Jagged Little Pill preview thread- Page 8

[treblemakerz]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 12:27pm

leefowler said: "Gee treblemakerz, it’s almost like you and GreasedLightningwere talking to two completely different groups of people."

That's what I was implying, and why I said this is likely to be a divisive show. Not sure where the hostility is coming from.

[YvanEhtNioj]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 4:36pm

GreasedLightning said: "Not exactly... Not a single person I know who has seen this has enjoyed it. On or off the boards. "

That doesn’t mean anything. Most everyone I know enjoyed it.

I think, for the most part, people should take reviews on here with a grain of salt. It’s like when whizzer(?) went to see Beetlejuice and hated it, then everyone else went on a “well now I’m never going to see it”. THEN once people actually got a mind of their own and saw that show they realized it wasn’t the complete dumpster fire people on here painted it out to be. 
 

if you go see it and you hate it, fine. But try to go in with an open mind. 

Updated On: 11/17/19 at 04:36 PM

[GreasedLightning]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 6:28pm

I didn’t... say... that it did. You obviously completely misunderstood my statement. I was just chiming in on the very final statement saying there was a “huge discrepancy” between the boards and off the boards. There’s not a huge discrepancy. It’s mixed reviews all around. And for the record, I did go in with a very open mind and high expectations, paid full price for a really great seat. I saw it this weekend and absolutely hated it. It is what it is.

No hostility towards you treblemakerz. Not sure who your comment was towards but apologies if you thought it was coming from me.......

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 6:51pm

This will 💯 get mixed reviews.

[treblemakerz]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 6:53pm

GreasedLightning said: "No hostility towards you treblemakerz. Not sure who your comment was towards but apologies if you thought it was coming from me......."

All good! Comment was not directed towards you, someone just seemed to take my post as an attempt to negate yours which was not the case.

[Miles2Go2]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 6:54pm

So did If/Then and Moulin Rouge! and American Idiot and and I loved them so I remain cautious yet optimistic.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 8:16pm

Respectfully, why must these thoughtful posts on subjective but measured responses to this piece of musical theater devolve into ad hominem exchanges on the posters?  We all arrive here to share years, indeed decades of theatergoing experience-based analyses. We gain little attacking perceived differences in taste, or bias and prejudices. It's exhausting to wade through when we simply want to know how others respond to theater.   

Updated On: 11/17/19 at 08:16 PM

[Peronista]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 9:05pm

Here here, Augie... and my respectful response to the show was that any of the many themes they set out to explore could have sustained its own musical, but attempting to address them all at once in a single gumbo of hot topics seemed to just be too too much. Rather like some of these minority reps in the hearings racing a mile a minute thru a 5 minute time bloc to cram as much counterpoint in as they can. Slightly exhausting and nervous making, however well intentioned.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 9:36pm

Oh I'm sure the set was very expensive, but it LOOKED cheap. To pay $200 to see actors moving a set around in 2019 is just bad direction. 

[mailhandler777]

Posted: 11/17/19 at 11:13pm

YvanEhtNioj said: "GreasedLightning said: "Not exactly... Not a single person I know who has seen this has enjoyed it. On or off the boards. "

That doesn’t mean anything. Most everyone I know enjoyed it.

I think, for the most part, people should take reviews on here with a grain of salt. It’s like when whizzer(?)went to see Beetlejuice and hated it, then everyone else went on a “well now I’m never going to see it”. THEN once people actually got a mind of their own and saw that show they realized it wasn’t the complete dumpster fire people on here painted it out to be.


if you go see it and you hate it, fine. But try to go in with an open mind."

If I would go by peoples reviews from here or from the critics I'd never see a show...haha.

[Chowd95]

Posted: 11/18/19 at 7:01am

RippedMan said: "Oh I'm sure the set was very expensive, but it LOOKED cheap. To pay $200 to see actors moving a set around in 2019 is just bad direction."

Come From Away and Harry Potter would beg to differ...

Posted: 11/18/19 at 12:38pm

RippedMan said: "Oh I'm sure the set was very expensive, but it LOOKED cheap. To pay $200 to see actors moving a set around in 2019 is just bad direction."

The movable screens looked like they were made out of white corrugated plastic. Like with the ribbed pattern across them and everything. They look like the same material that relators use for signs they put in people's yards.

[carolinaguy]

Posted: 11/18/19 at 1:49pm

Saw this Saturday afternoon. The staging is busier than a one-armed paper hanger. They bring on the ensemble for nearly every scene. To me, pumping up the musical numbers like that indicates a lack of trust in the story, and for good reason. The characters are just overloaded symbols of a society in chaos. It was hard to feel for them. (That said, the woman seated next to me burst into tears during one of the many late-show crises and blubbered for the rest of the show.)

