“Illinoise,” a dance-driven, dialogue-free musical adapted from a beloved 2005 album by Sufjan Stevens, will move to Broadway next month.

The show, a collaboration between acclaimed choreographer Justin Peck and Pulitzer-winning playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury, opens April 24 at the St. James Theater; the run will be limited, with a planned closing date of August 10.

“Illinoise” features a group of young creative people gathering around a campfire to share stories about their lives; it ultimately focuses on the life of a man finding his way while facing grief. “A lot of the show is really about the catharsis of opening up to the community around yourself,” Peck, who directs and choreographs the show, said in an interview.

“Illinoise” joins a busy spring season on Broadway, which has seen a heavy concentration of openings in late April, posing significant economic challenges for producers as costs have risen and viewership has fallen since the coronavirus pandemic.

But the creators and financiers of “Illinoise” want to capitalize on their show’s momentum: It’s just wrapping up a sold-out edition at the Park Avenue armory in Manhattan, and also had successful runs earlier this year at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and last year at Bard College’s Fisher Center.

The handover will be unusually quick, with just 29 days between the end of the run at the Armory and the start of the run at the St. James. There is a short rehearsal period, but no previews; the first performance will also be the opening, which is unusual for Broadway.

“We have this kind of lightning in a bottle with this show, something that you can’t create intentionally,” Peck said. “We want to maintain the energy of the show, and the longer we wait between stages of this, the more we risk losing that energy.”

“Illinoise” is performed by a dozen acting dancers and a trio of vocalists, along with a live band.

The show’s use of dance to tell a story is not unprecedented: The history of such so-called dansicals includes the Tony-winning “Contact,” which premiered in 2000, as well as the 2002 production that most influenced Peck , “Movin’ Out,” which Twyla Tharp choreographed to the songs of Billy Joel.

“The music, the story and the movement come together in your own mind, rather than being combined in front of you on stage,” Drury said in an interview. “And there’s something about that that feels really beautiful and exciting. It ensures that the audience can really empathize and connect emotionally with what is happening on stage.”

The Broadway run is produced by Orin Wolf, John Styles and David Binder, in association with Seaview.

‘A Wonderful World’, a new musical about Louis Armstrong, will open on Broadway this fall.

The musical, which was previously performed Miami, New Orleans And Chicagostars James Monroe Iglehart, who won a Tony Award a decade ago for playing the Genie in “Aladdin” and is now starring as King Arthur in a Broadway revival of “Spamalot.”

The show begins previews on October 16 and opens on November 11 at Studio 54, where the musical ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ is now playing in limited release.

When Armstrong passed away in 1971, the trumpeter and singer left a legacy as one of the most important figures in the history of jazz. The show explores his life through the eyes of his four wives.

The score consists of Armstrong songs, including the classic that gives the show its title, along with “When You’re Smiling,” “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love” and others. The book is by Aurin Squire and Christopher Renshaw directs; Renshaw and Andrew Delaplaine are credited with conceiving the musical.

“A Wonderful World” is produced by Thomas E. Rodgers Jr., Renee Rodgers, Martian Entertainment (Carl D. White and Gregory Rae), Vanessa Williams and Elizabeth Curtis.

Good morning. Today we're looking at an Off Broadway musical that Donald Trump's former fixer will promote during a press preview this morning. We also get details about a lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams that, in an unusual move, the City Council could join.

Today — the day a judge can schedule a criminal trial against Donald Trump — the one-time fixer acting in that case will promote an off-Broadway broadcast of the former president and several women in his life.

The show, “Five: The Parody Musical,” centers on Trump; his two ex-wives; his current wife, Melania Trump; his daughter Ivanka; and Stormy Daniels, the porn actress whose fixer, Michael Cohen, paid $130,000 to keep quiet about her affair with Trump.

Cohen will be the MC at a press preview for “Five” this morning, introducing cast members who will perform songs from the show. He said he saw the script and thought it was “clever and funny.”

