Review: With ‘Jagged Little Pill,’ They Finally Fixed the Jukebox

Loved it enough to go three hours to Buffalo to see it again, this time with teenage daughter. It really hits home for parents. Great music

The show quality and sound, left me feeling I was at a high school musical. The singing wasn’t really singing but more screaming, accept it wasn’t into the mic. The background music over powered the vocalists, so you could barely understand the words at time. I just found it very boring!!! Some of the singers have great voices though.

Just walked out of this show in San Francisco. I could barely make it through the first act. Not even quarter-baked high school production, extremely shrill singing, terrible book. I’m aghast at this review.

This is worth seeing 100%.... you'll want to see it again and again. I have taken multiple clients and they all loved it. Great date night idea too.

I'm a Millennial, and I grew up with Jagged Little Pill from a young age. I'm absolutely shocked by how negative some of these comments are, and I'm just curious as to what their authors' demographics are (do they skew older? white? upper-class?). The musical brilliantly deconstructs privilege, from the immunity it grants to the porosity that weakens it. I'm wondering if those with a very negative takeaway are uncomfortable acknowledging and interfacing with their own privilege. The one person below who walked out in Act One after rape was treated as a "minor character" is very peculiar. Rape in the musical is neither minor nor a character; it's a major theme that links generations and classes. What do you believe would have been a better treatment of the subject? I found this musical an absolute visceral experience that captured the many raw dimensions of the human experience. That they accomplished this based on an album and within a musical format is truly genius. I cannot stress enough how amazing it is. If you can go see it, please do. And make sure to check your privilege at the door.

Just saw the show and loved it (as did my husband)! Diablo Cody and Alanis Morisette are a genius combo. This show is a love letter to GenX women. Twenty years later, we are exhausted and we are angry (#MeToo, gun violence, etc). I felt seen watching El Stans in the lead as Mary Jane right down to her puffer jacket and Trader Joe’s grocery shopping. I also appreciated that the show was hopeful about families working through difficult things and evolving and showing grace and forgiveness towards each other. This is real life and it is messy and beautiful all at the same time.

I love Broadway productions. But I'm not a fan of jukebox musicals. I've never been able to get through one. These songs have deep enduring memories for me not only as a teenager when I first heard them but throughout my life when I would listen to them again and again. For me as well as many other individuals this music is The Soundtrack of Our Lives. Don't mess with it. It doesn't need to be recreated, reinterpreted for a modern age. That ruins it for us. We already have strong and powerful associations tied to the music that would be impossible to recreate. When JLP came out I loved it , played it constantly, and still do. Now you tell me you want to restage these cathartic songs and make a "woke" musical? One that deals with Opioid addiction, race, bisexuality, sexual assault —all of which had NOTHING to do with the original album. No thanks. I seriously doubt even broadway viewers are looking for this. How about writing an original musical with original songs and book. Has that become a lost art?

Gee, I guess the sets costumes lights and sound just magically appeared. No one designed, or built or ran the show. Boy those elves really are wickedly brilliant. Or is it that the Reviewer just blatantly forgot to credit them? NO of course not it was the Elves. Theatre Elves do everything. Yes-ery Bob!

really? perhaps you should read the review in the Post and then see it again. I saw it in Boston and it is a banal piece of garbage..

Saw the show today. In a word, I thought it was glorious. This album meant so much to me in the 90s... to see it come alive with some of the most important issues of our day brought me to tears and filled me with hope. I swallowed it down and it felt so good. Thank you to everyone that played a role in bringing it to life.

Green is a decent writer, but I find myself looking askance at his tastes with greater frequency. Like SCOTLAND PA, which also received his rave, I found this show to be infantile, and unbearably solemn and humorless in an adolescent crypto-Goth way to boot. (I confess that I felt the same about Morissette's work when she first shot to fame.) This work admittedly speaks to the desire of some humans to "feel tragic," equating misery with glamour, and unhappiness with depth. But I just felt like this show sucked every molecule of oxygen out of the air at the Broadhurst Theatre, and could not wait to escape the particularly amateurish maudlin world it put forth.

Agit-propping a multitude of “issues” into the libretto was just an embarrassing attempt to claim relevance. Awful show!

The book for this show was written with a checklist!

My friends and I went to see "Oklahoma!" on the basis of the critical raves in the Times. This sounds like another show that's impossibly woke, with a check-the-box line-up of trendy topics, one for each character. I don't expect every musical to be "The Sound of Music" or "Mama Mia," in fact I loved another, very similar, jukebox musical, "American Idiot." But, despite Mr. Green's assurances to the contrary, this sounds like a dreary slog.

I hated this show. It's a self-righteous, smug, pandering, meandering shallow mess of a show that's too long.

Wealthy Connecticut family, tiger mom, workaholic dad, son bound for Harvard, date rape, OxyContin... it might be a great show but somehow I’m not feeling it’s something I absolutely have to see. Some great books don’t need to be turned into movies. Some great albums don’t need to be turned into Broadway shows. I could be wrong I guess...

Credit where credit is due. The New York Times made a commitment to credit designers and has consistently fallen short.

