A double album’s worth of Alanis Morissette’s Greatest Hits provide the plot-propelling dramatic soundtrack to Jagged Little Pill, the thrillingly of-the-moment Tony winner that redefines the oft-derided “jukebox musical” to stunning effect.

Like Next To Normal and Fun Home before it, Jagged Little Pill peels back the onion layers that mask how damaged a “perfect modern family” can be.

In this case, it’s the Connecticut Healys: high-powered attorney dad Steve (Chris Hoch), stay-at-home mom Mary Jane (Heidi Blickenstaff), and the couple’s two teenaged offspring, Harvard-bound golden boy Nick (Dillon Klena) and the artistically gifted African-American daughter (Lauren Chanel as Frankie) Steve and Mary Jane adopted when MJ was unable to conceive a second time.

What lies beneath the surface, however, is a wife and mother whose addiction to opioid painkillers keeps steadily worsening, a workaholic husband obsessed with online porn, a son increasingly weighed down by his parents’ need for him to be perfect, and a daughter whose sexuality she keeps carefully hidden behind a closed bedroom door.

 Unlike its similarly themed processors however, Jagged Little Pills takes preexisting songs like “Ironic,” “Uninvited,” and “You Oughta Know” and ties them together to tell a cohesive story, no easy task, but one which Diablo Cody so aces, it scored her a Best Book Tony statuette to go with the Best Original Screenplay Oscar she won for Juno.

But it’s not just Jagged Little Pill’s jukebox nature that distinguishes it from the aforementioned Next To Normal and Fun Home, musicals whose Broadway and post-Broadway incarnations have kept things relatively simple with small casts, a single set, and of choreography kept to a minimum.

 Not so JLP, where director Diane Paulus, movement director-choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, and a sensational design team have joined forces so inextricably, future regional stagings will have basically two options: either recreate the original now on view at the Pantages or start from scratch and end up with a virtually brand-new show.

First and foremost among Jagged Little Pill’s innovative touches is its “Chorus,” a dozen or so triple-threats wearing multiple hats, as a Greek chorus observing the action, as physical incarnations of the lead characters’ innermost thoughts and emotions, and as assorted students, parents, and townspeople.

And not only are Cherkaoui’s dances impossible to separate from Paulus’s direction and the cast’s lead performances, so is Jagged Little Pill’s production design*, one of the most intricate in Broadway history, whose constantly moving set pieces, dazzling projections, and electrifying lighting effects are linked in the most spectacular of ways, again and again and again.

Morissette’s songs (co-written with composer Glen Ballard) may be the show’s chief selling point (even those who aren’t Alanis fans per se will likely recognize at least a few of them), but in addition to its previously signaled assets (direction, choreography, and design), Jagged Little Pill provides its lead and feature players with the kind of roles any performer would kill to play.

Most stunning of all is Blickenstaff’s deeply felt, breathtakingly sung star turn as Mary Jane, whose life gradually unravels before our very eyes as Blickenstaff sinks her dramatic, comedic, vocal teeth into a “role of a lifetime” and earns justified cheers.

Hoch, Klena, and Chanel do standout work as well, digging deep beneath Steve, Nick, and Frankie’s picture-perfect surface, and each gets at least one Alanis hit to reveal character struggles and motivations, Hoch’s wistful yet hopeful “Mary Jane,” rising star Klena’s powerhouse “Perfect,” and Chanel’s devastating “Prodigal Daughter.”

Allison Sheppard is simply shattering as a teen not given the option to “just say no,” Jade McCleod (an achingly real Jo) wins a justified standing ovation for her spectacularly sung “You Oughta Know,” and Rishi Golani reveals do-die-for pipes as the nerdy-cute Phoenix in “That Would Be Good” and “Head Over Feet.”

Finally, it’s hard to imagine a more multitalented, multitasking ensemble than Lee H. Alexander (Doctor), Delaney Brown (Denise), Jada Simone Clark (Barista), Lani Corson (Jill, Teacher), Jason Goldston (Andrew), Golani, Zach Hess, Cydney Kutcipal, Jordan Leigh McCaskill (Pharmacist, Therapist), Alana Pollard, Daniel Thimm (Drug Dealer), Kei Tsuruharatani, and Jena VanElslander (Courtney), who seem scarcely if ever to leave the stage, with special snaps due VanElslander, who mirrors MJ to striking effect.

Morisestte’s song are not only in the best vocal hands, Tom Kitt scores high marks as music supervisor, orchestrator, and arranger as does Matt Doebler as musical director/conductor, with sound designer Jonathan Deans cranking up the volume to rock-concert-ready decibels.

Maya J. Christian, dance captain Claire Crause, Sean Doherty, and assistant dance captain Charles P. Way are swings.

Ira Mont is production supervising stage manager. Justin Myhre is production stage manager. Michael Sanfilippo is company manager.

Alanis Morissette’s Greatest Hits may be Jagged Little Pill’s biggest selling point, but they are far from the only reason put an evening at the Pantages on your must-see list. This is contemporary American musical theater at its most endlessly innovative and heart-wrenchingly powerful.

*Riccardo Hernández (scenic design), Emily Rebholz (costume design), Justin Townsend (lighting design), Lucy MacKinnon (video design), J. Jared Janas (hair, wig, and makeup design)

Pantages Theatre, 6233 Hollywood Blvd, Los Angeles.
www.broadwayla.org

–Steven Stanley
September 14, 2022
Photos: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade

Tags: Alanis Morisette, Broadway In Hollywood, Diablo Cody, Glen Ballard, Los Angeles Theater Review, Pantages Theatre