The book and lyrics for “Five” were written by two gay men from Orthodox Jewish backgrounds – one a drag performer, the other a former mortgage adviser turned playwright and producer. The show was inspired by 'Six', the energetic Broadway musical about the wives of Henry VIII that Times critic Jesse Green called “a Tudors Got Talent belt between six sassy divas.”

“The light bulb moment came right after we saw 'Six,'” “Five” writers Moshiel Newman Daphna and Shimmy Braun said in a press release for the show. They said that “Five,” with music and additional lyrics by Billy Recce, a 26-year-old composer with other Off Broadway credits, “at least gives these women their moment in the spotlight.” Previews begin tonight at Theater 555, located at 555 West 42nd Street.

Cohen — who pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations in 2018 and served a prison sentence — told me by phone that he was working on his material for the press preview.

“It would really have to look like me or it wouldn't be authentic,” he said. “I think my sense of humor is strong enough. This isn't a full comedy routine. There are only a few minutes between acts.”

This was after we determined who exactly he was talking to. He had called me, as agreed by people from the show, but at first he thought he had called someone from the show who would give him “some talking points,” he said.

“I don't want to talk about this Trump legal circus,” he said. “His legal team – it's like playing Whac-a-Mole with subpoenas. You'll get a summons! You'll get a summons! Everyone gets a summons.”

It wasn't Oprah Winfrey who shouted, 'You're getting a car! You get a car!” but he liked it. “I agree with that,” he stated.

Cohen said it was “interesting” that the press event was scheduled on the same day as a hearing in one of the cases involving Trump. But he also said that “it would be difficult for anyone to find a day when he can hold a press conference where he is not confronted with a legal issue.”

The case on the docket today was brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has accused Trump of falsifying records of payments he made to Cohen to reimburse him for the hush money. Trump has attacked the judge as “Trump-hating” and Bragg, who is black and a Democrat, as a “racist” on a politically motivated “witch hunt.”

Cohen said he became involved with “Five” after the show's PR agents contacted him to ask if he would read the script — “and if I liked it, if I would be willing to do the press conference.” to organize.'

There is no role for him in the show, he said, but he noted that he is mentioned because one of the five titular women is Daniels. Cohen has said that Trump directed him to make the payment to Daniels; Trump has denied having an affair with her.

Cohen said he had not seen a performance of “Five.” He also hasn't seen 'Six'. “Of course I know the story,” he said. “This is a bit of a comical representation of that, using Donald instead of Henry V.”

Henry the what?

“Henry VIII,” he corrected himself.

He continued to think about his monologue.

“Here's something more like me: how I would end the first introduction,” he said. “In all seriousness, it's easy for all of us to make fun of Trump or Trump's legal troubles here, but there are real consequences at stake here, not just for our individual freedoms, but for the future of the democracy. That said, let's hope justice is served. And not just with a well-cooked steak and ketchup on the side, but with real consequences, so that we can all agree that no one is above the law.”

“Actually,” he said, “can you read that to me? I'm going to use that word for word.”

Weather

Expect an increasingly cloudy day around 30 degrees. Prepare for a chance of rain and snow showers overnight, with temperatures stable around 30 degrees.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until Monday (Washington's birthday).

The latest Metro news

There are four petitioners in a class action lawsuit against Mayor Eric Adams and the city: three tenants facing eviction from affordable apartments they have lived in for years, and a family in a city-run shelter.

All four are represented by the Legal Aid Society, which accuses Adams of failing to comply with laws intended to reduce homelessness.

And in an unusual twist, the city council is expected to join the lawsuit soon.

At issue is a package of bills the Council passed last year to expand options for a housing voucher program, which is one of the city's main tools to combat homelessness. Adams vetoed the legislation, saying the city could not afford the changes the bill called for. The Council voted in July to override the veto.

Since then, the government has failed to make the vouchers more widely available, the lawsuit states. Legal Aid filed the lawsuit on behalf of people who qualified for the voucher program, known as CityFHEPS.

