{"id":1941,"date":"2026-06-12T18:36:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T18:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1941"},"modified":"2026-06-12T18:36:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T18:36:22","slug":"review-jagged-little-pill-doesnt-do-justice-to-iconic-album","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1941","title":{"rendered":"Review: &#8216;Jagged Little Pill&#8217; doesn&#8217;t do justice to iconic album"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<div>\n<p>By definition, jukebox musicals are a musician\u2019s \u201cGreatest Hits\u201d album reimagined as a plot-<br \/>\ndriven concept album. This often takes one-of-two forms: A \u2013 the biography, in which the songs<br \/>\nnarrate the life of the musician; or B \u2013 the melodrama, in which an otherwise original story is<br \/>\ndriven by popular songs.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1939\">SF Giants bring back Ryan Walker in search for bullpen answers<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The former wants to be a Rosetta Stone for a beloved entertainer; the<br \/>\nlatter is likely what a writer saw in their head when they listened to the songs over and over. Both<br \/>\nare unabashed fan fiction.<\/p>\n<p>The latter would probably explain Oscar-winner Diablo Cody\u2019s book for \u201cJagged Little Pill,\u201d the<br \/>\nEast Bay premiere of which is currently running at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek. The<br \/>\nmusical takes its name from Alanis Morissette\u2019s award-winning album, and uses the Canadian<br \/>\nmusician\u2019s catalogue to tell a rather conventional tale of suburban bliss not being all it seems.<\/p>\n<p>With both Morissette and Cody becoming famous for breaking their respective molds,<br \/>\ncollaborating on something conventional comes off as downright regressive.<\/p>\n<p>Mind you, the story still goes for shock. In a cookie-cutter Connecticut town, we find Mary Jane<br \/>\nHealy (Molly Bell) writing her family\u2019s annual Christmas letter. The unusually frank missive<br \/>\nreveals that Mary Jane finds herself comfortably numb on meds following a recent car<br \/>\naccident. She\u2019s grown distant from her workaholic husband Steve (Keith Pinto), and her adopted<br \/>\nBlack daughter Frankie (Chanel Tilghman) is the very sort of antifa lesbian the White House<br \/>\nwarns us about. Mary Jane\u2019s only true source of pride is the knowledge that her letterman-<br \/>\njacketed son Nick (Zeke Edmonds) has just been accepted to Harvard.<\/p>\n<p>The Healys go through the everyday motions until Frankie complicates her relationship with Jo (Mickey Hanano Skinner) by catching the eye of handsome new boy Phoenix (Mario Houle). That\u2019s nothing compared to when she and Nick attend a party with childhood friend Bella (Grace Margaret Craig), during which a line is crossed that will have lasting repercussions for everyone in town.<\/p>\n<p>(Be advised that this show features drug use, teenaged drinking, and the aftermath of sexual<br \/>\nassault.)<\/p>\n<p>In and of itself, it\u2019s not a bad plot. In fact, knowing how long it takes to workshop a Broadway<br \/>\nmusical, this show\u2019s 2018 debut would have seemed almost perfectly timed to open at the height<br \/>\nof the #MeToo movement.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1937\">LA County medical examiner details cause of death for slain actor James Handy<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The problem is that Cody\u2019s book has no interest in these characters as people. Each one is an easy-to-remember descriptor (\u201cjock son,\u201d \u201clesbian daughter,\u201d etc.) to whom bad things happen. Like video game characters, they exist only in the time that the action happens and are meant to do nothing more than react and sing Alanis songs.<\/p>\n<p>This, of course, brings up the other problem: it doesn\u2019t integrate Morissette\u2019s songs well. One gets the impression that the writer, known for turns of phrase, wanted to have her characters monologue more.\u00a0Instead, the action constantly stops cold to shoehorn in one of Morissette\u2019s hits. Sure, there\u2019s fun to be had hearing Frankie\u2019s classmates nitpick her poem (\u201cIronic\u201d), but almost none of the songs fit in the script organically.<\/p>\n<p>Also not helping matters is Center Rep\u2019s rather reserved staging of the show. Artistic director<br \/>\nMatt Morrow is no stranger to eye-popping productions on the Lesher stage. Yet, here she treats<br \/>\nevery cast member as if they\u2019d shatter from the slightest vibration. Blocking often consists of just<br \/>\nwalking from one side of the set to the other, then acting as if their feet are glued to that spot. They hit the high notes (Morissette is a trained mezzo-soprano, after all), but one is hard-pressed to recall a single one of them matching the physical intensity of their songwriter.<\/p>\n<p>Cody would have been 18 when this show\u2019s namesake album debuted. At that age \u2014 the legal<br \/>\nthreshold between adolescence and adulthood \u2014 one can imagine the kinds of stories she dreamt up as she listened to the CD over and over. That\u2019s probably why this story feels too much like the work of an unpolished youth, full of shock value and peaks with few valleys of nuance.<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<p>The talented cast show off their vocal chops by working through Morissette\u2019s oeuvre, but the<br \/>\ngossamer story makes this little more than an Alanis-themed episode of a talent competition.<\/p>\n<p><em>Charles Lewis III claims to be an award-nominated journalist, culture critic, and performing artist born and raised in San Francisco. He alleges to have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, KQED, the San Francisco Examiner, and many more. Dodgy evidence of this can be found at The Thinking Man\u2019s Idiot.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/nextcitydigest.com\/?p=1935\">Motorist hits, kills pedestrian in San Jose residential neighborhood<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>\u2018JAGGED LITTLE PILL: THE MUSICAL\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>By Alanis Morissette and Diablo Cody, presented by Center Rep<\/p>\n<p><strong>Through:<\/strong> June 28<\/p>\n<p><strong>Where:<\/strong> Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Drive, Walnut Creek<\/p>\n<p><strong>Running time:<\/strong> 2 hours 25 minutes, with one 15-minute intermission<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tickets:<\/strong> $31-$101; centerrep.org<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Walnut Creek production of Jukebox musical based on Alanis Morissette album features talented cast but is hampered by staid staging<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1940,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1941","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-things-to-do"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Review: &#8216;Jagged Little Pill&#8217; 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