The Musical Jagged Little Pill Is a Spirited Take on Alanis Morissette’s Work

Following a rotating platter of nostalgia-infused musicals from Pretty Woman to Mean Girls to Legally Blonde, the pop-rock musical Jagged Little Pill is the latest of its kind to arrive on Dallas stages. This week, it has five dates at the Winspear Opera House.

The jukebox show stages songs from Alanis Morissette’s 1996 studio album Jagged Little Pill. The 12-track album, which includes classics such as “You Oughta Know,” “Ironic” and “Hand In My Pocket,” took home Album of the Year at the 38th Annual Grammys along with a handful of other awards. So it's no surprise the body of work was a top pick to become a Broadway musical.

With a book by Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, the musical is tracked predominantly by the original work of Morissette and songwriter Glen Ballard, with some added songs by Michael Farrell and Guy Sigsworth. Tom Kitt creates new arrangements and orchestrations to transform the grunge-pop album into a piece of work that succeeds on the stage.

The story centers around the Healys, a Connecticut family that's the image of the perfect nuclear family. The mother, Mary Jane Healy (Julie Reiber), likes people to know that their son, Nick, (Dillon Klena) is headed to Harvard, that their daughter, Frankie (Teralin Jones), is succeeding in her artistic ventures, that the father, Steve (Benjamin Eakeley), just got an impressive job promotion, and that she is happy to be supporting all of them (and that it’s not breaking her).

The foursome is riddled with unresolved struggles. Nick champions a dismal understanding of life beyond getting into Harvard; Frankie grapples with being a Black and queer girl adopted by a white family and confined by white suburbia; Steve works 60-hour weeks and misses the family’s lives; and Mary Jane hides her addiction to opioids following a car accident almost a year earlier.

Once the novelty of staging an entire plot to a beloved album in our cultural imagination wears off, this show runs into the same issue lots of jukebox musicals face: does the Jagged Little Pill soundtrack elevate that story by attaching it to a larger narrative of existing work or does the album suffocate the story by forcing characters to fit into songs that don’t belong to them?

At times, the oddity of hearing a middle-aged man belt your favorite Morissette lyric like it's a Dear Evan Hanson song is disorienting. Suspending disbelief over not-quite-right lyrics proves tiring and leaves you wondering what the characters would say if they were given an original score. Nonetheless, using Alanis Morissette’s angsty breakout album to soundtrack a suburban family in disarray proves a worthwhile endeavor.

While the show chases various narratives and whims, the dominating story takes place between Mary Jane and Frankie.

Mary Jane is in denial, wanting the family to push forward until they can’t anymore, oblivious and avoidant. This persistence is challenged when her opioid prescription runs out, forcing the Lululemon-clad mother to resort to the streets for her painkiller of choice. She is challenged once again, as her son witnesses his best friend raping his other friend Bella (Allison Sheppard) at a high school party.

All the while, Frankie pursues writing and activism (through a club in which she makes up half of the membership). She develops a friend-with-benefits love with her best friend Jo (Jade McLeod) and falls for a boy in her class named Phoenix (Rishi Golani).
As distress floods the mother-daughter relationship at all times, their interests collide most notably after Frankie decides to help Bella following the rape — a choice Mary Jane warns against. (A rape victim herself, Mary Jane wonders why God’s will would include her college assault, and she pays her shame forward her to the next generation.)

Choreographed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, the show is most compelling when dance is at the center. The show presents ensemble numbers with a style similar to other Broadway depictions of high school life (take Casey Nicholaw’s work on Mean Girls and The Prom, for example), but one that doesn’t forget the fact that it’s an Alanis Morissette musical.

As lyrics might fall short of expressing what the characters in Jagged Little Pill actually believe, the dancing avatars step in to serve the plot, which spotlight the characters’ internal distress. Dancers double for the characters Bella and Mary Jane during their darkest scenes. As Bella attends the tragic school party, her drunken loss of control is depicted through Bella's avatar (Shelby Finnie).

The avatar returns to portray Mary Jane’s body fighting a laced drug as Mary Jane herself sings “Uninvited.” The avatar convulses, limps and glides in movements around the couch.

Steeped in tragedy — almost too many for the show itself to keep track of — Jagged Little Pill is not without laughs and excitement. The cast is forceful, giving a new life to the beloved Morissette soundtrack with the band.

Like its namesake album, Jagged Little Pill is unapologetic, spirited and moving. Though the show leaves some promises unfulfilled, it's certain you will leave Jagged Little Pill feeling entertained.

The national tour for Jagged Little Pill stops in Dallas for five shows, Jan. 12–14, at the Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St. Tickets are available at the AT&T Performing Arts Center website.