Hadestown review: the new musical has it all

Hadestown, the new musical which opened on Broadway on April 17 has had one of the most public evolutions of all musicals I know. It started as a song cycle touring Vermont in 2006, and from there, became a starry concept album with a cult following. Then, it was an off-Broadway show. Then it hit Canada. Then to London. Each step of the process has been closely scrutinized by the public.

But what is most amazing is that every time it has evolved, Hadestown only made it better.

When I fell in love with the show as a concept album In 2010, I knew that the score influenced by the people of Anais Mitchell was beautiful and that the principle – the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice reinvented as an anti-capitalist parable – was convincing.

But I was not sure it would work like a theatrical show. The central metaphor of capitalism as death was so abstract, and the mythical characters so much better as archetypes than as psychologically distinct human beings, that I worried myself that the fact of literalizing everything while staging it would break everything.

In the Broadway production of Hadestown, sumptuously directed by Rachel Chavkin of Natasha, Peter and the great comet of 1812 fame, the metaphor is a bit incoherent. The story is a bit hairy and some characters are a bit flat. But Hadestown in its final form, revised and studied and carefully thought out, it exceeds the sum of its parts.

It slips under your skin and stays so deftly that in the theater, you can actually see the cult grow in real time. When the lights of the house went out during the performance I saw, three unrelated people who were not sitting together said "Holy crap" in unison. The man in front of me told me that he had already seen the series five times; count the glimpses, Hadestown had been on Broadway for about three weeks and officially opened only five days ago. Then the lights went out and the audience returned to the stage, waiting for the climax where we would all have the same gasp – because this show is breathtaking in the literal sense of the term.

Hadestown manages the mythical cycles of death and rebirth with as much emphasis as contemporary issues on artistic creation in a capitalist world

In clbadical mythology, Orpheus is the greatest bard in the world and Eurydice, his beloved fiancée. When Eurydice is killed by a snakebite, mourning Orpheus goes to the underworld to implore Hades, the god of the dead, to bring his wife back to life. To plead his cause, Orpheus sings a song so beautiful that the woman of Hades, Persephone, embodying the spring, begs her husband to let go Eurydice.

At Mitchell's Hadestown, the contours of the myth are the same – but here, Hadestown is not just the underworld. This is also A factory town and Hades is both the god of death and a malicious overseer, forcing his tenants to work tirelessly at building an endless wall around his city. (Lest you think it's too bad for 2019, Hades' song "Why We Build the Wall" has been in the show for over 10 years.) Mitchell says any resemblance to Trumpian rhetoric is "purely archetypal" ".")

And here, Eurydice is not bitten by a snake. Instead, she is lured into Hadestown by the promise of work and food, after the impractical Orpheus artist spends the winter composing a song and not bringing money back to the House. "I can not ignore my guts," Eurydice sings plaintively. "Orpheus, I'm hungry."

This balance is the most delicate part to bring Hadestown at the scene. On an album, Eurydice can both die and get a job in the factory. Auditors do not have to choose between one side or the other of the metaphor, because we do not have to look at it. We just understand that she does both and lets the story go on. On stage, however, everything must necessarily become a little more literal.

This is where Rachel Chavkin's management comes in. Chavkin has created a theatrical world in which both levels of Mitchell's metaphor can breathe at once. When Eurydice lifts the two silver coins that lead her to the underworld, she is dying. But she also gets on the train to a factory town and she walks around at once, right in front of our eyes.

In this effort, Chavkin is enormously helped by his competent crew. Rachel Hauck's scenic design vaguely suggests a New Orleans bar for the portion of the show that takes place above the ground, but its pendulum lamps and rotating turntables can just as easily create an overwhelming sense of oppression and claustrophobia, as if stuck in a factory or mine – or in hell. And Michael Krbad's costumes dance exactly as you did not know, existed between the chic jazz of New Orleans and the latest Hellenistic trends. Take a look at the gray robes of the three fates: depending on your strabismus, these are dresses for church ladies or dresses that would not look out of place on a Greek vase.

It is also useful that Mitchell has heavily revised his material throughout his studio-to-stage journey. Over the past nine years, his lyrics have become less lyrical and prettier, more concrete and more character-driven. Although there is a little compromise to make there (I must admit that I sigh after the loss of this beautiful image of the first meeting of Hades and Persephone: "The smell flowers that she held in her hand / The pollen that fell on her The fingertips, / And suddenly, Hades was only a man, / With the taste of nectar on the lips "), this revision means that the story is now more organic for the characters, and these people do not make their choice simply because they are archetypal figures of ancient myths and that's what they've always done, but because these choices make sense, and suddenly they feel fresh and urgent.

Mitchell also has a lot more emphasis in this version of the show on Hes and Persephone's plot B and their tortured marriage, and in that choice, it is probably motivated by the fact that Patrick Page and Amber Gray – who have been part of the show since its production in 2016 at the New York Theater Workshop – are easily distinguished by the cast. Like Hades, Page travels the scene in the manner of a tiger, moving his bbad so low velvet so low that his voice seems to resonate from the center of the Earth. And while Persephone, with his smoky voice, conceals depths of melancholy under a desperate and drunken smile, Gray does not escape so much with the spectacle that she dances with, with her torso tilted at 90 degrees to her legs .

Page and Gray are ably supported by the legendary Andre De Shields, who plays Hermes, the messenger god and the narrator of the series, with an icy glare. Eva Noblezada (Eurydice) and Reeve Carney (Orpheus) have a more difficult path: Orpheus and Eurydice carry the weight of the metaphor and continue to feel a little more like flattened archetypes. than characters in their own right. Nevertheless, Noblezada gives Eurydice the courage of his survivor, and Carney manages to find in Orpheus a sweet clumsiness that makes this character more pleasant and convincing than it has been in previous versions of this show.

And when all come together for the show's climax, The moment that thrilled everyone in unison was not due to a brand new plot, an innovation in the myth. It's because of the moment that is central to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the moment of their release from the underground world that you have always come to come – somehow now rendered both inevitable and shocking.

"It's an old song," says Hermes at the opening of the show. "It's a sad song. But we sing it anyway.

Hadestown has been sung time and again since 2006. It has been sung in concert halls throughout Vermont. He was sung in the studio for the concept album. He has been sung on Broadway, Canada and London. But Mitchell and Chavkin continue to sing anyway.

And whenever they do, it keeps getting better.

Hadestown now plays on Broadway.