Girl, Interrupted ★★★★

The creative path from conception to premiere is rarely smooth.

In 2018 singer-songwriter Aimee Mann was approached by producers to create music for a stage musical adaptation of Susanna Kaysen’s memoir, Girl, Interrupted. Famous for writing wistful, melancholic music, Mann seemed a perfect match with the material.

And was. She started writing songs, and then the 2020 pandemic hit, derailing the musical if not the music: Mann released some of the songs she’d written for the show on her 2021 album, Queens of the Summer Hotel.

All these years later, the musical — and despite it occasionally being referred to as a play with music, it is a musical, albeit not standard musical fare — has arrived at The Public Theater. With Mann’s music, book by Martyna Majok, who won a Pulitzer for Cost of Living, and direction by Jo Bonney, one of Majok’s frequent collaborators, Girl, Interrupted now lives on stage as a haunting memoir that sings.

The creators have opted to focus on Kaysen’s memoir rather than the so-so 1999 film version that starred Winona Ryder as Susanna but is best remembered for the powerful performance by Angelina Jolie, who stole the film away from Ryder and every other co-star, winning an Oscar in the process as wild, troubled Lisa.

There’s no such theft in this production. Juliana Canfield, Tony-nominated for Stereophonic, is excellent as Susanna and brings considerable gravitas to the role. The show has her as an adult revisiting her 18-year-old self during her confinement at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts following a suicide attempt, and Canfield skillfully manages the time leaps as Susanna’s older and younger selves.

Susanna’s fellow patients all have their individual challenges and stories, and Mann’s sublime songs give each of the wonderfully talented actresses who portray them a chance to shine. Susanna sings “Robert Lowell & Sylvia Plath,” a touching, delicate duet with Grace (Mia Pak), Susanna’s roommate. Lisa (King Princess) explains why she’s always trying to escape in “Outside, Inside.” Daisy (Katherine Reis), who eats whole chickens and keeps the carcasses, reveals her outside troubles in “Home By Now,” and the wealthy Tori (Gabi Campo) tells why she shoots speed when back in “Mexico.” Lastly, in what is possibly the most moving song of the night, Polly (Sally Shaw) recounts why she set herself on fire in “Burn It Out”:

I knew the secrets that live in fire

I saw the promise that flames inspire

I could just burn it out

Shadows and scenes that would not stay put

I could redact them with ash and soot

I could just burn it out

Each of those songs is a triumph. The downside is that as the show progresses, it starts to feel as if each character is waiting for her designated spotlight moment: she goes, then she sings, then…

Other than that, Majok very much succeeds in telling these teenagers’ sad stories with eloquence and sensitivity, and Bonney gets wonderful performances out of her entire cast, which includes the regal Emily Skinner who, sadly, does not get her own song.

That said, a little levity might have gone a long way here. The set is as dark as the subject matter, and as the show has no intermission, the emotional lifting required of the audience can be heavy. There’s a reason Spring Awakening had some zippy, rousing numbers.

A bit mean as it is to say given this show’s prolonged path to production, the timing of this production feels oddly off. Despite a modern-day crisis of young women walking a mental-health tightrope, the show never quite finds a way to connect its 1960s institutional setting to the specific anxieties facing young women today. Nonetheless, Girl, Interrupted has an amazing score to balm even the most hardened of souls.