When Alanis Morissette sang, “All I really want is some patience / A way to calm the angry voice,” she couldn’t have known that voice would echo three decades later in a musical of the same name — Jagged Little Pill, now running at Slow Burn Theatre through June 28.
Under the direction of Slow Burn’s co-founder and director, Patrick Fitzwater, Jagged Little Pill closes out the theater company’s 16th season leaving audiences wanting more.
“Jagged Little Pill is a story about what happens when the image of perfection starts to crack, and the courage it takes to face what’s underneath,” Fitzwater says. “Alanis Morissette’s music gives voice to that tension in a way that is raw, honest and deeply human.”
Winner of two Tony Awards, two Drama Desk Awards, eight Outer Critics Circle Awards, and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album, Jagged Little Pill features lyrics by Alanis Morissette, music by Alanis Morissette and Glen Ballard, and a book by Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody.
The show ran on Broadway from 2019 through 2021, despite closing during the COVID pandemic for seven months.
The show’s score features Morissette’s hit songs from her catalog and the album, Jagged Little Pill, and includes two songs Morissette wrote specifically for the musical: “Predator” and “Smiling.”
Framing the plot are Morissette’s most iconic songs, including “Ironic,” “You Oughta Know,” “Hand in My Pocket,” and “All I Really Want,” taking on new life and broadening their significance.
“Ironic” becomes an English class assignment for Frankie – part poem, part essay, part autobiography and part “brilliant-ish,” as the teacher explains. Students heckle her in class – “that’s not ironic,” echoing the criticisms leveled at Morissette at the time.
“You Oughta Know” becomes what Rolling Stone calls “a queer anthem,” a rallying cry for gay youth. and elicits a round of mid-scene applause from the audience.
In the new number, “Smiling,” Mary Jane responds to her husband’s Steve’s query and Morissette’s iconic song, “Mary Jane”: “What’s the matter, Mary Jane? You had a hard day… You never seem to wanna dance anymore.”
“I keep on smiling, keep on moving, can’t stand still,” an over-wrought and emotionally exhausted Mary Jane sings as response.
Despite being a musical, Jagged Little Pill takes on the heavy topics of addiction, identity, sexuality and social justice, among others. Other themes woven through the storyline — couples counseling, interracial adoption, sexual assault, LGBTQ+ identity — deepen the show’s emotional landscape.
Are you singing along yet?
The story revolves around the Healys, a white suburban Connecticut family, and opens with the mother, Mary Jane Healy, played to perfection by Kimberly Doreen Burns, sending out electronic Christmas cards extolling the Leave It to Beaver life she wants others to believe she has.
With a workaholic and porn-addicted husband, Ben Sandomir, as Steve Healy; an African-American bisexual adopted daughter, Frankie, played by Lauren Chanel; and the perfect son, Nick, played by Isaac Kueber, who was just accepted into Harvard, that idyllic life can seem elusive. When the cracks beneath the picture-perfect façade begin to show, the Healys must choose between maintaining the status quo or facing harsh truths about themselves, their community, and the world around them.
Burns sings, dances and leaves it all on the stage, appearing in most every scene. Her “couch dance,” depicting an opioid overdose (she’s addicted to oxycodone and fentanyl due to a car accident), a duet with her alter ego, is an ethereal, other-worldly hallucinatory dance.
Both Sandomir and Kueber turn in competent and steady performances, Sandomir as the good provider but absent husband, and Kueber as the high-achieving student whose silence almost costs him his future. Chanel, who toured in the national company as Frankie, reprises her role with energy and a sweet singing voice.
Standing out among other members of the cast, which includes Manny Tijerina as Phoenix and Mason Materdomini as Andrew, are Emily van Vliet Perea as Bella, a survivor of sexual assault, and Sydney Freihofer, an actor who identifies as “gender non-conforming,” who plays Frankie’s girlfriend, Jo.
The ensemble includes Abbey Alder, Daniella Coby, Madeline Dunn, Eli Flynn, Cat Pagano, Jack Pawlowski, Mikayla Queeley, Natasha Ricketts, Immanuel Rodriguez, Ashley Valent and Corey Vega.
Additionally, the production features music direction by Gio Tio, choreography by Madeline Dunn, scenic design by Nikolas Serrano, lighting design by Clifford Spulock, and costume design by Rick Peña.
While the musical may start out seemingly as a series of vignettes, by the end of the second act, the storyline takes shape and the emotional arc of the play is in full swing, bringing to bear the full emotional power of both the characters and the storyline, and leaving audiences deeply engaged in the lives of the characters and their final deliverance.
Despite the script taking on serious societal, political and emotional issues, Slow Burn’s production of Jagged Little Pill delivers it all in an exuberant package filled with optimism, hope for the future and a surprising amount of joy.
And, don’t forget the Alanis Morissette music.
To paraphrase the singer/songwriter, it’s messy but moving, sad but uplifting, too much and too little — and somehow, just right.
JAGGED LITTLE PILL runs at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW 5th Ave., Fort Lauderdale, through June 28. Performance times vary. Tickets are available online at BrowardCenter.org or Ticketmaster.com; by phone at 954-462-0222; or in person at the Broward Center’s AutoNation Box Office.