I will say the singing was killer, the songs were reasonably organic to their moments, and Antonio Cipriano is a real find. There were also some good one-liners; I’m still chuckling at the blondies joke. Mostly a misfire though.

[RippedMan]

Posted: 11/18/19 at 2:14pm

Chowd95 said: "RippedMan said: "Oh I'm sure the set was very expensive, but it LOOKED cheap. To pay $200 to see actors moving a set around in 2019 is just bad direction."

Come From Away and Harry Potter would beg to differ..."

Haven't seen Come From Away so can't comment, but I thought it felt a little "eh" in Harry Potter. Especially given the show and production budget. But I get it because they can't have tracks in the floor with all the stage magic, etc. 

[barcelona20]

Posted: 11/19/19 at 6:20pm

Did anyone read this interview on Vulture with Diablo Cody?  Gives us the answers to why they didn't change anything.

I was really surprised at how much politics are in the forefront of Jagged Little Pill.
One of the central characters, Frankie, is an activist. It just seemed impossible to tell a modern story about activism and empathy and not acknowledge the climate emergency, not acknowledge mass shootings, not acknowledge racial tensions, not acknowledge sexual assault. I know there are some people who feel that there might be too many issues in this show, and that’s fine with me. That makes me want to pile on more, because the reality is there are too many issues in the world. I wish we were living in a simpler narrative where we only had one or two things keeping us awake at night. But I have like seven, and they are all represented in this show.The opioid epidemic has affected my family personally in a major way, and for me to write about that has been cathartic.

[SouthernCakes]

Posted: 11/19/19 at 6:38pm

Sounds like she should have focused on the opioids as that was an actual personal narrative.

[Falsettolands]

Posted: 11/19/19 at 6:48pm

barcelona20 said: "Did anyone read this interview on Vulture with Diablo Cody? Gives us the answers to why they didn't change anything.

I was really surprised at how much politics are in the forefront ofJagged Little Pill.
One of the central characters, Frankie, is an activist. It just seemed impossible to tell a modern story about activism and empathy and not acknowledge the climate emergency, not acknowledge mass shootings, not acknowledge racial tensions, not acknowledge sexual assault. I know there are some people who feel that there might be too many issues in this show, and that’s fine with me. That makes me want to pile on more, because the reality is there are too many issues in the world. I wish we were living in a simpler narrative where we only had one or two things keeping us awake at night. But I have like seven, and they are all represented in this show.The opioid epidemic has affected my family personally in a major way, and for me to write about that has been cathartic."

But...it doesn't work...? She has every right to be upset about the current political climate, 100%. But by focusing on ALL of them she isn't saying anything about ANY of them.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 11/19/19 at 7:41pm

Yeah, that reasoning makes zero sense.

[Zion24]

Posted: 11/19/19 at 11:47pm

hoo, boy. 

Jagged Little Pill came out when i was in middle school; I knew the album by heart at some point. And to hear it all again today only affirms the genius of Alanis Morissette, because the songs and lyrics and beats all sound fresh. Had a blast listening to that music and the band plays it wonderfully (if a little loud). I'd add some of these tracks to my spotify happily. I will be humming these for the next week. 

So what the JLP team has done here is therefore all the more infuriating. Yes the show tries to out-Woke itself, raising another ISSUE! at every turn but never actually treating any of them with any intelligence or nuance. There isnt a single surprise, flourish, twist (20 minutes in, the entire plot reveals itself) but OK. That mess of a plot could still emerge as somewhat entertaining if the book scenes had been watchable. I thought the dialogue was out and out painful. Winced repeatedly when the Obvious Bad Thing or Obvious Response to Bad Thing happened. (The brother and father fell victim to this most egregiously). Editing the plot down is so doable but fine, its a process. But fixing the dialogue? Adding a modicum of wit or introspection? Nothing?

And its unfair to the actors who, for the most part, make the most of this. Elizabeth Stanley is giving a knockout performance; she was the most likable, nuanced character by a mile and her voice is shrill/solid to mimic Alanis' to the perfect degree. I thought the highlights of the show by far were her singing Forgiven and then Uninvited. (And I thought Forgiven was staged particularly well- thought it closed the first act perfectly and teased me into thinking Act 2 would be better.)

Celia Gooding's character is buried under horrible dialogue but she does a damn great job with the singing and acquits herself nicely given the role she is playing. Lauren Patten's voice is other-worldly, but i found her character one-note, and I am shocked at how much love her You Oughta Know has gotten. She sings the hell out of it but the staging (red lights, chorus, American-Idiot style dancing) was too much. And they hold the show for the applause- which was wild, but the standing ovation seemed forced to me. 

