'Girl, Interrupted' review: Aimee Mann's urgent, uneven new musical

“I don’t know what to call what I am,” says Susanna, a newly admitted patient at McLean, a mental health facility in Belmont, Massachusetts. Time-jumping between 1967 and roughly 20 years later, Girl, Interrupted examines both the personal and systemic ramifications of a healthcare system ill-equipped to understand and treat the complexities of the mind fully.

Featuring a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Martyna Majok, original music by Aimee Mann, and choreography by Sonya Tayeh, Girl, Interrupted captures the atmospheric qualities of its source material—Susanna Kaysen’s memoir of the same name. However, most will be familiar with the 1999 film adaptation starring Winona Ryder as Susanna and Angelina Jolie’s Academy Award-winning performance as self-described psychopath Lisa (here played by King Princess).

But for all its harrowing lived experiences, the musical, now making its world premiere at The Public Theater Off-Broadway, struggles with an identity crisis not unlike its characters.

Katherine Reis, King Princess, Sally Shaw, Mia Pak, Gabi Campo, and Juliana Canfield in "Girl, Interrupted."

The crime of lacking pants

Girl, Interrupted leans into the duality of patriarchal dominance and ignorance. In the song “Give Me Fifteen,” which references the amount of time it takes a doctor to institutionalize Susanna, a male medical professional sings, “You’re committed for the crime of lacking pants.” Later, Susanna’s female doctor (Emily Skinner) says with a sense of composed frustration, “We’re doing the best we can with the knowledge we have. Which is limited.”

While the premise is fully realized on a moodily lit hospital-blue set (lighting design by Heather Gilbert, scenic design by dots), director Jo Bonney never quite distinguishes the time jumps. Juliana Canfield’s understated performance as Susanna avoids hystrionics, but Majok’s script circles on itself, such as in an early sequence when Susanna recounts the rhythm of nurses’ safety checks:

“When digital watches were invented years later, they reminded me of Checks… The way they murdered time.”

Juliana Canfield (center) and the cast of "Girl, Interrupted." — Juliana Canfield (center) and the cast of “Girl, Interrupted.” Photo by Joan Marcus.

Reflection, rather than action, stagnates Girl, Interrupted, despite an ever-spinning turntable that feels like convention rather than propulsion. The book-film-musical’s title references Johannes Vermeer’s 17th-century painting Girl Interrupted at her Music. Yet the subject remains painfully acute.

A recent CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 53% of high school girls report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness—and the numbers are even higher for LGBTQ+ youth. Girl, Interrupted has something urgent to say. The production is still figuring out how.