‘Girl, Interrupted’ Gets Interrupted by 25 Years Between Screen and Stage

“Girl, Interrupted” at the Public Theater offers a chance to revisit the story of Susanna Kaysen, an eighteen-year-old woman who signs herself into a psychiatric hospital in the late 1960s after a suicide attempt. She is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and spends the next eighteen months of her life under the watchful eyes of a clinical team. Ms. Kaysen first told her story in her 1993 memoir before it was made into a film in 1999 starring Winona Ryder as Ms. Kaysen. In the movie adaptation, Angelina Jolie plays Lisa Rowe, a young “sociopath.” The film swiftly became a cult classic and won Ms. Jolie an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress but in the nearly three decades since it was released, it has aged poorly. Our cultural climate is full of attempts to destigmatize mental illness, distilling this film to gratuitous suffering at its worst and a weak attempt at commentary on anti-psychiatry at its best. The play begs the viewer to ask, can “Girl, Interrupted” manifest on stage without a voyeuristic lens?“Girl, Interrupted” at the Public Theater until July 12th, 2026, opens with a projection of an oil painting where a young woman stares at the viewer as a male figure attempts to redirect her attention to a sheet of music. The painting is “Girl Interrupted at Her Music” (c. 1658-1659) by Johannes Vermeer. Juliana Canfield, in her portrayal of Ms. Kaysen, uses this imagery to express her feelings of camaraderie with the girl in the painting; both are defined by a period of interruption beyond their control. Ms. Ryder’s on-screen portrayal of Ms. Kaysen in James Mangold’s film presents a listless, confused and detached young woman. In the Public Theater’s rendition, Ms. Canfield has more of a chance to express Ms. Kaysen’s positionality and she does so with restraint and tact. The film dramatizes isolation, overmedication and electroconvulsive therapy. The play includes references to these practices but with such abstractness that the emotional impact is lost.Juliana Canfield and Emily Skinner in ‘Girl, Interrupted’ at the Public Theater. Joan MarcusThis lack of effective emotional pull is relevant because these clinical practices have not disappeared, only changed form. In 2020, Paris Hilton, the socialite and heiress to the Hilton fortune, released her documentary, “This is Paris” where she spoke about the abuse she endured as a teenager at Provo Canyon Behavioral Hospital. This brought the “Troubled Teen Industry,” a network of privately owned residential programs across America, to the attention of the mainstream. What followed was a movement called “Breaking Code Silence” which according to their mission statement, aims to “prevent institutional child abuse and to empower survivors to engage in positive self-advocacy.” This movement has allowed for a wider conversation about how mentally ill youth get treated, raising concern about for-profit models of psychiatric care.As I watched both the movie and the film, I found myself hoping for a contemporary telling of psychiatric stays, one that could go beyond tropes and caricatures to ask: what more could we do to support those who have been mistreated by psychiatry? If the film were made today, it would be a product of a time where mental illness is not taboo but instead hyper-relatable.Where the film does stand the test of time is that is not guilty of romanticizing mental illness, unlike “The Virgin Suicides” which was also released in 1999. The play’s major triumph was its reimagining of Lisa. King Princess plays her convincingly, elevating her from a villain to a complex young woman who has been failed by her family. Ms. Jolie’s depiction in the film is harsher, relying on morbidity and cruelty to propel the plotline. When the play ends, Lisa is stable, if not totally redeemed. In both the film and the play, the young women watch through the TV as their peers are drafted for the Vietnam War and as protests take place in the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. This shows their disconnect from the collective experience, as well as demonstrating the stresses and expectations of life in the 1960s. This is perhaps most strongly highlighted when in the play, Ms. Kaysen can only leave the hospital when she accepts a marriage proposal. This is omitted in the film, where she instead is discharged after getting a job at a bookstore in Harvard Square. This tender moment almost makes up for the film’s crasser choices.Honoring the original text is valuable as it highlights a time when Borderline Personality Disorder was the easiest way to label a non-conforming woman. But, regardless of whether it’s on stage and screen, perhaps we have moved beyond “Girl, Interrupted” as source material for mental health awareness and female empowerment. Where the film was exploitative, the play was thoughtful but too tame. It doesn’t further villainize mentally ill people but it does little beyond telling the same story with less fervor and more violin. If 1999 couldn’t do 1968 justice, neither, it seems, can 2026.

‘Girl, Interrupted’ Gets Interrupted by 25 Years Between Screen and Stage

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