This page: Some favorite
moments from the
music videos released
for Jagged Little Pill.
From top: “Hand in
My Pocket” (directed
by Mark Kohr), “You
Learn” (Michele Laurita),
“Ironic” (Stéphane
Sednaoui), “Head Over
Feet” (Michele Laurita).

that Bella’s assault became such a crucial part of the show. There is a direct correlation between the “too-muchness” that surrounded Morissette when Jagged Little Pill first came out in 1995 (Rolling Stone magazine labeled her the “stormy girl du jour” and “Angry White Female”) and the Broadway show, but now, Morissette is owning and leaning into that label. The show is too much, but that is no longer something to be feared. In taking on so many issues, it is a show that is reaching out to the audience for connection. It wants those watching to remember the times that they were heartbroken or discounted or isolated and feel less alone watching the characters on stage face these feelings head on. It doesn’t offer easy answers. Will Bella find justice? Will Nick ever understand the full consequences of his actions? Will Jo and Frankie ever be friends again?

The show leaves questions dangling when the curtain falls. For Morissette, that’s part of the message. Learning isn’t always linear. “Reflection and processing are everything,” Morissette told me in March, when I called her to discuss the show. At the time, she was quarantining with her family in California. “Even in the most challenging times and the biggest conflicts and the strangest chapters, not unlike the one we’re in right now. Ten years from now or two years from now, there’s going to be some reflection on what beauty was yielded from it. And in the moment, when hard, challenging, difficult times are happening, it’s tough for me to conjure the ‘You Learn’ energy. But that is what it’s all about. Even when it’s not fun.”

I think often about an taped interview that Morissette gave to MTV right when Jagged Little Pill first came out, in 1995. She looks so young, with her wavy brown hair falling into her face. At the end of the interview, the reporter, a young man, asks her about the fury behind “You Oughta Know.” “Some people say, well, she’s a man-hater,” he asks, as Morissette struggles not to roll her eyes. “How do you respond to people who say that?” Morissette juts out her jaw and lets out a deep, world-weary sigh. “I say, ‘No I’m not,’” she says. “And I mean, the song was written for the sake of release, and this really dys-functional subconscious part of myself. It was a way to let go of that certain situation, of which I take part responsibility for what happened. I was the one who put my self-esteem in his hands and basically gave him free rein to do with it what he would.” I think about the composure she had at only twenty-one years old, when the media wanted to paint her as a shrill harpy out for blood. And she had equal composure when it

came to the criticism of her peers, who saw her wild success (Jagged Little Pill still remains one of the top-selling albums of all time) and accused her of being a slick studio creation who borrowed from the grunge aesthetic to make pop hits. What I think now that the critics missed was that Morissette was trying to be legible, above all things, and she was trying to be heard. She made music for teenage girls who wanted an accessible way to express their inaccessible feelings, and to process subjects like abuse and betrayal safely within the borders of a radio hit. Morissette’s main goal, as she told me many times, is open communication above all things.

I think the Broadway show embodies that spirit—it is about a family who cannot be honest with one another, and about the ripple effect that follows. They hurt themselves and others, all because they are scared to express what they really want around the breakfast table. What Morissette’s music brings to this story is a willful, and sometimes complicated, outpouring of what has been bottled up. Frankie has been waiting to sing “Unprodigal Daughter” since she was a little girl. Jo has been waiting to sing “You Oughta Know,” about all the ways that she and other queer people feel unseen and overlooked, since her mother began taking her to oppressive church socials. Mary Jane has been waiting to sing “Forgiven,” where she can rail against the Catholic church, ever since she was told to keep her mouth shut about her college sexual abuse and remain a good, churchgoing girl. Diablo Cody, Diane Paulus, Tom Kitt, and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui crafted a show that allows every Morissette song to feel like catharsis, the way it feels when you sing the chorus of “Ironic” at karaoke. These songs are meant to feel a bit melodramatic, a bit overwrought. It’s watching characters move through them with their bodies and their throats that gives them a new grounding.

I hope that by the time you read this, Jagged Little Pill will be back on stage at the Broadhurst for eight performances a week. Theater is a communal art form, and JLP is a show that longs to bring people together, both during the show (the spontaneous standing ovation for Lauren Patten’s “You Oughta Know” every night feels electrically interactive) but also afterward. It wants you to go home and ask the Big Questions, feel the Big Feelings. And until the show is back on Broadway, we have Morissette’s music to keep us company. It’s hard to know if everything is going to be quite alright, but, as Jagged Little Pill reminds us, the only way we can face the future is together.

—RACHEL SYME

May 2020

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