Um, I only saw half the show because I walked out at intermission after the Act One finale used the rape of a minor character to try to move an otherwise moribund plot forward. To that point, the show had been a grab bag of worthy social issues all given short-shrift in a misguided attempt to make the show seem socially relevant. Using the rape of woman we knew of only as a barely-fleshed out caricature to move the plot forward was the last straw. This show was an absolute insult.

I am confused how Jesse objectively assesses that this incarnation still lacks definition and makes new, undefined and awkward discoveries, but still gives Jagged Little Pill a Critic’s Pick. His review is based on the work the show has done since its out of town tryout at A.R.T. in Cambridge; is it really a fair way to evaluate a Broadway show?

I'm glad to read this positive review of JLP. Many of the other reviewers were not so astute. All could delve deeper into Diablo's subversive script, enhanced by Diane Paulus' sharply focused direction. Here is a portrait of the disappearing and powerlessness of the middle class. Towering projections a suburbian structures engulfing the action adds to the image of battling for relevance and identity in the current climate, with the entire narrative enveloped with the wonderful score make this production one that moves and resonates.

I find it extremely disheartening that there’s not a single designer credited. Set design by Riccardo Hernandez, costume design by Emily Rebholz, lighting design by Justin Townsend, and video design by Finn Ross.

I saw the preview in NYC. I thought the show was terrific. Yes, a lot of critical topics are addressed and not necessarily in depth, but I don't view this as a critique. I was very impressed that Morrissette's album has stood the test of time. I hope I get to see the show again.

I saw this show 2 weeks ago and important to note is that much of the cast is making their Broadway debut. These young performers were so impressive! Lauren Patten is amazing and Elizabeth Stanley is so perfectly cast, Diablo created a great female lead in her. I want to see it again because there is so much going on and I know missed many things.

I enjoyed this musical. Positives: Good music, lots of energy. The cast was good. As one commenter already stated, the improper use of the word “ironic” was handled in a very funny way. The scene where time went backwards was very well done. Not-so-positives: It felt like the plot moved all over the place to incorporate the album’s lyrics (the album songs aren’t connected to a single story, like The Who’s Tommy or Quadrophenia). In some cases this was very challenging. However, I thought it was a good musical. PS: A recommendation to the producers: If Jagged Little Pill goes on tour, consider deleting the line where the resident of a city in Connecticut refers to the fifth largest city in the US as a third-rate city.

I haven’t seen the show and I love Morisette’s music, but I’m always wary of a new musical put to old songs. Ideally you want the song lyrics to advance the story and the tune to advance the mood. When the songs fit the plot, it works, as we typically see in traditional musicals. But trying to write a story around old music lyrics never quite works. It feels forced. The plot has to take strange twists to fit the song, and the song doesn’t always make sense in the context of the story. Just take Mama Mia as an example. Great ABBA songs, but they don’t really fit with the plot. It only works when the plot centers on the musicians themselves, as for example, in the Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the Carol King musical. So I’m not optimistic despite the decent reviews. I’d rather just listen to her songs.

I enjoyed Juno and respect Diablo Cody as a writer. How does she reconcile Morrisette's horrible misuse of the word "ironic"? I cant bring myself to sit through an entire play with that song, the idea that countless theatre goers will leave asking "isn't it 'ironic'?" when the situation is quirky or a coincidence.

nothing in the song "ironic" was ironic. the song should've been titled "coincidence." unfortunately, that war was lost long ago.

"With ‘Jagged Little Pill,’ They Finally Fixed the Jukebox" No, they most certainly did not. The show is overstuffed and overwrought.

I'm increasingly surprised by the number of shows being awarded a "Critic's Pick" badge. Where is the bar for that and what is the criteria? When I saw this, I was actually embarrassed for the performers, having to tackle seemingly every current issue in the news with such a vapid book. To me, when so many (very) important issues are being broached- each at a surface level- it makes a mockery of those issues. Maybe it's because I'm a teacher, and I see first-hand how some of these issues truly and traumatically affect teens. This show felt like every after school sitcom jammed into one, only without the humor. I understand that opinions will vary of course, but a Critic's Pick? I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised... still scratching my head as to how "Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus" earned the same honors.

I just saw the show earlier this wk and am still gobsmacked by the performances and raw emotional power of it all. I can’t stop singing the songs from my youth, and am impressed how packing all that emotional angst into one show with so many flawed characters worked effectively! As my husband (who rarely stays for any show’s second act and tends to avoid musicals completely) said, “the show was brilliant and I wouldn’t change a thing!”

What a thorough play- promises made are kept, balance is precarious, enough to provide forward motion and suspense. Clever use of metaphors, such as the backwards time sequence, are beautifully realized and front page issues are masterfully rendered, never becoming trite. And what great music! While difficult challenges are the principal fodder for this play, the ending is satisfying and hopeful. Well done!

I suspect the curve Green is grading on is extremely steep. He saw the show and (over)admires the work done; I saw it here for the first time and couldn't get past the humorlessness, the overpack of Topical Issues Straight From the Headlines, and the literally laughable choreography. If only we'd all seen the show in a previous incarnation, we might have also loved it in its apparently improved form.