Off-Broadway Musical Review—“Girl, Interrupted” at the Public Theater

Girl, Interrupted

Music and lyrics by Aimee Mann

Book by Martyna Majok, based on the book by Susanna Kaysen 

Choreography by Sonya Tayeh; directed by Jo Bonney

Performances through July 12, 2026

Public Theater, New York, NY

publictheater.org

Juliana Canfield and the cast of Girl, Interrupted (photo: Joan Marcus)

Susanna Kaysen’s 1993 memoir Girl, Interrupted—an unflinchingly honest account of her time in a Massachusetts psychiatric hospital in the 1960s—was first turned into a 1999 film, directed by James Mangold, notable for its two central performances: Wynona Ryder as Susanna and Angelina Jolie, who won an Oscar for the showy role of Lisa, one of Susanna’s fellow patients.

The new stage adaptation, a world-premiere production at the Public Theater—which has introduced new musicals for decades, from Hair, A Chorus Line and Hamilton to the more recent Suffs and Hell’s Kitchen, all of which went to Broadway—has an equally impressive pedigree. The book is by playwright Martyna Majok, whose incisive drama Queens was done off-Broadway earlier this season; the show is staged by Jo Bonney, one of our most inventive directors; and the music and lyrics are by Aimee Mann, a master of intimately ironic songs about miscommunication and broken relationships, from her 1985 debut with ‘Til Tuesday through her decades-long solo career.

But Mann’s songs—which made their debut on her stunning 2021 album, Queens of the Summer Hotel—are almost too confessional for the stage, even a small off-Broadway one. What sounds so achingly poignant on Mann’s album loses that poignance when sung by different characters, despite nearly identically restrained and small-scale accompaniment by acoustic guitar, bass, violin and piano. 

When Susanna (a restrained but powerful Juliana Canfield) sings “At the Frick Museum,” a deceptively intricate song that manages to encompass Vermeer—one of whose paintings at the Frick gives the memoir and the show their title—and male predation, her vocal is harrowingly understated, but lost is Mann’s world-wearily forthright voice. The same goes for most of the other songs, especially when they’re performed by more than one character. Another problem is that Mann does not write showstoppers; this works on Queens of the Summer Hotel, where the accumulation of her soulful, incident-filled songs grabs the heart. Yet onstage, though beautifully crafted and orchestrated by Todd Almond, the piling up of these same songs is far less memorable.

Majok’s lively book captures sympathetic snapshots of these misunderstood (and misdiagnosed) women, while Bonney’s precise direction helps smooth over the unavoidably episodic nature of the material. She also effectively uses the conceit of performers playing instruments onstage. Alongside the always authentic Canfield is a captivating cast, although such a forceful singer as Emily Skinner is unfortunately relegated to a small role as one of the hospital’s doctors.