“Jagged Little Pill” is not your typical jukebox musical

The company of the North American tour of “Jagged Little Pill.” Cast member Julie Reiber says the choreography is a major part of the storytelling and expresses emotion in a way you don’t always see on a Broadway stage. EVAN ZIMMERMAN FOR MURPHY MADE / COURTESY PHOTO

The tagline for “Jagged Little Pill: The Musical” proclaims: “Some shows you see. This show you feel.”

“It’s a big way to describe it,” says Julie Reiber. Reiber plays Mary Jane, the mother of a struggling family, in the national Broadway touring production. She’s the third woman to play the role, and she began the tour this past September.

“The reason the tagline is there is because this is the kind of show you go to, and you will be moved; you will feel something. This is what art is all about. It’s about provoking people in the best ways, making them feel deeply, and seeing parts of themselves they don’t want to always look at.

“This show deals with a lot of intense, heavy subjects, but it also has a lot of joy and a lot of laughs. The comedy is spot-on. There’s tons of laughter. You will be laughing and you will be smiling, but you will also feel intensely and deeply.”

“Jagged Little Pill” hits Sarasota Feb. 27–28 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.

Dillon Klena, Teralin Jones, Julie Reiber, and Benjamin Eakeley in “Jagged Little Pill.” EVAN ZIMMERMAN FOR MURPHYMADE / COURTESY PHOTO

With the Tony Award-winning book written by Diablo Cody (“Juno,” “The United States of Tara,” “One Mississippi”), the musical uses the songs from Alanis Morissette’s ground-breaking best-selling album of the same name. “Jagged Little Pill” was the “tapestry” of its generation; it seemed that everyone owned it. A winner of five Grammy Awards, it sold more than 33 million copies worldwide.

“(The musical) does a really beautiful job of having this powerful story wrap around Alanis’s music. It’s about a family in crisis. These characters go through a lot,” Reiber says, listing opioid addiction, mental health, sexual assault, trans-racial adoption, and gender identity as some of the issues it deals with.

“Our show definitely touches on lots of different topics Americans are dealing with. And the way the music is used in the show is unlike your typical jukebox musical. I think in so many jukebox musicals, the music is very forced into the story. Diablo Cody wrote this incredible script and story and did such a wonderful job of interpreting the two.

“The music from the album expresses perfectly what these characters are going through at the moment they sing it; they’re not forcing it… Alanis can write these songs about whatever she wrote them about, and they’re integrated into this completely different story about a family. These creators were able to integrate them so well.”

Two new songs are included, but fans of the album will hear the entire album performed during the musical, even the secret tracks.

“There’s something in this show for everyone to connect to, whether it be a character’s journey, a relationship, or a conflict that someone’s facing,” Reiber says.

Like so many others, Reiber owned a copy of Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill.”

“That album came out when I started college,” she says. “You couldn’t avoid noticing that album. Once you heard one song, you wanted to know the rest. I was drawn to specific songs, but overall, I was drawn to the musicality of them. She has such an expressive, unique use of lyrics and a great mix of rock and groove for me. It was one of those albums you heard everywhere. I couldn’t get it out of my head.”

‘Big sings’

Playing Mary Jane in the musical is an actor’s dream role, Reiber says, and very demanding.

“It’s a very, very emotional role for me,” she says, “so it’s exhausting in that way. It’s also so fulfilling as an actor to have that kind of challenge to repeat over and over again, to be able to find the journey in every show with a character that’s going through so much emotionally. It’s been really interesting and challenging for me to find my way through doing that over and over again. It’s a role an actor wants to dig into and be challenged by, and I have that in this role.

“She also gets some great comedy, and I’m good at that. Emotionally, she’s on this crazy roller coaster. She’s all over the place, trying to put on a good face while she’s melting down and going through the biggest crisis of her life. It’s intense.”

Her character, she explains, is a drug addict. She was in a car accident and, like so many Americans in the opioid crisis, became addicted without realizing it.

