Illinoise
Opening Night: April 24, 2024
Theater: St James Theatre
Website: illinoiseonstage.com
Based on the landmark Sufjan Stevens album, Illinoise “springs to epic life onstage” (The Washington Post) in a “mysterious, deeply moving and unforgettable dance-musical” (The New York Times) directed and choreographed by Tony Award winner Justin Peck. Peck and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury have crafted an original coming-of-age tale that blends dance, theater, live music and storytelling into a breathtakingly emotional journey.
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April 26, 2024
But not together: Among a thousand other smart choices, Justin Peck (who directed and choreographed) and Jackie Sibblies Drury (who, with Peck, wrote the story) have delaminated the songs from the characters, thus avoiding the jukebox trap that diminishes both.
April 27, 2024
Yet in all honesty, for all the obvious delight sprinkled over “Illionise,” it did not move me. It made me want to be moved though, which in a way, is its own sort of illumination.
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April 26, 2024
The final Broadway production of this crazy busy 2023-24 season is also one of its most exhilarating: Illinoise is a thrilling and absolutely gorgeous dance celebration of singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 early-career masterpiece LP Illinois, using a large cast of dancer-actors – and three excellent singers, along with that extra “e” at the end of the show title – to flesh out the loose story that might (or might not) have stayed hidden in the grooves of the concept album all along.
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April 26, 2024
This multifaceted mix, often stirring and fascinating to listen to, is not an inherently logical choice for a narrative work of art — and yet, Justin Peck has devised, directed, and choreographed a 90-minute dance theater piece based on it, one that will indelibly be remembered as one of the most singular productions in recent Broadway history.
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April 26, 2024
Now on Broadway at the St. James Theater, this miracle of a show has traded the grandeur of Park Avenue Armory’s monumental Drill Hall for a gentler intimacy. (“Intimate” would not be a typical descriptor for the St. James, but that’s just how massive the Drill Hall is.) It remains, above all else, a magical work of fierce heart that bursts with indescribable wells of emotion.
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April 26, 2024
And this is the real triumph of the new show built by Stevens, director and choreographer Justin Peck, and playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury around the epic blueprint of the album: Beyond its many technical glories, and its few brief stumbles, Illinoise achieves a holistic transcendence. For 90 glorious minutes, you do feel.
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April 26, 2024
At the Armory, I found “Illinoise” not only sentimental but downright whimsical. It was intriguing to see three singers walk out on stage wearing enormous fairy wings (costumes by Reid Bartelme and Harriet Jung). Only later did I realize that they were moth wings, because “Illinoise,” with its book by Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury, is a coming-of-age story.
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April 26, 2024
Without a word of spoken dialogue, the show pulls us into late adolescence, a time when love, anguish and everything in between are felt perhaps with the greatest intensity. The book co-written by director-choreographer Peck and Drury (who won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama with her brilliant meta-theatrical race inquiry, Fairview) is skillfully shaped yet invisible in the best sense of undiluted physical, sensorial and elemental storytelling.
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April 26, 2024
Reimagining Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 album Illinois into a tale of love, longing, zombies, and killer clowns, when Illinoise works, it works like gangbusters. And when it doesn’t, fear not; there’s still plenty of beauty to behold at the St. James Theatre.
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April 26, 2024
The piece sits very comfortably in the St. James Theatre, a more intimate venue than “Illinoise” enjoyed either in Chicago or on Park Avenue. It’s not a show for all tastes but it certainly makes the case that it belongs on Broadway.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2024
Illinoise is a wonderfully collaborative effort that raises the “barre” for Broadway musicals moving forward.
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April 26, 2024
And while my gut tells me the show — from New York City Ballet resident choreographer Justin Peck that’s set to the songs of Sufjan Stevens — is not really a musical per se, it is a transporting and soul-stirring experience all the same.
READ THE REVIEWApril 26, 2024
This has not been a banner year for new musicals on Broadway, but with “Illinoise,” the final show I saw this season, I glimpsed the majestic future.
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