Stop getting attached to the idea that any element of pop culture is sacred, least of all any album that helped you survive a trying time in your life. Even the very people that have created their own masterworks are willing to bastardize and/or taint them for the right price/venue. Case in point is Alanis Morissette’s announcement that she’s working on a musical adaptation of the life-changing 1995 album that launched her into the mainstream (not to mention Madonna’s Maverick Records–RIP–as well): Jagged Little Pill. As June 1 marks Morissette’s forty-third birthday and June 13th the twenty-second anniversary of the album, it seems some planetary alignment is afoot for garnering this resuscitation.
Already slated for a premiere in May of 2018 at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, little is yet known of what the plot will entail, though, suffice it to say, there will be some very Juno-influenced vibes (Juno itself being one of many byproducts of Jagged Little Pill). Indeed, Diablo Cody has already written the musical down in book form, which will focus on “a modern and multi-generational family and their complex dynamics, touching on issues of gender identity and race.” Though this really doesn’t fit quite as nicely as one would have hoped with an angsty teen white girl raging in her room over the disappointments of men, one supposes we’ll just have to take it.
Whether or not its debut in Cambridge will result in the musical migrating to the true capital of such things–Broadway–it doesn’t matter. The very immortalization of the album onto the stage presents a mutation from which pop culture can never return. Let’s hope Morissette and Cody can at least combine their moody white girl powers to make something worthy of the record that gave women in the 90s a voice they didn’t yet know they were allowed to have.