The mayor made some changes to the program through an executive order, including removing the rule that people could only qualify for vouchers if they had stayed in a shelter for 90 days. Advocates for the homeless had pushed for the change.

But the package of laws passed by the Council went further, making tenants eligible for a voucher after receiving a request for unpaid rent from their landlord. Previously, people usually had to prove through housing court that they were facing eviction.

METROPOLITAN diary

Reading rush hour

Dear Diary:

I was on a rush hour train into the city with my children, a three-year-old and a baby. I had to stand with the stroller and the baby, but I found a spot where my daughter could sit a little further away.

After sitting down with her Madeline book, she looked up at me.

“Mommy, you wanted to read to me,” she said.

I made eye contact with a man sitting next to her. He was tall and slim, wearing a beige cotton summer suit and a bow tie.

“Sweetheart, ask the man to read to you,” I said.

The man gestured to himself.

“Me?” he said.

I nodded.

He then read “Madeline” from 42nd Street to 72nd as riders nearby watched and listened.

–Claire Steichen

“Gutenberg! The Musical!', a comedic meta-musical about two talentless idiots who pitch a show about the father of the printing press, concludes its limited Broadway run on January 28.

The show, written by Scott Brown and Anthony King and starring Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells (who reprise their buddy act from the Book of Mormon), has generated mixed reviews and strong box office returns. But even before it opened, its mere existence on Broadway had book and library nerds shaking with anticipation and a bit of disbelief.

There has also been grumbling from some traditionalists (of the rare book, not the Rodgers and Hammerstein variety), along with some resignation. Well why not a musical about Johannes Gutenberg? If Broadway can turn a semi-overlooked founding father like Alexander Hamilton into a household name and cultural hero, why would the man whose invention jump-started mass literacy throw away his opportunity?

Hamilton had a number of thick biographies at his side. But as Gad's character notes in the show, Wikipedia (correctly) declares that records of Gutenberg's life are “sparse.”

Here's a primer for those who, even after watching the show, are wondering, “Guten-Who?”

What do we actually know about Johannes Gutenberg?

Born the son of a patrician in the early 15th century in Mainz, Germany, Gutenberg was originally trained as a goldsmith and metallurgist. Some surviving documents suggest that in the 1430s he secretly began developing what would become his famous printing press. His early efforts included some papal indulgences and a grammar book. Then, in late 1454 or early 1455, seemingly out of nowhere, his monumental two-volume Bible of nearly 1,300 pages, with two columns of 42 lines per page, appeared.

Today, specialists accurately describe Gutenberg's achievement. His Bible “was the first substantial book printed in the West with movable type,” said George Fletcher, the author of “Gutenberg and the Genesis of Printing,” during a recent interview at the Grolier Club in Manhattan, where I recently attended visit was for a conversation. Take an up-close look at some of Gutenberg's printed works, including loose leaves from his Bible.

Did Gutenberg really 'invent' the printing press?

Not exactly, although if you bring this up over a pint of mead at the Rusty German, the seedy tavern in the show, you might get in trouble. As early as the late eighth century, Japanese craftsmen were printing Buddhist sutras en masse carved wood blocks. And a form of loose letters appeared in China as early as the 11th century, although it is unclear whether Gutenberg would have been aware of this, Fletcher said.

Yet the world-changing nature of Gutenberg's invention lay not in the press, Fletcher said, but in his entire system, starting with the type species (as specialists call the individual characters). “What's important is this ability to reuse and reuse the fonts, in any combination imaginable,” he said. “You have 26 letters, but you can get millions of combinations from them. And he discovered how to do this.'

Did the Gutenberg Bible really help turn the illiterate masses of Europe into reading, as the series character claims?

“There's a lot to it,” says Fletcher, a former curator at the New York Public Library (which has one Gutenberg Bible) and the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan (which has three). Between about 1455 and the end of 1500, about 30,000 different editions of printed books, amounting to millions of copies, appeared throughout Western Europe and as far away as Constantinople. “And by the 1490s, all kinds of things were being marketed,” he said. “So there was a lot more material for people who could read or who could learn to read and improve themselves.”

