REVIEW: Jagged Little Pill (National Theatre)
Preview: Jagged Little Pill was a landmark when it dropped. An absolute juggernaut of feminist Gen X angst, it won like three-hundred Grammys and put Alanis Morrissette on the map in 1995. Of course, I was born in 1997, so this is all just what I’ve read about it. I do know of a bunch of the songs from rampant radio play, and I think they’re pretty good. But I’d never sat down and actually listened to the whole thing front-to-back. I’m usually very, very, against jukebox musicals, but as this was focusing on more of a concept album (a medium with plenty of ties to theatre), I was less apprehensive. I feel like a lot of critical and audience opinions on the show were clouded by COVID shutting it down, so when it hit the road more than a year after theatres reopened I was glad to be able to catch it. I’ve always wanted to actually attend a Diane Paulus-directed production as well, since I loved her work on Pippin.
Acting: For what it’s worth, the acting holds up. While some singers (Lauren Chanel, Heidi Blickenstaff) are better than others (Jade McLeod, Dillon Klena), the book acting is there and believable. I mention this a bit more in the Book/Music section of the review, but they waste two of the show’s most entertaining and most popular songs on Jo (McLeod), Frankie’s best friend who is woefully under-utilized. While “Hand in my Pocket” provides exposition for Franke after the I Want number (“All I Really Want”), McLeod makes up for slightly disappointing vocals with stellar choreo and a great range of emotion in the bombastic showstopper of “You Oughta Know”. I’ll never be able to hear that song again without thinking of it as an absolutely fantastic 11 o’clock number. In all likelihood it just was an off night vocally for them - I’m confident they would pull it off much better in future performances, and I’ll be sure to update this section if I see it again. If it was as impressive as it was with mediocre vocals, it probably kills when firing on all cylinders. Steve Healy, the dad, was also a sympathetic character with his own issues I found was excluded from the greater family dynamic onstage. When he was present, Chris Hoch had great vocals and a believable dad energy who had serious remorse for his history. Despite the shortcomings in the story, it is acted and sang quite well. 7/10
Production: Dear Evan Hansen and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. I’ve always considered myself president of the anti-screens-as-a-set-design-choice committee, and this show will be very present in my re-election campaign. It’s so, so lazy to do this. Yes, it’s cheaper, yes, it’s tourable, yes it’s versatile-ish. But at what cost? FUN! Hello Dolly put a whole goddamn TRAIN on the stage! Screens force-feed the audience a suspension of disbelief by using live-action footage and stock photos, ruining the immersion of the world on stage. Scenic Designer Riccardo Hernandez utilizes them to an uncomfortable degree, even when they don’t need to. Mood lighting, the existing props, and varied use of the LED gradients that frame the stage — which they DO do at times — could subtly assist in environmental storytelling without spoon-feeding it to the audience. In fact, Justin Townsend’s lighting designs are great when utilized properly. From the angelic drapes of brightness over our tragic heroines, to the high-intensity warmth of argumentative dialog. there’s plenty of ammo to argue that the lighting is the best technical element of the production. Something I don’t see many people talk about is the choreography, though. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui features dynamic, informative movements from the entire ensemble, more than I expected from a show focusing a lot on some main characters. I found myself enraptured by the coordination of serpentine limbs in numbers like You Oughta Know. It wasn’t a total flop technically, but there’s many more misses than hits. 3/10
Book/Music: This part feels like it’s more of an album review, and I’m no Fantano, but I will say this: it’s good! It’s a poetic, metaphorical set of songs that really did seem to work well as songs for a musical. I’ve seen and listened to my fair share of shows that do less with more in a similar vain. While the songs were out of order compared to Morrissette’’s original album —and featured two additional ones written specifically for the show — they already felt theatrical enough to have been on stage in 1995, when they originally came out. This includes the hits from the album, such as radio mainstays like “Ironic”, “Hand in my Pocket”, and the showstopping “You Oughta Know”. Not all radio-friendly songs can work in a serious stage production like this, but they were recontextualized well enough. While they worked well for the story, this is in spite of the narrative that was given. Diablo Cody’s story felt like a “““woke””” bingo board they desperately tried to check off as much as possible. The result is a narrative gumbo with a roux as white as milk.
The premise: we open on Christmas, with the Healy family seemingly doing fine. The son got into Harvard! The (adopted Black) daughter is a fiery activist! The mom is recovering well from a car accident! Of course, this being an ESMM (Edgy Suburban Mom Musical), everything actually, really sucks. Mom (MJ, potrayed with sympathetic aloofness by Heidi Blickenstaff), is addicted to opioids. Frankie (the exciting Lauren Chanel), the aforementioned adoptee, not only is missing a sense of belonging, but struggles to conceal her queerness from her parents. Steve, the underutilized father character played well by Chris Hoch, works 60-hour weeks at his white-collar job but is perennially absent from his family as a result. Filing out the family is Nick, the sociable yet reserved Harvard admit, underperformed by Dillon Klena. Other minor characters include Frankie’s classmates Phoenix and Bella, and best friend with benefits Jo. These side characters are who suffer the most from the underbaked plot, each being introduced with very interesting elements that I so wish they elaborated more! They felt unfair for some of these character traits to just serve as red herrings, or worse, being introduced merely as a contest to see who can suffer the most and make the Healy family more sympathetic in comparison. Too often as well does the plot rely on very outdated tropes — semi-spoiler, but personally, the cheating bisexual is really lame as a storytelling device. That’s only one thing they could have dropped; trying to shoehorn in queerness, sexual identity, gender, sexual assault/rape, drug addiction, porn addiction, capitalism, feminism, free speech, white privilege, classism, elitism, bullying (I’m really losing count here), into one (1) show is simply too much. This isn’t even to say that the plot is necessarily bad, either! It was pretty coherent and served as an entertaining vehicle to deliver the songs on, but unfortunately was over-engineered to oblivion to remain topical. 6/10
VisDev: Marketing for the show portrays a homey (ha), DIY aesthetic with typewriterlike fonts. The playbill also prominently features an upside-down house on a sky blue background, metaphorical as it is, and I think it conveys the themes appropriately without giving much away. Pre-show staging left a LOT to be desired. When it wasn’t a basic curtain with the logo projected on it, it was an empty stage with fore- and midground planes containing a very rudimentary black frame with a row of LEDs on it. It tells you nothing and is very bland, which is disappointing given all the other (dare I say interesting) aesthetic staging choices they make during other parts of the show. 3/10
Verdict: Despite the story being overstuffed beyond reason, clever use of the source material coupled with solid acting prevents this musical from being too much of a hard pill to swallow.
