Jagged Little Pill to Premiere at ART — Page 7

Saw tonight. Mid show standing ovation for Lauren Patten.

I saw it two nights ago and have to agree with the negative critiques.

The book is awful. As others have said, the show lacks focus, suffers from a hackneyed, derivative plot lines and the dialog is maddingly trite. It plops down every de rigueur social issue (suburban opiate addiction, sexual identity, racial identity, teenagers party/date rape) with all the originality of an Afterschool Special. So many plot lines, so little time (well 2 hours 30 minutes to be exact). The first act was quite slow and barely moved past setting up each individual character’s dilemma.

It seems, at first, that there is a lot of energy in the group musical numbers, but as the night goes on it just seems more like flailing. There are a couple of decent song stagings and one excellent staging. Many commenters were reminded of “Next To Normal”, (I wish), DEH or Spring Awakenings (if only), however, for the most part, I could only think of the Elizabeth Swados musical “Runaways.” Lot's of glorified skipping and hopping with random arm gestures that seems so dated.

As others have also mentioned the lame screen projections (other than those that convey room décor) do the show no favors and only serve to double down on the triteness.

I also echo a commenter who noted that the band being pushed and pulled on off the stage at seemingly random intervals was puzzling, dizzying (not in a good way), and extremely distracting. Brian Perri is adorbs but his raucous head bobbing out was distracting.

Certain songs - the whole #MeToo march seems so ever gratuitous--need to be removed. I don’t know, however, if you can just tweak the narrative—they might to need completely throw out the book and reconceive story or stories. Everyone’s story seemed banal-- even if you were to eliminate some of the narrative threads to whittle down the plot, I don’t know if the story ( or stories) remain are interesting enough.

Performers are okay – no standouts to me. Celia Gooding was there and my only thought was that she was okay. All actors were sabotaged by silly dialogue. About that mid-show standing ovation for Lauren Patten, get a grip people. Absurd. Rather than stand, I was fuming. Many audience members are reading these threads or other social media, because it is clear that they are just waiting to leap to their feet because someone told them they should. Stopping the show to give Lauren Patten a standing ovation has now become a Pavlovian response, what they should be doing, rather than an organic response. The idea of “show stopping” has now jumped the shark if this performance now has that moniker. Lauren Patten is a talented singer (though I found her annoyingly one-note and adenoidal in the book parts), her performance of this song is fine, but it does not lend itself to mid-show standing ovation. Still trying to get over this.

It is always an occupational risk to shoehorn a plot around pre-existing songs and while Morissette's music might have deserved that effort, this is just a mish-mash of milquetoast angst done better in other shows, IMHO. I can't imagine drastic changes from the show I saw before opening night which I think is tonight

If you can't make it to Cambridge, don't fret. Hopefully you will see a more improved version later on, but it should be back to the drawing board on this one.

I'm actually quite pleasantly surprised with the positive notices this show is getting from the Boston press. Perhaps this will be critically better received on Broadway than expected...

Saw it today at what appeared to be a sold out matinee. The book, as many have mentioned, still needs work. They could also drop a couple of songs. The main cast were all very good with Gooding and Stanley as standouts. Lauren Patten's "You ought to Know" was face meltingly good and she got her standing ovation. Very positive buzz from everyone on the exit from the theater.

NYT review https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/30/theater/review-jagged-little-pill-musical.html

Does anyone know anything about the standing room tickets for Jagged Little Pill? Website says they have some available when the box office opens at noon and I'm wondering if people are lining up/how early they're lining up to buy them. I'd love to try to go up one weekend and see this!

I went to the matinee last Saturday. I was a little uncertain of my decision to pick up a seat in the front row (house left) when I read people mentioning the high stage, but thought ultimately that my 6'1 height would offset it. As it turns out, the stage was a tad too high for me, but not so high where I HAD to strain to see anything (there was one moment on the other side of the stage I missed a little of, but it's not like I didn't know what was happening). But anyway, on to the show...

Overall, I enjoyed it and I definitely see a future for this production on Broadway although it might even benefit from going the route American Psycho was going to go and first go off-Broadway with an eye on ultimately transferring at some point.

I agree with theaterdarling's comparison to an after school special (that nagged at me throughout the performance, ha!) though I don't think the book is that awful. I do think that they need to trim or cut some things entirely, like 20 minutes or so worth (maybe start by getting rid of the epilogue-like ending - people can draw their own conclusions). This show in no way needs to be nearly three hours long. Pick one or two terrible things to deal with, we don't need to see the kitchen sink thrown at this family!

