Chicago Tribune
- Highly Recommended
"...Liliom obviously could have made different choices and not saddled Julie with a child and unimaginable grief. But it's also clear he loved her and allowed himself a level of vulnerability with her which no one else got to see. Liliom wanted those other women to want him. With Julie, he wanted her and couldn't measure up to the man he thought she should have."
Chicago Stage and Screen
- Highly Recommended
"...Three time Oscar winner Michel Legrand’s score is recognizably cinematic which gives us a kind of elegiac feeling that this plot exists in a world outside the stage. Sweeping in its conception, it enlarges the experience. Conductor Nicholas Koo is set with the challenge of conducting the Lyric Opera Orchestra in the pit and the Rob Parton Big Band on stage and he meets it and goes beyond."
Around The Town Chicago
- Highly Recommended
"...A sexy tragedy set in the jazz age with ballet, an amusement park, and a visit from a ghost whose wife could never forget his leather pants. Such is John Neumeier’s 2011 adaptation of Ferenc Molnár’s 1909 play Liliom, now making its Joffrey Ballet debut. Although most people are more familiar with the story as the basis of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1945 musical Carousel, Neumeier re-imagined it as taking place during the Great Depression."
Buzz Center Stage
- Highly Recommended
"...Sometimes when reach into the past to resurrect or revive an old story, it doesn't age well. The subject matter could be problematic, the material divisive, the cultural context lost through the fabric of time. Without proper context we tend to view these historical pieces through a modern lens. We're quick to criticism, condemn, or simply say the story doesn't resonate with newer audiences. But once in a great while, we reach back in history and find a piece that doesn't require adaptations, modernization of the old piece simply adding to the allure of the story. Give that narrative to visionaries and dreamers and you might just get a production that future generations will pull from the archives, not to resurrect or revive, but revere. That one is a great while is here today in Chicago with the Joffrey Ballet's premiere of Liliom."
Third Coast Review
- Recommended
"...Raise your hand if you have been in a chorus and had to trill your way through "You'll Never Walk Alone." That is the most popular song from Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel, and it's a weeper. That classic American musical was based on a play called Liliom by Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnar. As with most American musicals, they removed much of the sensuality and leaned heavily on soaring ballads. The Joffrey Ballet brings the storyline back to its roots, and it is stunning."
PicksInSix
- Highly Recommended
"...One of the many draws of “Liliom” is that it effortlessly demonstrates how dance can communicate deep emotion. The company does a remarkable job with visual storytelling through leaps, gestures, postures and pairings. Dance, as a universal language, takes us places, and trust that wherever the Joffrey Ballet wants to take you through the exquisite movement, striking set design and lush soundtrack of “Liliom,” it will absolutely be worth it."
NewCity Chicago
- Recommended
"...But it's the ballet's very first moments-when Evan Boersma, cast throughout the run as the death figure Balloon Man, transforms a ballet-trained body into something other worldly-that should set our expectations. In the universe Neumeier creates, every movement, whether it's a gestural hand striking or a fabulous arabesque extending, springs from the same place: creative expression. And it's the dancers who access that unified source that capture our attention."
