A New Voice for 'Girl, Interrupted'
Even the darkest works offer moments of beauty when you give them time to percolate. That was my experience with Girl, Interrupted. The new play with music deftly handles depressing subject matter.
Martyna Majok’s play is an adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir (which also inspired the Oscar-winning film). All three works focus on Kaysen’s 18-month stay at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts.
She ends up there after a tumultuous early life, including a relationship with her high school English teacher. At her breaking point, Susanna overdoses on 50 Tylenol.
Heavy material like this requires a compelling presence at its center. Luckily, Juliana Canfield fits the bill perfectly. A Tony nominee for Stereophonic, she guides the audience through Susanna’s intense story with care and compassion.
That’s especially helpful when we meet the rest of the McLean patients, all battling their own demons. The group includes women who shoot up, set themselves on fire, and smear feces on the wall, among other ailments. (We never see any of these activities, but they're referenced throughout the show.)
The most compelling character is the sociopath Lisa. The unofficial leader of her fellow patients, she’s rebellious and sarcastic. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for this part in the film version, and the recording artist King Princess makes a self-assured stage debut in the role.
The final piece of the puzzle is Aimee Mann’s score. The songs in this show (taken from her 2021 album Queens of the Summer Hotel) dive headfirst into the characters’ psyches. One highlight is “Give Me Fifteen,” a bouncy but villainous number sung by the doctor who commits Susanna.
The emotional apex, however, is the final song “I See You.” The lyrics discuss “a girl up in her bed/blade against her skin.” Later, Mann emphasizes that “People get crushed and broken/people lose and they grieve.”
It’s powerful stuff, though again very bleak. As I walked out of the show, the darkness was all I thought about, and it threatened to overpower the experience.
In the weeks since, however, the piece stayed with me. Girl, Interrupted is a fresh look at a decades-old story and a vital conversation starter about mental health.
At the Public Theater through July 12
