The singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens has gifted us with a steady stream of new releases ever since his debut album back in 2000. But even as he's stayed professionally active, and stream stats for songs like "Fourth Of July" and "Mystery Of Love" put him in legit mainstream-star territory, Stevens has been able to maintain a rare kind of internet-era ambiguity and mystery that only adds to the ethereal, fragile quality of his music. He hasn't been a true touring artist since the Obama administration, hasn't performed live at all since 2018, and keeps out of the spotlight enough that, when he does let fans in on his personal struggles and tragedies, it feels more like receiving a late-night phone call than reading tabloid gossip. For me personally, Sufjan almost feels like someone I went to high school with—both of us queer Michiganders raised in Christianity who moved to New York to write after college. It actually shocks me a little whenever I'm reminded that he's 20 years older.
It's this enigmatic, restrained celebrity of Stevens—the way you form your opinion of him through a sprawling and diverse multi-decade collection of music that's meant to stand on its own—that makes his work perfect for a production like Illinoise, a dance-focused musical that's got one more month in its limited Broadway run. Midtown Manhattan has long hosted licensed musicals featuring the greatest hits of popular artists, either placed in a clean, friendly biographical narrative or wedged into a flimsy original story. Some of these productions are charming. Nearly all of them try to brainwash you into thinking they're great by ending on a song the audience absolutely loves. But while Illinoise, crafted by Justin Peck and Jackie Sibblies Drury from the material of Stevens's 2005 breakthrough album, shares some superficial similarity with the cheesiest blockbusters, the decision to eschew all spoken dialogue sets it apart in the medium. In the absence of any recent Stevens tour, Illinoise is a place to give life to some of his most beloved songs while also inviting the audience to experience both his artistry and popular theater in a way they possibly haven't before.
There is a plot here, and frankly it shouldn't be hard to follow if you're paying attention. In the vein of The Canterbury Tales, the first chunk of this intermission-less show gathers a group of writers on a beach at night to hang and share stories from their notebooks. (The versatile and appealing set, by Adam Rigg, places the musicians in full view above the characters and invokes a big-city, small-town, or isolated natural setting by just subtly shifting its points of emphasis.) Our attention is drawn toward the one that looks the most like Sufjan—Ricky Ubeda, credited as "Henry"—but he stays hesitant and withdrawn. Instead, his peers take turns getting up in the middle of the group, at which point the scene essentially dissolves into a dance sequence set to a Stevens track from the Illinois album.
The three formidable vocalists—Elijah Lyons, Shara Nova, and Tasha Viets-VanLear, all wearing familiar-looking wings—do all the verbalizing, stretching Stevens's erudite, expressionistic, and sincere words to encircle the dancers. Illinoise takes advantage of the wide-ranging subjects on the Stevens album to change tones quickly, almost like an old-fashioned revue. "Jacksonville" features an extraordinary early show-stopper of a tap solo from Byron Tittle, "They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back from the Dead!! Ahhhh!" gets explicit about the crushing pressure of conservative ideology on a young progressive, "The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts" is a sweet crowd-pleaser about a guy who wants to be Superman, and the subject matter of "John Wayne Gacy, Jr." is about as dark as you can get on a Broadway stage.
That the show never stays in one genre for too long keeps up a certain level of suspense, and the originality is an obvious strength. Sometimes, I think dance shows at this Broadway-level scale can try too hard to justify their own existence—as if their starting position with audiences is a defensive "Hey, you probably haven't seen anything like this before, but here's why it's good." Illinoise isn't obsequious in that way, and with the exception of the tap inferno, what it asks of its performers is consistent emotional openness rather than showy gymnastics. There's a straightforward joy in just watching these talented bodies move in unison, live right in front of your face, and because it relies solely on music and motion, it gently expands your brain to contain just a few more ideas about narrative forms than it may have at the start.
About halfway through the show, Henry gets up the courage to share, and the musical dives into his journey for the rest of its runtime—a close friend lost and a love found, to put it simply. Two of the early songs that center his experience are "Chicago" and "Casmir Pulaski Day," staged fairly literally. "Pulaski," in this form, is even more of a heartbreaker: Already a difficult listen on the CD, this quiet ballad about cancer takes shape as a duet between Ben Cook and an ailing Gaby Diaz, where physical limitations and the hesitancy of ex-lovers work to dam the couple's purely felt sadness and still-remaining beauty. It speaks volumes without over-emphasizing anything.
"Chicago" took me aback when I first heard it. I mentioned that these jukebox-flavored shows generally blast you with their best song at the end, and seeing it in the middle, staged simply as a song about driving to Chicago, and then driving to New York, felt underwhelming—a waste of what most Stevens fans (at least those over 25 or so) would call his signature song and catchiest melody. However, "Chicago" returns later in Henry's story, back in the present day, and there, it all fits. Having seen where the story's gone, and with the help of the musicians, we can contrast the two versions and mark the passing of time. Where the "All things go, all things grow" choruses might have initially reflected the easy confidence of youth, it becomes a lesson hard-earned in maturity.
There are roughly two possible reactions to hearing a good live performance of a song you already like. In one, it's a simple endorphin release reminding you that the song is great and you've always enjoyed listening to it. For fans of Stevens, Illinoise is that, and in this way it functions as a stand-in for one of his old concerts. But the other reaction, one that Illinoise also achieves by executing its bold and imaginative premise so well, is that listening to the song feels like hearing something fresh that deepens all of your past experiences with it. Through this rearrangement of a classic album and the creative spark in these dances, Illinoise becomes not just a tribute to Stevens but a conversation with him. And for those who like to think of him as kin, it's a conversation with us, too.
