‘All the girls were in there for shit that is pretty normal’: the show reinventing Girl, Interrupted for a new generation

Susanna Kaysen’s cult memoir sparked a wave of 90s novels about young women in crisis. After 10 years in the making, stars Juliana Canfield and King Princess are bringing it to the stage

Girl, Interrupted may seem like unlikely material for a musical. Based on a 1993 best-selling memoir by Susanna Kaysen, the slim volume chronicles the author’s approximately two-year stay inside a psychiatric facility in the late 1960s. After a decade of effort, the book’s adaptation is finally premiering off Broadway at New York’s Public Theater with a cast that includes Juliana Canfield, the Tony-nominated Stereophonic actress, as Susanna and the pop star King Princess, in her stage debut, as Lisa.

Though the theatrical interpretation pulls solely from the memoir, James Mangold’s 1999 film adaptation, starring Winona Ryder as Susanna and Angelina Jolie in an Oscar-winning performance as Lisa, will probably loom large in the audience’s minds, as it did for the cast.