By the time we got to the protest scene, I was just angry: that song is great and SO AHEAD OF ITS TIME, it would have been so powerful to hear a 1994 number sung so poignantly in 2019. But this show's allergy to subtlety took over, until the cast is actually lined up Seasons of Love style holding protest signs that scream political slogans (that I think we all agree with, and thus dont see anything particularly clever or dramatic in using them here). I really didnt mind the cast moving the set around (which didnt look particularly cheap to me), and even bringing in the chorus for*every*single*scene was tolerable but that dancing! Front and center, spotlit and totally distracting and out of place? Oy.

Crowd ate it up: there was weeping all around me, everyone was bopping along to the music, myself included. I hope Stanley gets some kudos, and I hope Gooding (and Klena, and all of them i guess) get exposure and cast in better shows in the future.

FWIW, we were extreme left front mezz and saw every single moment perfectly.  

[VintageSnarker]

Posted: 11/20/19 at 5:53am

Falsettolands said: "barcelona20 said: "Did anyone read this interview on Vulture with Diablo Cody? Gives us the answers to why they didn't change anything.

I was really surprised at how much politics are in the forefront ofJagged Little Pill.
One of the central characters, Frankie, is an activist. It just seemed impossible to tell a modern story about activism and empathy and not acknowledge the climate emergency, not acknowledge mass shootings, not acknowledge racial tensions, not acknowledge sexual assault. I know there are some people who feel that there might be too many issues in this show, and that’s fine with me. That makes me want to pile on more, because the reality is there are too many issues in the world. I wish we were living in a simpler narrative where we only had one or two things keeping us awake at night. But I have like seven, and they are all represented in this show.The opioid epidemic has affected my family personally in a major way, and for me to write about that has been cathartic."

But...it doesn't work...? She has every right to be upset about the current political climate, 100%. But by focusing on ALL of them she isn't saying anything about ANY of them."

I'm still curious about this show because of the cast. But at any point did Diablo Cody think to ask if she was the right person to take on this activist narrative or all of these issues? Not to make this all about identity politics but her past work has been... kind of limited. 

[dramamama611]

Posted: 11/20/19 at 7:57am

The overwhelming majority of "protesters" have very specific things they care about support.  They don't just go around protesting every problem the world has.

[bwayphreak234]

Posted: 11/20/19 at 8:30am

barcelona20 said: "Did anyone read this interview on Vulture with Diablo Cody? Gives us the answers to why they didn't change anything.

I was really surprised at how much politics are in the forefront ofJagged Little Pill.
One of the central characters, Frankie, is an activist. It just seemed impossible to tell a modern story about activism and empathy and not acknowledge the climate emergency, not acknowledge mass shootings, not acknowledge racial tensions, not acknowledge sexual assault. I know there are some people who feel that there might be too many issues in this show, and that’s fine with me. That makes me want to pile on more, because the reality is there are too many issues in the world. I wish we were living in a simpler narrative where we only had one or two things keeping us awake at night. But I have like seven, and they are all represented in this show.The opioid epidemic has affected my family personally in a major way, and for me to write about that has been cathartic."

Oh boy... 

 

[rwkpa26]

Posted: 11/24/19 at 6:47pm

Where is the closest Staples to 44th Street? Looking so I can send Ms. Paulus in that direction to buy a pair of scissors and make some necessary cuts. Saw this afternoons matinee and have to agree with many that this show is a jumbled mess. Far too many plot lines, many of which are serious topics that came across as ingenuine due to the rapid shifts from subplot to subplot. There was a beautiful moment at the end of the show where four of the principles are singing on a sofa, but my enjoyment quickly faded as panels moved offstage and the 15 piece ensemble returned to the stage to repeat the same grunge dancing they’ve been performing for the past 2.5 hours. Mind you these are premium panels-featuring middle school clip art and clunky movements. Elizabeth Stanley is great in this, but otherwise JLP left much to be desired.

[Call_me_jorge]

Posted: 11/24/19 at 8:25pm

rwkpa26 said: "Where is the closest Staples to 44th Street? Looking so I can send Ms. Paulus in that direction to buy a pair of scissors and make some necessary cuts."

I.  I... I can’t. I literally cannot. The best intro to any post on these message boards. 

[dangeresque49]

Posted: 11/24/19 at 9:52pm

Chowd95 said: "RippedMan said: "Oh I'm sure the set was very expensive, but it LOOKED cheap. To pay $200 to see actors moving a set around in 2019 is just bad direction."

Come From Away and Harry Potter would beg to differ..."

Harry potter is probably the coolest thing I have seen on a stage. The fire out of the wands... the time travel...  the final fantasy boss fights