ILLINOISE at the St. James Beginning April 24 — Page 3

I trust Kad’s analysis of this (as well as most things Broadway). the Best Music competition is likely going to get pretty exciting.


I would adore a Best Musical win for Illinoise.

TotallyEffed said: "Kad said: "For the purposes of the Tonys and other awards, "musical" has a history of being interpreted rather expansively- it's included dance pieces (Contact, Movin' Out, etc), legit operas (Baz Luhrman's La Boheme), operettas (Pirates of Penzance, etc), and revues (Smokey Joe's Cafe, etc). It's basically come to mean "anything that tells a story largely through musical performance.""



And,then of course, there's the very sneaky "play with music.""

Yes, the they/thems of theater pieces that ruin the binary.

interesting to note that they'll only be doing 7 shows per week. Their typical schedule is Mon-Sat evenings and only a Saturday matinee.

ACL2006 said: "interesting to note that they'll only be doing 7 shows per week. Their typical schedule is Mon-Sat evenings and only a Saturday matinee."

That is interesting, I guess it's to give the dancers more time to recover compared to an 8 week show?

They do have some random Weds matinee too (April 24, May 1, Jul 3, Aug 7). I'll be going to the first show. The comments on here have me intrigued

Saw this last night and… I don’t know. I just didn’t connect with it at all. Maybe I was expecting too much, but I kept waiting for it to exhilarate and it mostly was just “pleasant.”

The dancers are obviously very talented, but the choreography is so pedestrian and irritatingly literal and repetitive. The musicians and singers - also very talented - are drowned out by an over-amplified sound design that doesn’t allow you to fully understand the dense, purple prose of the lyrics. And if you’ve ever wanted to be repeatedly blinded by flashlights and stadium lighting, this is your chance!

I went in wanting to love it and walked away scratching my head about how this became such a runaway hit.

I’m familiar with the album and very much of the generation who grew up with it as a touchstone of early/mid-00’s folk. It’s not one of my favorites though, and I’ve only listened to it all the way through maybe once in my life, but I appreciated hearing it live.

My comment about its hit status confounding me had more to do with the production as a whole, since it’s not just the album being played live. All the pieces together didn’t cohere for me.

To be honest, I think maybe dance theatre is not my preferred medium of narrative storytelling.

Updated On: 3/21/24 at 09:35 AM

I've never listened to the album. Very interested in going into this completely blind and seeing if it holds up removed from the nostalgia factor.

I hope people don't try to judge this or critique it as a musical.

It's a dance piece with Sufjan music. It's about getting swept away into sensory.

It's not gonna be everyone's cup of tea and maybe it's mostly for folk fans who want a visual diversion with a beloved album and that's okay.

I'm thankful it's not trying to shoehorn anything.

16 weeks is too ambitious I think....

ColorTheHours048 said: "rattleNwoolypenguin said: "I hope people don't try to judge this or critique it as a musical."

Except that the creative team is calling it a musical and treating it as such. So, I think they want us to do exactly that."

Marketing decision I'm sure.

"Dance Fantasy" or whatever doesn't sell probably.

Call it whatever you want - it's the best musical/dance happening this season. Hype or not, we are hoping it's the "Best Musical".

jagman106 said: "I just got a message from Seat Geek regarding my June 3 ticket for Illinoise saying "event has been cancelled and to expect a future email message with refund options." I'm thinking maybe just this Monday night performance is cancelled, and not the entire transfer. Curious if anyone else received a similar message."

They changed their schedule for that week. They added a Friday matinee and cancelled the Monday evening performance.

ACL2006 said: "jagman106 said: "I just got a message from Seat Geek regarding my June 3 ticket for Illinoise saying "event has been cancelled and to expect a future email message with refund options." I'm thinking maybe just this Monday night performance is cancelled, and not the entire transfer. Curious if anyone else received a similar message."

They changed their schedule for that week. They added a Friday matinee and cancelled the Monday evening performance."

Thank you. I see that my ticket no longer appears in my SG account, but still no follow-up email. I hope I can just exchange it for a different performance.