Slow Burn Theatre Ignites Breathtaking Jagged Little Pill

By Bill Hirschman

Slow Burn Theatre Co. earned its reputation long ago for producing outstanding middle-of-the-road accessible musicals like Frozen. But its current triumph in the powerful Jagged Little Pill reminds fans that it has been responsible over 15 years for a score of theatrically challenging and moving works.

As director and co-founder Patrick Fitzwater quipped about the run through June 28 at the Broward Center, “We’re going back to our roots.”

In this, one of the most consistently excellent South Florida theater seasons in recent years, this company manages a breathtaking if unlikely merging of a plot-driven structure with music adapted from Alanis Morissette’s iconic angst-engorged album.

Emotions thrusting out of actors’ guts transmute into pure music that itself becomes something you can almost reach out and touch. The acting, direction, choreography and visuals roil at the bottom of a volcano, erupt skyward and into the audience such as the first act closer “Forgiven” that had the opening night audience cheering.

Most of the score is based on the 1995 album that became part of the DNA of most pop music lovers younger than Boomers, plus a few other numbers added by Morrissette and Glen Ballard. But while her confrontational poetic lyrics remain, the music has been arranged and orchestrated to fit in a musical theater genre.

The feel echoes the musical Next To Normal: A typical middle-class white family in suburban Connecticut initially seems the all-too-familiar paragon. To outsiders they appear to be perfect and they struggle to maintain that veneer. But quickly layers peel revealing a cache of ills and weaknesses, starting with the growing pill addiction of the mother Mary Jane.

Her husband Steve is a 60-hour-a-week workaholic with a penchant for online porn because the marriage is disintegrating. Their son Nick is a seemingly ideal athlete and scholar headed for Harvard, but he has seen something that he shouldn’t  but won’t admit. Their adopted black daughter, Frankie, is straining to discover her sexual and racial identity, but she is finding comfort in her very, very close relationship with proud lesbian Jo.

Over the evening, a half-dozen issues emerge including sexuality, racial identity, sexual assault, marital discord, counseling, expectations, healing, and above all a variety of relationships. The protagonists wrestle emotionally, verbally and even physically.

In one ingenious scene choreographed by Madeline Dunn, we see Mary Jane struggling in a manic pas de deux which is danced on, through and over a sofa with the physicalization of her addiction in the person of Dunn.

High praise is due the Tony-winning script by Diablo Cody (screenwriter of Juno) who has seamlessly integrated a story around Morissette’s individual songs without it ever seem like she is shoving them into a hole or building something falsely around the inclusion of a pop hit – something a score of mediocre musicals have failed at. This is not a jukebox musical.

Indeed, Cody creates what cannot be classified as a happy ending after such a descent, but akin to Next To Normal she realistically sells a justifiable prospect of hope, but with no guarantees.

Although every element, every performance, every piece of staging is masterfully executed, Kimberly Doreen Burns gifts simply one of the finest performances of the season as Mary Jane.

Burns has graced local stages as Dot in Sunday in the Park With George and a kind but submissive mouse of an abused wife in The Spitfire Grill. But those efforts and others did not prepare anyone here for this tortured haunted fervid “Super Mom” heroine. Her soprano can caress a melody or ravage it with a belting blast appropriate for Morissette’s razor lyrics. She doesn’t present a song; she draws it from inside her viscera and acts its essence. She is equally compelling in the dialogue scenes as Mary Jane deteriorates bit by bit.

Equally deft is Fitzwater’s amazingly smooth staging and Dunn’s deliriously frenzied choreography such as the liquid mercury depiction of Mary Jane in a drugged-daze drifting through chores from the market to the gym and beyond. Or watch Dunn using school desks on wheels as the centerpiece of a dance number. Both artists use the superb dance troupe as a Greek chorus projecting what the characters are singing about.

Sydney Freihofer

But Burns is hardly alone in thespian quality. As Jo, Sydney Freihofer creates a memorable character who virtually stops the show (a cliche that is dead-on here) with her solos leading the chorus.

No less deserving is Emma Van Vliet Perea as Bella who must evolve from withdrawn rape victim to activist. Lauren Chanel is just as worthy as Frankie. All have clarion voices that make you want to go back and see the show again.

Music director Gio Tio and seven musicians nail the unique merging of Morissette’s genre-defining musical style with the required arrangement/orchestration tropes of musical theater.

Kudos are due as well for local veteran Ben Sandomir as Steve, Isaac Kueber as Nick, Manny Tijerina as Frankie’s potential straight beau Phoenix, and Mason Materdomini as Nick’s best friend and Bella’s rapist.

More than a nod is due to the visual and aural environment created by Nikolas Serrano’s sets accented by angular neon tubes merged with Clifford Spulock’s lighting, Dan Donato’s sound, Rick Peña’s costumes, all of it overseen by Timothy S. Dickey and Wilhelm Peters.

Note: A large amount of lyrics in Morissette’s poetic fury are discernable, although not all. It might help us Boomers to take the CD out of the library. But if you don’t get every word, the emotion comes through.

Jagged Little Pill through June 28 from Slow Burn Theatre Co. performing at the Amaturo Theater at Broward Center for the Performing Arts, 201 SW Fifth Ave., Fort Lauderdale. Performances 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday (except 17th); 2 p.m. Sunday, 1 p.m. Saturday. Running time 2 ½ hours including one intermission. Single tickets start at $49; groups of 10 or more save 10 percent. Student and teacher rush start at $30 and are available at the window day of show based on availability while supplies last. Call 954-462-0222 for tickets, at www.browardcenter.org or in person at   the Broward Center’s Auto Nation Box Office. Info at www.slowburntheatre.org