“Girl, Interrupted” was a best-selling 1993 memoir about Susanna Kaysen’s experience in a psychiatric hospital. Then in 1999 it became a film featuring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie.
Now the title will have another life, as a stage play with songs by Aimee Mann.
The show, written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Martyna Majok, is being presented by the Public Theater, a large Off Broadway nonprofit. It is to begin performances next May; the cast has not yet been announced.
The project has been in the works for years, though its contours have changed. Mann has said in interviews that she was asked by Barbara Broccoli, the longtime producer of the James Bond movies, and Fred Zollo, Broccoli’s ex-husband, to write songs for a musical adaptation of the memoir. Their daughter, Angelica Zollo, was also involved with the project.
But then came the pandemic, and the project stalled out. Mann repurposed her work on the show, releasing it as a 2021 album called “Queens of the Summer Hotel.”
Now, with support from Broccoli and Angelica Zollo, the Public says it will present a “play with music” version of the show, featuring some of Mann’s songs.
Majok, the writer of the play, won the Pulitzer for “Cost of Living”; another play she wrote, “Queens,” is now having an Off Broadway revival via the Manhattan Theater Club. She is also attached to a new musical adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” (not the version now running on Broadway — another one, with Florence Welch as one of the songwriters).
The “Girl, Interrupted” play will be directed by Jo Bonney, who also directed “Cost of Living,” and will feature choreography by Sonya Tayeh, who won a Tony Award for choreographing “Moulin Rouge!”
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
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