Review: JAGGED LITTLE PILL rocks out at Citizens Bank Opera House

Mid-show standing ovations are rare, usually reserved for above-the-title stars and even then only on opening or closing nights of a star’s run.

So when Jade McLeod earned one for their blow-the-roof-off-the-house rendition of “You Oughta Know” at a recent performance of “Jagged Little Pill,” presented by Broadway In Boston at Citizens Bank Opera House through June 25, it was a thrilling moment in a show that has many.

An American Repertory Theater production based on the worldwide chart-topping 1995 album of the same name by Alanis Morrisette, “Jagged Little Pill” premiered at the Loeb Drama Center in Cambridge in May 2018, selling out its entire 79-performance run. It next moved to New York’s Broadhurst Theatre in November 2019 – winning two Tony Awards and the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album – for a Covid-interrupted engagement that closed on December 17, 2021.

The show’s book, by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (“Juno”), deals forthrightly with timely topics including addiction, sexual assault, gender identity, and more, blended with a perfectly suited score of alternative rock classics by Morrisette and Glen Ballard.

Top-lining this excellent North American tour cast is Heidi Blickenstaff in the role she played on Broadway as a replacement, Mary Jane (M.J.) Healey, a comfortable Connecticut mom desperate to keep a high-polish sheen on her suburban world while struggling to conceal both her own prescription-painkiller addiction and her husband Steve’s (Chris Hoch) propensity for online porn, behind a wall of yoga classes and sappy Christmas letters.

Blickenstaff keeps M.J. on tenterhooks, masterfully placing tinges of sadness in her soaring vocals on act one’s “Smiling” and “Forgiven” to make the character not unlike people audiences know in their own lives. Also complicating Mary Jane’s unraveling life are her Harvard-bound son, Nick (Dillon Klena), and adopted daughter, Frankie (Lauren Chanel).

Klena – terrific on the descriptively titled “Perfect” – plays Nick as the classic high achiever, but with a conscience instead of an inflated ego, fawned over by his parents and sought after by his friends. And if Klena looks familiar, it may be because his real-life brother, Derek Klena, originated this role in Cambridge and on Broadway.

Chanel affectingly plays Frankie’s challenges as a black bisexual teenager being raised in a white family, and experiencing romantic attraction to Jo, a non-binary friend with whom she explores her sexuality, superbly played by McLeod. Chanel and McLeod make a compelling young couple but are given the short shrift when Frankie falls for Phoenix (Rishi Golani), a male classmate, and casts Jo aside.

Allison Sheppard – achingly true on act two’s “Predator” – is heartbreaking as Bella, whose sexual assault at the hands of a fellow high-school student divides the town and opens further fissures in the Healey family.

Under the very able direction of Diane Paulus, with pulsating choreography by Sidi Laribi Cherkadui and a sensational ensemble, this production is swift-footed from start to finish, with Morrisette’s ever-relevant songs driving home the show’s important messages.

Photo caption: Jade McLeod and the North American touring company of “Jagged Little Pill.” Photo credit: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade.

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