Get the latest gossip
‘Illinoise’ Review: A Thrilling, Genre-Defying Broadway Musical Brings the Sufjan Stevens Album to Lyrical Life
Director-choreographer Justin Peck and writer Jackie Sibblies Drury craft a genre-defying work that expands what kind of art we see on Broadway.
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. Adam Rigg’s set, which consists of an upside-down evergreen forest, a field of wheat, and an industrial space (dynamically lit by Brandon Stirling Baker), heavily features both the vocalists and the musicians, giving them positions of prominence alongside the dancers. In “Decatur” and “Seer’s Tower” he mostly eschews the lyrics, embracing the thematic content of each song, with the former bittersweetly showcasing the trio’s bond and the latter becoming a depiction of suicidality, wherein Carl’s dark thoughts are anthropomorphized by the dancers, who gradually, one by one, leap off a high platform.
Or read this on Variety