox musicals with a strong book and expressive choreography

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photo by Matthew Murphy, Evan Zimmerman

Cast of the North American touring production of "Jagged Little Pill"

Since the blockbuster success of Mamma Mia, theater fans have grown accustomed to jukebox musicals all following the same familiar formula: Start with a playlist of nostalgic pop tunes, tie them together with a superficial storyline, and polish into a blandly inoffensive crowd-pleaser.

However, my jaded attitude toward the genre was given a serious shaking by Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill: The Musical, which is currently playing at the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts as part of the Broadway in Orlando touring series. This show surprisingly flips the usual playbook on its head and dives into difficult subject matter, emerging with a divisive production that’s messy and frustratingly flawed, yet also aesthetically and emotionally arresting. 

Jagged Little Pill’s strengths start with the Tony-winning book, written by Diablo Cody of Juno fame. Set in upper-class Connecticut suburbs on the eve of the pandemic, it follows the fumbling efforts of Gen X supermom Mary Jane Healy (Julie Reiber) to connect with her Gen Z adopted Black daughter, Frankie (Teralin Jones), while simultaneously hiding her spiraling opioid addiction from her workaholic husband Steve (Benjamin Eakeley) and the rest of her family and friends.

When the rich friend of their Harvard-bound son Nick (Dillon Klena) is accused of raping Frankie’s friend Bella (Allison Sheppard; Delaney Brown on opening night), the Healys’ outwardly “perfect” life is shattered. Told with a wit and complexity that’s rarely seen in similar shows, this is a trigger warning-worthy tale of terrifying relevance that evokes #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, tackling enough dramatic material to fuel a stand-alone straight play or two.

Thankfully, this dark story dovetails well with the heartache and angst encapsulated by Alanis Morissette’s late-’90s albums. All of her big hits are here, from “All I Really Want” to “Ironic” (which gets a hilarious mid-song grammatical mansplaining), and orchestrator Tom Kitt has given them a theatrical lushness without sacrificing their grungy alt-rock origins, much as he did for Green Day’s American Idiot. Crucially, the key cast members are capable of matching Morissette’s mezzo-soprano singing range, while also echoing her aching intensity. In that regard, the most striking member of the talented Equity ensemble is Jade McLeod (as Frankie’s jilted first love Jo), who powerfully delivers “You Oughta Know” with a raw primal rage that rattles the rafters.

Director Diane Paulus keeps the action flowing cinematically across Riccardo Hernandez’s minimalist set, which frames the elevated onstage orchestra with a proscenium of sliding video screens and color-changing LED strips. The MVP of Jagged Little Pill may just be choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, whose expressive gesture-based movement direction seamlessly blends hip-hop and modern dance with ingenious acrobatics. The intricate backward blocking for “Smiling” and the chilling couch combat during “Uninvited” were among the most exciting musical theater moments I’ve seen in years.

With so much going in its favor, it pains me to admit that a good portion of the audience will feel alienated by Jagged Little Pill, with justification. First and foremost, the audio mixing is inexcusably awful, hearkening back to the worst days of the Bob Carr. Ensemble singers sound breathy and hollow, lead vocals are alternatively edgy and muffled, and the eight-piece band led by Matt Doebler consistently overpowers the cast. If you want to understand more than 20 percent of the lyrics, download the GalaPro captioning app and pray you can connect to the venue’s WiFi.

If you can get past the unintelligible audio, you may also notice that although this show would easily ace the Bechdel test (for a refreshing change), all of the male characters are exceptionally underdeveloped in comparison to their multi-dimensional female counterparts. Frankie’s new beau Phoenix (Rishi Golani) in particular is little more than a plot device, and neither of the Healy men are especially interesting, so their scenes severely slow down the show.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Jagged Little Pill far more than I expected to, which is what makes its problems all the more exasperating. Although I can’t wholeheartedly endorse it for anyone who doesn’t have Morissette’s lyrics engraved in their memory banks, it commanded my interest from start to finish, and didn’t assault me during the bows with an overblown megamix — which is much more than I can say about Moulin Rouge.