Illinoise – 25 April 2024

In a Broadway season full of faithful adaptations of novels, movies, and plays, and (for the most part) revivals that cling to the original intent with religious zeal, Illinoise stands out as a beautiful, last minute attempt to throw in a purely fictional, breathtaking dance piece just in time to qualify for the 2024 Tony Awards. Though using music of Sufjan Stevens that was not written for theatre, the show sees this music as one among many layers of a nuanced story whose vitality comes from the interconnection of the pieces. It is not driven by the music or the dance or the lighting or the singers, but by the symbiotic relationship playing out in real time in a collaboration that truly feels seamless, dynamic, and unique.

The underlying pulse of the show beats in the interconnectedness of the performers as they weave in and out of time, in and out of imagination, in and out of connections to each other. The vocals are admittedly hard to understand at times, but they don’t dictate the story the way they would in a traditional musical. Rather they underscore and provide texture. They add meaning, but are not the meaning. Illinoise is a beautiful show that reminds us how tenuous the duality of the world is, and how stories don’t have to be loud, in your face, and straightforward in order to hammer home a message.

Illinoise asks a lot of a modern audience in terms of attentiveness and interpretation— because the story is told without dialogue and the only words are the distant cries of the singers, a level above the dancers, simultaneously highlighted and fading into the background, featured for their voices yet not audible or visible to the characters. As an audience, we are watching a series of connected and disconnected shifts in and out of time and the heads of the characters, and we are finding the purpose of the show in the way characters look at each other, touch each other (or don’t!), and mobilize as a unit to share space, hold space, and make space.

Towards the end, the story came full circle back to the beginning, and tried to wrap up too many things too completely. Everyone leaning in to support Henry (Ricky Ubeda) would have been a perfect and powerful ending to the pulse of the show. It was a still, intimate moment in a room that had been moving and coming alive for 90 minutes, and I wanted to linger a little more in the silence of this visible support, in the way the layers and textures all culminated in a bottom line of telling your story with great courage and being embraced even though you feel broken.

It wouldn’t be a show that played at the Park Avenue Armory without attached reading material, and, if you haven’t seen the show already, I highly recommend reading the program insert first. It provides absolutely clarity to what you are seeing and removes all ambiguity surrounding what is happening to Carl (Ben Cook) towards the end. Reading in advance allows you to feel it while you see it, rather than question it. The supplement stashed in the Playbill is beautiful in its own right, and adds yet another layer to the intricate weaving of Illinoise on Broadway. The orchestrations (Timo Andres) are top notch, and the interplay of the lighting design (Brandon Stirling Baker) and sound design (Garth Macaleavey) are absolutely delightful.

This show is very different from the rest of its season. It embodies all of the elements of phenomenal theatre: brilliant design, direction, choreography, vocals, musicianship— but the true magic of Illinoise is that it’s one of very few shows I’ve seen where the collaboration feels so tight and so interconnected throughout. In theatre, we always say we all have to come together to make the show work, and Illinoise truly leads by example. When we all come together, we barely need words— we can just feel collectively and allow the show to move us. This show is still dancing around inside me as I think about the effortless way these dancers uplift a heavy story. I like the duality. It is a beautifully accurate reflection of how reality moves us through our most difficult moments.

I did not attend this performance on a press pass.