Did Gutenberg fight the religious authorities?

The musical depicts Gutenberg as locked in a battle with an angry monk, who fears that the printing press will lose the church's power over the masses.

In reality, some religious readers were deeply impressed by Gutenberg's wares, including the future Pope Pius II, who saw a copy at the Frankfurt Book Fair in early 1455. He wrote excitedly to a cardinal in Rome, praising Gutenberg and his pages, which he declared “exceptionally clean and correct in their script, and without errors, as Your Excellency could read effortlessly without spectacles.”

Unfortunately, the future Pope noted, the edition of about 180 copies had already sold out.

Was Gutenberg really in love with a girl named Helvetica, like in the show?

Unlikely. Helvetica is the name of a now ubiquitous, sleek line font style created in 1957, which achieved world dominance after being selected as the core font on the first Macintosh computers. The typeface Gutenberg used, which mimicked the look of calligraphic handwriting, is known as blackletter.

What happened to Gutenberg after his Bible?

Shortly after the book was announced for sale, he had a dispute with one of his financiers and lost his press. “He was kicked out of the company just on the cusp of success,” Fletcher said. Gutenberg died in 1468, around the age of 70. His grave is unknown. A History of the World published in 1482 by William Caxton, the first printer in Britain, omitted his name but noted the revolutionary technology born in Mainz, saying: 'The craft is multiplied throughout the world and books are available cheaply and in large quantities. number.”

Where can I buy a Gutenberg Bible?

Sorry, you're out of luck! The last one put up for auction in 1978 fetched $2.2 million, about $10 million in today's dollars. Today, all 49 nearly complete Gutenberg Bibles known to have survived are in institutional collections.

Single leaves, known commercially as Noble Fragments, are available for purchase and cost about $70,000 to $100,000, a bit higher if they are on parchment rather than paper, said Selby Kiffer, a senior vice president at Sotheby's. (De Grolier owns several Gutenberg leaves and other fragments.) If an entire Bible were to come on the market, Kiffer estimates, the price would be a record $60 to $80 million.

Yet perhaps what is remarkable about Gutenberg's work is not its rarity, but its enduring familiarity. “We may be in a digital world now, but from 1455 to today, the book as a technology hasn't changed that much,” he said. “And certainly, the craftsmanship has not improved since Gutenberg.”

Are there any other early pressers ready for a Broadway close-up?

The best bet is probably Aldus Manutius, a leading printer in late 15th-century Venice, where the center of printing innovation moved a decade after Gutenberg. Aldus pioneered the printing of portable, relatively affordable editions of classics, transforming personal reading. He was the first to print editions of Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Sophocles; the first to use italic type; and the first to use the semicolon in its modern sense.

Thus was a famously short-tempered character. And if you read Robin Sloan's 2012 novel, “Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore,” he was also the founder of the Unbroken Spine, a secret society of bibliophiles engaged in a 21st-century existential confrontation with Google over the soul of humanity.

But why not believe it? As Gad's character puts it in the series, historical fiction is “fiction that is true.”

“Gutenberg! The Musical!', a comedic meta-musical about two talentless idiots who pitch a show about the father of the printing press, concludes its limited Broadway run on January 28.

The show, written by Scott Brown and Anthony King and starring Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells (who reprise their buddy act from the Book of Mormon), has generated mixed reviews and strong box office returns. But even before it opened, its mere existence on Broadway had book and library nerds shaking with anticipation and a bit of disbelief.

There has also been grumbling from some traditionalists (of the rare book, not the Rodgers and Hammerstein variety), along with some resignation. Well why not a musical about Johannes Gutenberg? If Broadway can turn a semi-overlooked founding father like Alexander Hamilton into a household name and cultural hero, why would the man whose invention jump-started mass literacy throw away his opportunity?

