Theater Review: Writer DiabloCody and director DianePaulus spin an original feminist musical around the classic alt-rock album by Alanis Morissette, 'Jagged Little Pill'
, became an international sensation not just for its galvanizing pop hooks and crunchy guitar riffs. It was the compelling combination of its raw, intensely personal female introspection alongside universal reflections on the debris of adolescence that made young women, in particular, hear their own rollercoaster of emotional experience in the songs.
The singer-songwriter's unfiltered honesty about uncomfortable subjects was startling for mainstream pop at the time — who else was spitting out reminders of giving head in a theater? This was not the posing wink-wink sexuality of Madonna or the defiantly in-your-face wreckage of Courtney Love in the Hole years, but a frank exploration of young female experience hatched out of what felt like real hurt and outrage.
That delay is due partly to the exhausting busy-ness of Paulus' direction, ushering on the ensemble for almost every number as they fling themselves around like acrobatic whirling dervishes in choreography by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui that swings between tortured and ecstatic, with too little in between. It's a relief in the rare instances that a character or two are left alone to explore their feelings in song, without all the frantic distractions.
These main characters unpack their inner selves in "All I Really Want," smartly repurposed to convey different shades of unrest. But it's also the first sign that wrapping Morissette's idiosyncratically personal lyrics around folks for whom they were not written is going to be an imperfect fit, thematically as well as vocally.
Stanley's characterization packs the emotional heft to reel us in eventually, a process that begins to take hold in the powerful Act I closer, "Forgiven," sung when she takes a rare step inside the local church, looking for spiritual help alongside a bank of votive candles.
There's a more visceral charge in the anger of the wronged Jo, and Patten turns the spurned-lover anthem, "You Oughta Know," into an electrifying showstopper, starting out frozen in rage and then thrashing about in a violent release of stunning force.
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