Jazz, tragedy, and a carousel ride: The Joffrey Ballet presents Neumeier’s 'Liliom' in Chicago
The premiere of John Neumeier’s Liliom in Chicago heralded the 2026 to 2027 season of The Joffrey Ballet on Thursday, September 17, 2026, at the Lyric Opera House. Liliom originated as a 1909 play by Ferenc Molnár and was afterward adapted for the Rogers and Hammerstein musical Carousel.
Neumeier is no stranger to the Joffrey, with past choreographic collaborations including The Little Mermaid (2023) and Orphée et Eurydice (2017). This time, Academy Award®-winning composer Michel Legrand and Rob Parton’s Jazztech Big Band join him and the Lyric Opera Orchestra to transport us to the 1900s—the Great Depression, the burgeoning of a new Jazz Age, and a pop culture surge that provided escapism during a time of economic plight.
The new ballet adaptation is set in Playland, an amusement park where ferris wheels blaze neon, a carousel spins with persistence, and the 16-piece big band perches over the stage under a golden glow, showering the scene with brass-belting delight. Groups of young folk gather to fawn over the spirited and overindulgent Liliom (José Pablo Castro Cuevas), who is employed by Mrs. Muskat (Amanda Assucena) and her carousel. But one young woman, Julie (Victoria Jaiani), catches Liliom’s eye. From here, the story is an unfolding of passion, desperation, sin, redemption… and, ultimately, tragedy.
That tragedy is foretold by the silent and stretched entrance of The Balloon Man (Evan Boersma); his slow, slinking lunges propel him across the stage in a fixed direction. He is pulling taffy and heading toward a toothache, as he passes a small cutout of a cloudy blue day and, instead, enters Playland—where the sky is eternally devoid of color. It is here, delivering Liliom from purgatory and back onto Earth, that he establishes his place as a paradox: a pilot between life and death, carrying a bundle of colorful balloons that represent joy and wonder but eventually float Liliom up and away to his reckoning with the gatekeeper and devils of the afterlife.
These contradictions continue, ascending to a pinnacle of musical, kinetic, and visual juxtapositions during the scene of a wedding. Guests circle swiftly, skipping and galloping, around the newlyweds; all the while, the heavy, entangled throwing and thrashing of a crime scene ensues. The classical orchestra ebbs and flows in direct cacophony with the big band swing and arrhythmia. The dark greys and blues of the costuming allow for a sleek transition from wedding attire to funeral wear when the scene ends in Liliom’s death.
Altogether, you find thematic elements evoking the tensions of the Depression Era, as well as stylized movement scores of the individual characters, who are all wrought with the anxiety of their choices versus their circumstances. This opens the door to understanding the darker themes encroaching upon the flashing lights of Playland.
While we (and a sulking mime on stage) watch and lament the foreboding drama and clashes of fate play out on stage, the Joffrey cast and crew, once again, take a classic tale and spin us in an emotional centrifuge—this time, in the shape of a carousel.
Liliom runs from Thursday, September 17 to Sunday, September 27, 2026 at the Lyric Opera House in Chicago. You can find more information at joffrey.org.
Cover photo: Joffrey Company Artists Evan Boersma and Reed Henry. Photo by Cheryl Mann.
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