I didn't think that the songs felt forced, as if they had Alanis Morrisette's discography sitting in front of them and just tried to check off as much as they could. "Ironic" is a bit of an exception to that, but you knew they were going to get it in somehow and at least they poked fun at it a bit.

It may have been because I was so close, but I hardly noticed the projections so fortunately wasn't distracted by them - though some of them when I forced myself to look or there was less going on onstage were pretty terrible. I would imagine/hope that the plan would be to replace some of those with actual scenic elements and maybe scrap others - sometimes the singer is enough to command the stage, you don't ALWAYS have to have something going on behind them. Also, I echo all the criticism of the band sliding on and off throughout the show. What the hell? Pick one or the other, either would be fine but good grief it was completely pointless and really seemed random.

As far as the performances, I really enjoyed Elizabeth Stanley and Lauren Patten, with honorable mention to Celia Gooding. The cool part about sitting so close was being able to see Stanley's tears (Derek Klena cries too!) but she was fantastic. Alanis would call it ironic, but coincidentally I went to see "On The Town" with the Boston Pops featuring Andy Karl, Brandon Victor Dixon, Andrea Martin, Marc Kudisch, et al the night before, and I realized I had seen Stanley in the revival years ago. I really really enjoyed Patten, and her "You Oughta Know" is wonderful. I had resolved not to stand after reading all the posts here as I think there are only certain rare instances where that's called for...like clockwork she got her standing O, but it took a while to develop and since I was in the first row, I stuck to my guns and clapped heartily while remaining seated.

There weren't any performances that I felt didn't work, but like some others have done, I did think about who might end up cast in a Broadway production should they decide to part with anyone from the current company. While I certainly didn't mind Antonio Cipriano's performance, nor did I mind (very slight spoiler) when he jumped from the stage right in front of me, Isaac Powell came to mind as a possibility in that role.

All in all I'm glad I went, and I'd recommend anyone who finds themselves in or around Boston between now and mid-July who's thinking about checking it out to do so. I don't know that I would make a special trip for it, unless pairing it with a Moulin Rouge performance or something. I live in the area, so I do plan on trying to check it out once more before it closes so I can see it from a different perspective, as seeing it up close is great but you do miss some of the larger picture.

This will be eaten alive by the NY critics if it shows up like this. Its focus is non-existent. Of all the things I've seen at ART that transferred, this is by far the weakest. Too many issues that either are ignored or too neatly solved, a preachy Act II, staging that is ordinary and often presentational and dialogue that would be embarrassing in a writing class are all things that need to be fixed. The performances are quite good, but not yet 3 dimensional, which I blame mostly on the writing (and some poor acting choices). Some concepts work (the "memory" Bella) but then get weird...when they use the same actress as "inner turmoil" MJ.

Teenagers and young adults are going to fawn all over it, pretending that "at last, someone understands me".

I agree A LOT with what Vote Peron had to say, although I didn't want to. But he's very much on the nose with his details. (And yes, I agree with your comment about the standing ovation didn't feel organic at all)



Can this be fixed? Yes. The question always is: WILL it?

Why hasn’t this show been extended? Looks like every show in the remainder of the run is sold out. I saw the show this evening and was hoping to score tickets to another show before it ended.

Saw JLP last Thursday.



Not earth shattering...but damn good. Like a series of good music videos. Choreography is great. Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is a real find. And book is clever and sharp. Staging and video are just about perfect. Morissette's songs sure work for this Musical.



Sure plot is shoehorned. But I went with the machinations and found myself having a good time. Even with the subject matter...and I'm certainly FAR from the target audience. It's a silly conceit, but irony works in this context. (yes, I get the reference...).



They need to get rid of the son's three songs. Stop the show cold and just torture the singer. The character all in all has it pretty good. These songs don't serve him or the show.



If Evan Hansen can grab Broadway, Pill is Hamilton!

Updated On: 6/16/18 at 11:37 AM

I am the same age as Alanis is and I know a lot of people young enough to be my kids love the show. I believe that a lot of that is everyone in the cast but 4 people are millennials or whatever the generation after millennials is themselves.

Updated On: 6/16/18 at 10:38 PM