From the moment I walked into Walter Kerr Theatre on a humid August day, I knew Hadestown was going to be incredible. The stage itself told a story. The pit was no longer a pit. Instead, all the musicians were up on stage, the behind-the-scenes instruments of production laid bare: two accordions on the side, a piano on one side, a series of stands on the other. Everything about it was intimate. Despite having won eight Tonys, including Best Musical, Hadestown didn’t feel like an impersonal performance. It felt like a story. Deftly intertwining myth and politics into a complex metaphor, creator Anaïs Mitchell manages to use the influence of a story drafted thousands of years ago to make a series of commentaries on climate change, isolationism, and capitalism. But the human proclivity for storytelling dominates it all.
Hadestown retells both the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and the ancient story of Hades and Persephone. The story takes place in a Depression-era New Orleans where the Underworld is a factory town run by Hades (Patrick Page) and, for half the year, by Persephone (Amber Gray). For Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), times are hard, and she struggles from place-to-place, pushed to and fro by the wind, which is personified by the three Fates (Jewelle Blackman, Kay Trinidad, and Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer) Then she meets Orpheus (Reeve Carney), a naive boy, who is working on a song that is “going to bring the world back into tune.” Each of the crew gets their own moment of introduction in the rowdy opening number “Road to Hell.”
The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is a tragedy. We are told this by Hermes (André De Shield) as he seems to drag the entire stage into his orbit in the very first song. Just like the original myth, Eurydice dies and is taken down to the underworld. Orpheus, distraught, sings to the gods in order for them to help him go into the underworld without dying, which they agree to do. While there, he begs Hades to get his wife back and Hades, after hearing him sing, allows him to bring Eurydice back with one condition: Eurydice must follow him and Orpheus must not look back. It’s a tragedy, so, of course, Orpheus looks back. Eurydice is taken back to the underworld. We enter the musical knowing this and still, we forget. That’s the miracle of Hadestown. It takes an old song and makes us not only watch it, but live it. In the era where plot twists are often the major appeal of entertainment, it’s impressive that spoilers mean nothing. Spoiler: Orpheus looks back. Everyone knew this entering the theater, but in the enveloping silence following his fateful glance, I hear a gasp. The true heart-wrenching beauty of Hadestown isn’t in its ending; it’s in everything that comes before.
From the get-go, the world of gods and men is broken. Persephone, the goddess of spring, brings about winter by going down to Hadestown. But jealous and fearful Hades has been keeping her longer and longer, prolonging deadly winter. “When’s the last time you saw a spring or fall / I can’t recall.” In this incarnation, Persephone was not abducted in a glorified rape. Instead, she and Hades were in love until their relationship fermented and Hades built his “neon necropolis” of Hadestown. Persephone distracts herself with a “river of wine” and an underground speakeasy-esque side business for the workers. When this business is revealed in “Our Lady of the Underground,” Gray staggers and growls across the stage with unparalleled performance. She breathes life, not only into the world, but also the stage.
Because of her absence, the seasons have become harsh and brutal. So brutal, in fact, that Eurydice is driven down to the underworld. Here, the beautiful juxtaposition of old and new stories comes to life. The shake of the coin-bag for Eurydice’s ticket to the underworld mimics the deadly rattle of the asp that killed Eurydice thousands of years ago in Ancient Greece. These parallels add richness and depth to Hadestown. Every medium it has been performed on shimmers through. Mitchell’s rough folk music, sleek New Orleans jazz of the off-broadway performance, and showy Broadway charisma all blend together into a potent, emotional, and yes, intimate performance.
But the music is hardly the best part. The choreography stole my breath away. In fact, the lighting itself made me cry. When Orpheus sings, the trees bend down for him and the chorus mimics the weighted boughs, buoying up Eurydice with tables. The chorus sometimes doubles as the set. The main players’ voices are the controls for the very walls themselves and the world seems to suspend belief and bend and break and morph to the rules of music. Everything adds depth. In the highly-charged “Wait For Me,” the lighting steals the show. A musically-simple number, it’s heightened immeasurably by swinging lights, the swooping Fates’ lanterns, and the headlights of the workers. Every prop is a motif. A large center pit in the middle of the stage is the road to Hell itself and is used in conjunction with the lyrics so beautifully. Hades and Persephone watch from the pit in the masterpiece of “Chant” as workers crawl around them in spinning, useless circles. The set, which at first seems simplistic, is a marvel and is used to the fullest.
If anything about this show fell short, it was in Eurydice and Orpheus’ relationship. Compared to the nuanced, rich, and compelling Hades and Persephone, Eurydice falls a little flat when she falls in love with Orpheus. A sweet but isolated song, “All I’ve Ever Known,” sweeps us through the stages of their relationship, essentially asking us to take on faith (and vocal prowess) that these two unlikely candidates have fallen in love. Part of this is no fault of Mitchell or Noblezada. The original myth leaves Eurydice quite voiceless, and Noblezada, if nothing else, has a stunning built-for-power-ballads voice. This leaves her belting out a story of self-sufficiency that falls somewhat hollow. We are told about a fiery girl who falls in love with a stumbling awkward prodigy seemingly the minute she sees how he can sing a flower into existence. But even if we doubt their love in the first act, it doesn’t detract from the heartbreaking monstrosity that is their reunion and subsequent loss.
The Fates are a three-part girl-group with immense vocal power, expression, and otherworldly presence. In a world of gods and men, they are above gods. They are inevitable. They swoop like vultures propelling the story along with glee and regret, nudging and pulling and grabbing. They mock Eurydice and Hades alike. They are the story itself, the inevitability of it; they are Fate. Though they pale somewhat in comparison to the 2017 version of Hadestown, these Fates are polymaths. They go onto stage, accordion, cymbals, and violins in hand, and play out their laughing melodies with sneers etched onto their faces. Blackman’s voice, in particular, is unforgettable. Her rich contralto resonance fills the stage whenever she parcels out quips.
Everything about Page’s performance as Hades was impeccable. His sleek business suit, snakeskin shoes, leather jacket, and brick tattoo seemed like a second skin. He was the power-grid for the show. Every musical number was electrifyingly terrible and he was practically gleaming with greed and jealousy. Any number of parallels can be drawn between Hades and the current political administration, particularly with the eerily prescient song of “Why We Build the Wall,” written a decade before Trump’s election. But to compare Hades to Trump is an insult to Hades. The King of the Underworld, at least, has a rich gravelly bass which brings to life a perfectly evil character, an archetype made realistic. If Orpheus falls short as the stereotypical musical wunderkind, Hades succeeds as the king of Evil, with a capital “E.”
As all shows must, Hadestown, the musical, ends. But Hadestown, the story, never does. The repetition of the performance itself is a part of the story. After all, in a quick summary, Hadestown is a musical about a story about a poor boy writing a song about a story. If that’s dizzying, wait until you try and comprehend every inch of depth, motif, and characterization on the stage. Hadestown was more than a decade in the making, giving it a depth and a richness that we are privileged to explore. After Hadestown, who knows where Orpheus and Eurydice will lead us; if we’re lucky, Anaïs Mitchell will be with us, too.