Jagged Little Pill

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

I had no idea what this musical was about. It had music by Alanis Morisette, a name I know, but whose music is unfamiliar. There were warnings about drug usage and sex violence. I wasn’t too excited about it, to be honest.

I really liked it. It was very funny. And also, really not funny. The set was terrific. As we were driving to Minneapolis, I told Keith that I hadn’t taken a picture today and that we would have to take one at the theater. He said maybe the set would be cool and that would be the picture. We walked in and looked, and I said, “Nope.” He countered with, “Well, maybe we can say the set was minimalistic.” It was a couple neon bars on the sides of the stage and two neon bars peaked in the middle of the stage. Yeah, well, those bars did lots of things and were really cool. Great set.

I sorta liked the music. Some of the music. Our issue with the music is that a lot of it was screamed, and screamed so loudly that we couldn’t understand a single word. It’s harder to appreciate when you can’t get any of the lyrics. One of the secondary characters had a big feature tune in the second act and I was just waiting for it to be over because it was LOUD, and I couldn’t understand any (any!) of it. Turned out it was a crowd favorite – people clapped within the song, applause roared at the end, and several people stood up.

The show had drug use, but it was mostly about believing victims of sexual assault/rape. The audience went wild when the characters stood up for victims or talked about standing up for victims. I found it interesting, because although I very much agree with that stance, I didn’t feel the need to stand up and cheer for it, since we weren’t actually at a rally for rights – we were at a scripted play. I clapped for their performance, but it didn’t spill into reality for me.

I don’t know how to feel about that. Maybe I would have liked to get all excited about it. I don’t know. I will float and think about it tomorrow.