From May 13th to June 26th, Girl, Interrupted—the bestselling 1993 book adapted for film in 1999—will reportedly be an off-Broadway musical with original music by Aimee Mann.
Although Susanna Kaysen‘s memoir about being a long-term psychiatric inpatient at McLean Hospital was better received than the movie, the latter, with standout performances by Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie, is now considered a cult classic.
Girl, Interrupted: The Memoir
Eighteen months in a mental hospital following a teenage suicide attempt and a not-necessarily-accurate diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) sounds drastic and foreign considering today’s improved laws, advances in psychiatry, and insurance-controlled lengths of stays. Indeed, insurance coverage is unlikely to cover 18 days, let alone months, regardless of diagnosis.
Bekah Waalkes, Liberreview.com, reviewing the 30-year anniversary edition: “In the [new] introduction…Kaysen calls the book her ‘own village study,’ an anthropological analysis of a ‘small, self-contained place.’ We get to see the customs and hierarchies of McLean as Kaysen recounts the stories of her friends and floormates. The anecdotes which compose the book, sometimes fun or funny, sometimes bleak, introduce us to, among others: Lisa, proud of her rare diagnosis as a sociopath; Georgina, Kaysen’s roommate who went mad during her junior year at Vassar; Daisy, who hoards laxatives and chicken carcasses; and Valerie, the head nurse on the floor who commands attention and occasionally respect.”
What about the title? “[It] suggests indefinite time lost: a youth that slides away unaccounted for. We learn that the title refers to a Vermeer painting, Girl Interrupted at Her Music, housed at the Frick, and that Kaysen saw the painting with her high school English teacher, whom she slept with. The psychiatrist at McLean tries to get her to analyze this relationship, but she refuses to make her crisis fit a neat narrative about spoiled innocence. (The movie adaptation has no such qualms: it imagines an ice cream parlor confrontation between Kaysen and the English teacher’s wife).”
Girl, Interrupted: The Movie
Whoopi Goldberg, Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy (1977-2009), Elisabeth Moss, Jared Leto, and Vanessa Redgrave are just some of the celebs featured in addition to Ryder and Jolie.
Roger Ebert‘s review nailed the 90’s-related premise: “Although mental illness is real and terrifying, the movie argues that perfectly sane people like Susanna can become institutionalized simply because once they’re inside the system there is the assumption that something must be wrong with them. Goldberg’s nurse has seen this process at work and warns Susanna: ‘Do not drop anchor here.’ But Susanna fits easily into the cocoon of Claymoore, where the other women include a rebel misfit named Lisa (Angelina Jolie), a roommate named Georgina (Clea Duvall) who would like to live in the land of Oz, the burn victim Polly (Elisabeth Moss), and the deeply troubled Daisy (Brittany Murphy). The staff is headed by a bureaucrat (Jeffrey Tambor) and an intelligent but detached psychiatrist (Vanessa Redgrave).”
Girl, Interrupted: The Musical
From The Public Theater‘s description: “When Susanna admits herself to a psychiatric hospital, following a 15-minute session with a doctor she’d never met, she forms unexpected bonds with the young women inside as they search for connection and a way forward. Raw and unapologetic, this new play with music reveals that the people who witness our darkest moments are often those who truly see us.”
Casting includes Juliana Canfield as Susanna, King Princess as Lisa, and Mia Pak as Grace.
