<em>Illinoise</em> is Broadway's best new musical | review

Dance musical Illinoise takes the songs of Sufjan Stevens's album of the same name and reimagines them as a series of stories told around a campfire culminating in an emotional queer coming-of-age

Amongst Justin Peck's impressive and high energy choreography for Illinoise, the final new musical of the overstuffed and *insert RuPaul “meh” gif here* 2023-24 Broadway season, two men stand on stage hand-in-hand simply stepping to the side, forward, and back. Their hands are on their hearts and slowly their breathing comes in sync. We sit like this for nearly a minute. It's a quiet moment, one of many in the musical, that catapults it past simply a "dance play". It's raw with meaning and drenched in queerness and love and anxiety and hope — a moment that had my inner gay child screaming.

Illinoise has been a personal project for choreographer-turned-director Justin Peck, who held the prestigious title of Resident Choreographer for the New York City Ballet before transitioning to choreographi…