Hamilton had a number of thick biographies at his side. But as Gad's character notes in the show, Wikipedia (correctly) declares that records of Gutenberg's life are “sparse.”

Here's a primer for those who, even after watching the show, are wondering, “Guten-Who?”

What do we actually know about Johannes Gutenberg?

Born the son of a patrician in the early 15th century in Mainz, Germany, Gutenberg was originally trained as a goldsmith and metallurgist. Some surviving documents suggest that in the 1430s he secretly began developing what would become his famous printing press. His early efforts included some papal indulgences and a grammar book. Then, in late 1454 or early 1455, seemingly out of nowhere, his monumental two-volume Bible of nearly 1,300 pages, with two columns of 42 lines per page, appeared.

Today, specialists accurately describe Gutenberg's achievement. His Bible “was the first substantial book printed in the West with movable type,” said George Fletcher, the author of “Gutenberg and the Genesis of Printing,” during a recent interview at the Grolier Club in Manhattan, where I recently attended visit was for a conversation. Take an up-close look at some of Gutenberg's printed works, including loose leaves from his Bible.

Did Gutenberg really 'invent' the printing press?

Not exactly, although if you bring this up over a pint of mead at the Rusty German, the seedy tavern in the show, you might get in trouble. As early as the late eighth century, Japanese craftsmen were printing Buddhist sutras en masse carved wood blocks. And a form of loose letters appeared in China as early as the 11th century, although it is unclear whether Gutenberg would have been aware of this, Fletcher said.

Yet the world-changing nature of Gutenberg's invention lay not in the press, Fletcher said, but in his entire system, starting with the type species (as specialists call the individual characters). “What's important is this ability to reuse and reuse the fonts, in any combination imaginable,” he said. “You have 26 letters, but you can get millions of combinations from them. And he discovered how to do this.'

Did the Gutenberg Bible really help turn the illiterate masses of Europe into reading, as the series character claims?

“There's a lot to it,” says Fletcher, a former curator at the New York Public Library (which has one Gutenberg Bible) and the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan (which has three). Between about 1455 and the end of 1500, about 30,000 different editions of printed books, amounting to millions of copies, appeared throughout Western Europe and as far away as Constantinople. “And by the 1490s, all kinds of things were being marketed,” he said. “So there was a lot more material for people who could read or who could learn to read and improve themselves.”

Did Gutenberg fight the religious authorities?

The musical depicts Gutenberg as locked in a battle with an angry monk, who fears that the printing press will lose the church's power over the masses.

In reality, some religious readers were deeply impressed by Gutenberg's wares, including the future Pope Pius II, who saw a copy at the Frankfurt Book Fair in early 1455. He wrote excitedly to a cardinal in Rome, praising Gutenberg and his pages, which he declared “exceptionally clean and correct in their script, and without errors, as Your Excellency could read effortlessly without spectacles.”

Unfortunately, the future Pope noted, the edition of about 180 copies had already sold out.

Was Gutenberg really in love with a girl named Helvetica, like in the show?

Unlikely. Helvetica is the name of a now ubiquitous, sleek line font style created in 1957, which achieved world dominance after being selected as the core font on the first Macintosh computers. The typeface Gutenberg used, which mimicked the look of calligraphic handwriting, is known as blackletter.

What happened to Gutenberg after his Bible?

Shortly after the book was announced for sale, he had a dispute with one of his financiers and lost his press. “He was kicked out of the company just on the cusp of success,” Fletcher said. Gutenberg died in 1468, around the age of 70. His grave is unknown. A History of the World published in 1482 by William Caxton, the first printer in Britain, omitted his name but noted the revolutionary technology born in Mainz, saying: 'The craft is multiplied throughout the world and books are available cheaply and in large quantities. number.”

Where can I buy a Gutenberg Bible?

Sorry, you're out of luck! The last one put up for auction in 1978 fetched $2.2 million, about $10 million in today's dollars. Today, all 49 nearly complete Gutenberg Bibles known to have survived are in institutional collections.