“She’s the perfect urban wife, and she tries to be this perfect person she’s always tried to be, but being addicted to this drug makes her vulnerable in so many ways,” she says. “She’s also faced with an old trauma she’s never really dealt with, which is brought up through another storyline. There are many levels of intensity that she deals with.”

Reiber’s excited that she gets to sing these songs every night.

“This music just fills my soul,” she says. “To sing this music every night, I go through something every single time in the best way possible. When I think of my career and the roles that I’ve played, I compare this role to Elphaba,” she says, naming the character she played in “Wicked” on Broadway when she’d belt out “Defying Gravity.”

Both roles are “a big sing,” she says. “The weight of it, the carry of it, the individuality of it, the size of it. The fact that you’re carrying a show and the big song of it! Both require a lot of vocality. They also require a lot, both physically and emotionally. They’re similar in that way. “

But though both characters are faced with conflict and challenge, they deal with it differently to get to the other side of it.

“MJ, for me, emotionally, is on a level that takes a lot more out of me as an actor and as a person,” she says.

Dancing with demons

“Jagged Little Pill” contains many outstanding numbers, and Reiber performs at least two of them.

In “Uninvited,” she is on a couch, grappling with herself and her addiction.

Specific characters in the musical have dancers they call avatars, who act as the conscience of the family, she explains.

“(Mine) follows me around and acts as the drug and as the dark parts of MJ in ‘Uninvited,’” she says. “On the couch, MJ and her avatar are battling it out and working through her demons. It’s an incredible number. When I first saw ‘Jagged Little Pill,’ the dancing was one of the things that just blew my mind. It is a major part of the story.

“It’s not your typical Broadway choreography; it’s very modern. I had never seen choreography like that. When I first saw it, I was really taken by how it’s very visceral, from the inside out. It expresses emotion in a way you don’t always get from dancing. A lot of dancing is more performative. This is expressing emotion in a way you don’t always see (on a Broadway stage.)”

The choreography is by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, who has choreographed for operas, ballet companies, and Beyonce, Reiber says.

Another standout number is “Smiling,” in which Reiber enacts Mary Jane’s day in reverse.

“It’s one of my favorite numbers. It’s beautiful,” she says. “You’re physically moving backwards while you’re singing the song. MJ is backtracking through her day. She’s living a little outside her body right now. She’s living with her addiction and also trying to be the person she’s always been. Rehearsing the song, I’d be a weeping mess by the end of it. I could connect with the lyrics about having a hard day and being overwhelmed as a mom.

“When I saw this number on Broadway, I said, ‘What just happened?’ It was an amazing number. Kudos to the incredible choreographer.”

Keeping it up-to-date

Reiber saw the show on Broadway during previews; it’s changed quite a bit since then, she states, noting that they did recent rewrites to include George Floyd and Black Lives Matter.

“It’s really important to them to make sure the show is very up-to-date and very specific about the topics that we discuss and how we talk about them. It’s really important to the Jagged team that they represent and speak in ways that value people and really land in the way they want it to.”

The cast includes non-binary actors.

“It’s important we represent people the way they want to be,” Reiber says.

“We all respect each other’s pronouns. It’s important to the Jagged team and to the cast that we make it clear that this is a cast, a show, and a company that respects you and represents you the way you want to be represented. You can be your full self here.”

The character of Jo in the musical is non-binary, and Jade McLeod, who plays Jo, is also non-binary.

“They are amazing,” Reiber says.

(A video of McLeod singing “You Oughta Know” in the Playbill studio has racked up more than 44,000 views so far. (Her performance of this number on the tour has received mid-show standing ovations.)

“The show deals with a lot of issues that challenge people’s thinking,” Reiber says. “I hope audiences can ride it out, grow, learn from it, and feel something they haven’t before. We’re all humans here, going through difficult things and having to smile through them sometimes. That’s MJ’s story, and I’m grateful I get to represent such an important story so many people can relate to. I hope people come and are moved, that they laugh and cry, and that they see themselves somewhere and leave having grown and felt deeply.

“We’re all trying to heal. And art heals.

“And I’m so glad to be a part of that.”

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