Expand<\/a><\/p>\nMorissette\u2019s hits of female empowerment, co-written with Glen Ballard and headed by \u201cYou Oughta Know, \u201cAll I Really Want\u201d and \u201cHand in My Pocket,\u201d were expanded through Diablo Cody\u2019s Tony Award-winning book, addressing a whole lot of what ails us.<\/p>\n
The 22-song musical also makes quite a bit of programming sense for Chance, given some producing choices the theater has creatively embraced across the past decade or two.<\/p>\n
Chance has reveled in a sub-genre of rock-centered musicals with scores propelled by jagged big edges and dyspeptic social issue themes.<\/p>\n
Chance did well with another jukebox thrasher, Green Day\u2019s \u201cAmerican Idiot,\u201d as well as giving testament to the bracing original scores found in \u201cRent\u201d \u201cHedwig and the Angry Inch\u201d and \u201cNext to Normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
To fund the larger casts required to flesh out these shows, Chance has consistently ferreted out uncommonly talented regional performers new to the theater, harnessing surprisingly sufficient singing and dancing skill as well as appropriately youthful energies to drive the action.<\/p>\n
First seen on Broadway in 2019, \u201cJagged Little Pill\u201d is built around a nuclear \u2014 that word applying in a couple of ways \u2014 family core.<\/p>\n
Mary Jane (Jocelyn A. Brown) provides the show\u2019s centerpiece character.<\/p>\n
MJ, as she\u2019s known, is a too-perfect-seeming mom with a cloistered opiate addiction resulting from a traffic accident, as well as a long-avoided emotional trauma.<\/p>\n
In a compelling performance, Brown, with likely input from director Matthew McCray, permits the character\u2019s dramatic complexities to surface in an evolving progression.<\/p>\n
Superficially seen by all as having all life\u2019s edges smoothed out, Brown chips steadily away at this fa\u00e7ade, unraveling in slight instances as her holding-it-all together nature ultimately flies completely apart.<\/p>\n
Her family members are lost from realizing all this, as they\u2019re mired in their own preoccupations.<\/p>\n
Somewhat docile husband Steve (a passive Allen Everman) supplements his 60-hour-a-week working grind in off-hours X-rated internet obsessions.<\/p>\n
Son Nick (earnest Jeremy Kie Vance) is a Harvard-bound high-achiever, but also an emotionally underdeveloped child without a clue as to his inner nature or interests.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s Frankie (equally layered and refreshingly impulsive Doshima Iyorlu), an adopted, Black daughter who is probing her identity and sexuality.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s literally hand in hand with her classmate flame Jo (Sol Joun, delivering a crucially empowered performance of the anthemic \u201cYou Oughta Know\u201d), the two twined romantically as well wanting to address every social cause that comes into their consciousness.<\/p>\n
These lead performances were obscured a bit, however, in the show\u2019s first half. Perhaps it was just a letdown following an opening night performance, but the following day\u2019s matinee first act lacked focal drive.<\/p>\n
Though confidently acted, scenes seemed to drift and unfold rather than land with bite.<\/p>\n
Some of the lack of impact seemed to come from the music itself, a three-piece on-stage band playing gingerly, with an almost tentative feel for songs that demand \u2014 Morissette\u2019s music is never tentative.<\/p>\n
Happily, the show\u2019s second act seemed crisper, an artistic intensity regained.<\/p>\n
In particular, stagings of the show\u2019s two most traumatizing incidents were a creative marvel, both heightening, and also suitably masking, the starkness within these moments.<\/p>\n
An unrelated distraction was the show\u2019s occasional background choreography, with the ensemble at times a writhing chorus of over-gesticulating in whole-hearted dance.<\/p>\n
Impassioned delivery has its place, but here the organized movement verged on intrusively dominating the intimate moments of acting centerstage, as though the songs and performances themselves weren\u2019t enough to make us feel.<\/p>\n
From the technical aspect, though, it\u2019s an accomplished production that makes the most of its tight setting. A couple of examples are the sliding panels and a screen backdrop well employed by productions designer Nick Santiago.<\/p>\n
Hunter Moody\u2019s sound design noticeably elevated, but maybe a bit too much enhanced, instances of the background harmony singing.<\/p>\n
In 2026, with a hyper-heightened attention on the world\u2019s social strife, the personal preoccupations of \u201cJagged Little Pill\u201d with its torrent of personal calamities struck this viewer walking in the door as not passe, but perhaps a bit dated.<\/p>\n
But through the good acting we encounter here, and the seismic jolt in Morissette\u2019s still potent music, \u201cJagged Little Pill\u201d continues to make emotional demands of us that are, ultimately, still worthy of participation.<\/p>\n
\u2018Alanis Morisette\u2019s Jagged Little Pill: The Musical\u2019<\/p>\n
Rating: 3 stars (out of a possible 4).<\/p>\n
When: Through Aug. 9. Regular performances: 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays.<\/p>\n
Where: Chance Theater, Cripe Stage, 5522 E. La Palma Ave., Anaheim<\/p>\n
Tickets: $58-116<\/p>\n
Information: 888-455-4212; chancetheater.com<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n![\"Jeremy](\"https:\/\/www.ocregister.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/OCR-L-JAGGED-0721-03.jpg?w=620\")
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