LOS ANGELES — "Jagged Little Pill" was never supposed to go down easy. The jukebox musical was intended to echo its namesake: Alanis Morissette's multi-Grammy-winning 1995 album, which launched her as a beacon of unapologetic honesty and unwavering conviction, especially when singing about tough subjects. So, likewise, the stage show centered on a family as they faced hot-button issues like sexual misconduct, drug abuse, mental health and white privilege.
The Broadway production tackled some of these topics more successfully than others. It was lauded for its nuanced renderings of opiate addiction, sexual assault and bystander intervention but received criticism for its mishandling of the teen character Jo. A pre-Broadway version had numerous lines that signaled Jo as gender-nonconforming — a rarity for a Broadway musical — but many of these lines were removed when the musical opened on Broadway in late 2019. The production — as well as Lauren Patten, the cisgender woman who originated the role — later stated publicly that Jo was never written or conceived as nonbinary.
"Instead of offering a non-binary narrative that would provide representation and validation to a specific group of people (who are desperately seeking such representation and validation on stage), 'Jagged Little Pill' instead opts for cheap universalization," wrote Christian Lewis for the Brooklyn Rail. "They made Jo cis ... to make the character more relatable."
