| re: Illinoise | |
| Posted by: ShowGoer 09:57 pm EDT 05/01/24 | |
| In reply to: re: (and by the way Wayman…) - mikem 12:11 pm EDT 05/01/24 | |
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| “ShowGoer, I'm kind of surprised that you don't think Here Lies Love is any more of a musical than Illinoise. My understanding is that the songs for Here Lies Love were written to tell a story, and I don't think it's a whole lot different from a lot of sung-through musicals. What elements do you wish that it had that it doesn't?” Let me be clear, Illinoise is a spectacular evening of theatre and dance, and must be seen. That said (and I’m glad I knew this going in) David Rooney at the Hollywood Repoter may have put it best (in a rave review): “ Stevens’ swooning melodies, both lush and ethereal, and lyrics that are whimsical one moment and piercing the next, only occasionally are interpreted literally. More often, the songs serve as abstract reflections of the stories being shared by the dancers.” That’s not really a musical, least not by my definition - the songs certainly weren’t written for the characters, since the arc of the stage show wasn’t even created until nearly 20 years after the album came out…. and yet the stage conceptualization and the plot they’ve come up with only occasionally reflects the arc of the original album. On top of which, the characters aren’t singing their thoughts- they’re dancing their feelings, while 3 different vocalists sing the original album up above. It’s not that they’re all working at cross-purposes, or that the two halves of the show don’t reflect and refract each other. But even more than your average jukebox book show, it still feels like a plot grafted onto a CD, that then has a live performance of that CD accompanying the dances that were choreographed to it It’s a hodgepodge that works so much better than it should, since the cast and Justin Peck put on a hell of a show. But on the whole it’s more somilar to when a Lincoln Center choreographer will stage a ballet of dances to one particular composer or composition than it is to the generally accepted definitions of musical theater storytelling. |
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