'Jagged Little Pill' musical returns to Boston, with new spin on Alanis Morissette's iconic album
BOSTON - The musical Jagged Little Pill, based on Alanis Morissette's iconic 90s album, is back home in Boston.
The show, created at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, moved to Broadway in 2019, and is now on tour.
Director Diane Paulus says Boston audiences helped shape the production.
She told us, "Every time you take a show from Broadway on tour you have this unbelievable opportunity to continue to work on it."
Leading this tour is actress Heidi Blickenstaff, as M.J.
She played the role on Broadway, and it didn't take much convincing for her to decide to take the show on the road.
She said "It's like nothing I've ever seen on stage and I get to do it, which is really extraordinary."
The piece explores some heavy issues, addiction, sexual assault, inter-racial adoption and sexual identity, but there's humor as well.
And the music is a huge draw.
Mix 104.1 radio host Kennedy Elsey says Morissette's approach to music and songwriting changed everything, especially the song, "You Oughta Know."
"I feel like it has become an anthem. And from that the music that women were singing became a lot more real a lot more gritty, a lot more honest," Elsey said. "It doesn't matter how old you are, it doesn't matter what generation you are, X , Millennial, Z, whatever, it speaks to all of us"
Paulus tells us, Alanis "wanted it to feel relevant and complicated and messy and vulnerable and all of the thing that album captures."
Blickenstaff is thrilled to give Boston audiences a second chance at seeing the production, saying "The show really has grown and evolved into this further beating healing heart, and to be able to give it back to Boston feels like kismet."
You can see Jagged Little Pill at the Citizens Bank Opera House in Boston through June 25th.