Here’s a question for fans of statistics. What Broadway musical contains the greatest number of trauma topics? The Guinness Book of World Records is mum on the subject, but based on a viewing of the show currently at the Kravis Center this week, surely the answer is Jagged Little Pill.
Based on singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette’s decade-defining 1995 album, adapter Diablo Cody and director Diane Paulus turn it into a tuneful catalog of suburban angst. Those who go to musicals for lightweight escapist entertainment, be forewarned that you will encounter here tales of woe of opiate addiction, racism, rape, marital discord, homophobia, parental stress, teenage growing pains, sexual dysfunction and the dreaded scourge of social media.
Cody, who won an Oscar for her screenplay of Juno, added a Tony Award to her mantelpiece for the book to Jagged Little Pill. In it, she invents the Healey family of Connecticut, a seemingly model clan as seen by the outside world and from mom Mary Jane’s treacly Christmas letter. But Cody takes us inside, beneath the surface, to an entirely different reality.
Mary Jane (Julie Reiber) was recently involved in a car crash which left her in persistent pain, and soon addicted to fentanyl-laced oxycodone, first by prescription and soon from back-alley dealers. Her workaholic husband Steve (Benjamin Eakeley) has withdrawn from intimacy with her, preferring internet porn. And when pressured by Mary Jane, he only begrudgingly goes to couples counseling with her.
Then there’s son Nick (Dillon Klena), an overachiever at school, presumably headed to Harvard, but his striving for perfection is gnawing at him internally. Younger adopted daughter Frankie’s (Teralin Jones) challenge to fit in is more external, since she is black and gay in very white, straight surroundings.
Beyond the Healeys there is further pain and suffering. Most notably, at a party Nick attends, fellow student Andrew (Jordan Quisno) comes on to wrong-side-of-the-tracks Bella (Allison Sheppard) and when she is not compliant, he rapes her. When the incident becomes known, community passions heat up and the victim becomes the accused.
None of this is overtly addressed in Morissette’s album, but with some tinkering by music supervisor Tom Kitt — composer of Next to Normal, to which Jagged Little Pill has more than a passing resemblance — its songs display an emotional fidelity, far more than with most jukebox musicals.
Presumably, however, it was Paulus’s concept to clutter the stage with a dozen or so ensemble members, sort of a geek chorus, echoing her Tribe in the Hair revival. The problem is they turn many of Morissette’s solo numbers into choral arrangements, which make the crucial lyrics difficult to discern.
Still, enough of Morissette’s songwriting skill, her naked honesty and primal pain, comes through to please her fans and perhaps make new ones of those previously unfamiliar with her dark melodies and stark poetry. Among the standout numbers are Nick’s “Perfect,” Mary Jane’s “Uninvited” and particularly “You Oughta Know,” sung by Jade McLeod as Jo, Frankie’s special friend.
The result is a tough-minded show that asks a lot of an audience — careful listening and an emotional investment in the hard-edged narrative. Those willing to lean in and put themselves through Jagged Little Pill will likely be rewarded for the effort.
JAGGED LITTLE PILL, Kravis Center Dreyfoos Hall, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, Feb. 25. $40-$106. 561-832-7469 or visit www.kravis.org.