Single leaves, known commercially as Noble Fragments, are available for purchase and cost about $70,000 to $100,000, a bit higher if they are on parchment rather than paper, said Selby Kiffer, a senior vice president at Sotheby's. (De Grolier owns several Gutenberg leaves and other fragments.) If an entire Bible were to come on the market, Kiffer estimates, the price would be a record $60 to $80 million.

Yet perhaps what is remarkable about Gutenberg's work is not its rarity, but its enduring familiarity. “We may be in a digital world now, but from 1455 to today, the book as a technology hasn't changed that much,” he said. “And certainly, the craftsmanship has not improved since Gutenberg.”

Are there any other early pressers ready for a Broadway close-up?

The best bet is probably Aldus Manutius, a leading printer in late 15th-century Venice, where the center of printing innovation moved a decade after Gutenberg. Aldus pioneered the printing of portable, relatively affordable editions of classics, transforming personal reading. He was the first to print editions of Aristotle, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Sophocles; the first to use italic type; and the first to use the semicolon in its modern sense.

Thus was a famously short-tempered character. And if you read Robin Sloan's 2012 novel, “Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore,” he was also the founder of the Unbroken Spine, a secret society of bibliophiles engaged in a 21st-century existential confrontation with Google over the soul of humanity.

But why not believe it? As Gad's character puts it in the series, historical fiction is “fiction that is true.”

“The Great Gatsby,” F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel about flashy glamor and dashed dreams, is coming to Broadway as a musical this spring.

The show — the latest in a long line of adaptations of this widely read story — had a pre-Broadway run last fall in the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, NJ, where it opened to mixed reviews. (Coincidentally, the book also received mixed reviews and is now widely regarded as a great classic of American literature.)

The lavish production will join a Broadway season packed with new musicals, at a time when many industry leaders are concerned that there don't seem to be enough customers to keep most shows running.

This new 'Gatsby' musical is supported by Chunsoo Shin, a Korean producer hungry for a Broadway hit after a spate of failed ventures here. Most recently, he was part of the production team on “Once Upon a One More Time,” the short-lived show featuring songs by Britney Spears; previous efforts include a stage adaptation of “Doctor Zhivago” and a Tupac Shakur musical, “Holler if Ya Hear Me.”

The musical 'Great Gatsby' features songs by Nathan Tysen and Jason Howland, who collaborated on the 2022 musical 'Paradise Square', and a book by playwright Kait Kerrigan ('The Mad Ones'). (Tysen and Kerrigan are married to each other.) The director is Marc Bruni, whose previous Broadway outing, “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical,” which premiered in 2014, was a major hit.

The musical stars two Broadway fan favorites. Jeremy Jordan, a Tony nominee for “Newsies,” will play the nouveau riche title character Jay Gatsby, while Eva Noblezada, a two-time Tony nominee, for “Miss Saigon” and “Hadestown,” will play Daisy Buchanan, the young woman with old money that Gatsby has long longed for.

“The Great Gatsby” is expected to open on March 29 and open on April 25 at the Broadway Theater, one of Broadway's biggest houses.

The novel has been explored many times in other media, including in a glitzy 2013 Hollywood film directed by Baz Luhrmann and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan. A play “Great Gatsby” was performed on Broadway in 1926, the year after the novel's publication; Off-Broadway, there was a critically acclaimed seven-hour version called “Gatz,” developed by Elevator Repair Service and performed at the Public Theater in 2010.

The novel entered the public domain in 2021, opening the door for a host of adaptations. The most important thing, at least for theater audiences, is that another musical adaptation is in development. It's called “Gatsby” and the first performances are scheduled for May at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.

That production, which also has Broadway aspirations, includes a book by Pulitzer-winning playwright Martyna Majok (“Cost of Living”), songs by rock star Florence Welch (of Florence and the Machine) and Thomas Bartlett (aka Doveman ) , and direction by Rachel Chavkin (a Tony winner for “Hadestown”).