Mia Pak, King Princess, and Sally Shaw Photo by Joan Marcus

This latest rendition of Kaysen's story arrives in the form of a play, adapted from Kaysen's book by Martyna Majok (Cost of Living; Sanctuary City), coupled with songs by singer-songwriter Aimee Mann, for whom this is her first theatrical work. And while each of these components could very well stand alone, the pairing gives the nearly two-hour intermissionless production an awkwardly cobbled-together feel in which the narrative and the song cycle vie for the privilege of telling the story.

By the time 18-year-old Susanna was admitted in 1967, the four celebrity patients (Lowell, Plath, Charles, and Taylor) had long been sent out into the world. Yet even as she worked her way through her own nearly two-year stay, Susanna knew that one of their number, Plath, ultimately died by her own hand. What, then, would be her own fate?

Throughout the years, mental institutions have been typically depicted in books, films, and on stage in less than flattering terms as "looney bins" and "nuthouses." Examples abound, from movies like The Snake Pit and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, to plays and musicals like Marat/Sade and Sweeney Todd. The conditions are generally dehumanizing if not utterly deplorable, and the staff run the facilities as if they were prisons.

Not so with McLean, which, at least as it is depicted here, would seem to be a place where courtesy and kindness and caring treatment are the watchwords, an approach that can be very expensive to carry out. ("The nurses do what the doctors say, and the doctors do what the parents say," is how the head nurse, played by Ta'Rea Campbell, puts it most succinctly.)

There is some reference to the patients' psychiatric treatment. Emily Skinner, in particular, presents her character, the psychiatrist Dr. Wick, as a no-nonsense practitioner who, nonetheless, cares deeply about her charges. But mostly, the scenes unfold among Susanna and her peers, with the play emphasizing the ways in which the young women support one another. It is in these interactions that Martyna Majok's narrative structure functions best.

We get to know not only Susanna (Juliana Canfield, coming across in her every encounter, attitude, and demeanor as the upper middle class Type A character she depicts), but also five others, each of them carefully delineated not only by personality traits but by their clothing (costumes by Sarah Laux) and hairstyles (by J. Jared Janas). A standout among the young women is the singer-songwriter King Princess, making her stage debut as the wildly unpredictable Lisa (diagnosed as a sociopath), a role for which Angelina Jolie won an Academy Award in the 1999 film of the story.

In the hands of an altogether excellent cast and Jo Bonney's direction, Girl, Interrupted would be able to stand on its own as a straight play, a story of a group of young women under siege both by their mental illnesses and by a male-dominated system that generally labels them as misfits who need to be managed and controlled. (Manoel Feliciano draws the short straw here in the unflattering role called "The Male Presence.")

Likewise, the events unfold in an entirely different way through a song cycle, with moody, often dryly satiric numbers that evoke the themes, winningly supported by strolling violinists or sung via lovely choral arrangements. Yet, while Aimee Mann did write the songs specifically for Girl, Interrupted, many of them appeared earlier on what is essentially a concept album, "Queens of the Summer Hotel," released as a stand-alone after the show hit a long pre-production pause owing to the COVID pandemic.

Brought back together for this production, the competition between the scripted scenes and the score leads to an evening you might characterize as being filled with its own (probably unintentional) interruptions to a raw tale of vulnerable young women whose greatest strength lies in finding their collective voice. In psychiatric terms, Girl, Interrupted might be diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (aka "split-personality").