Another musical with a long production history also recently finally arrived on Broadway and employs familiar tropes to interpret modern society. Anais Mitchell’s Hadestown comes to the Main Stem after concept albums, workshops, a 2016 off-Broadway run at New York Theater Workshop, and a London engagement at the National Theatre. Mitchell’s delightfully funky folk opera weaves together the myths of Eurydice and Orpheus with that of Persephone and Hades to create an allegory of the conflicting strains of passion, art, and commerce.
Hades, king of the underworld, forces his wife Persephone, goddess of the harvest, to live with him in his gloomy subterranean domain for half the year. She emerges on the surface annually bringing spring with her. Bored with the arrangement, the wife rebels, and the sinister ruler draws down Eurydice, a financially desperate young woman, to replace her. But Eurydice’s lover, the gifted musician Orpheus, follows her and attempts to rescue her from Hades’s clutches with his enchanting songs.
Mitchell makes hell into a dreary factory where the damned souls are exploited workers laboring on a concrete wall to protect them from outsiders and Hades is a ruthless business tycoon preaching isolationism (sound Trump-ily familiar?). That the show began incubation before our current president took office does not lessen its relevance.
Director and developer Rachel Chavkin has made the current incarnation sleeker and slicker than its more intimate and affecting NYTW version, but Hadestown is still a moving and rousing celebration of community and love. Mitchell’s score retains its juicy pop flavor with more than a hint of Dixieland tang, echoed in the New Orleans ambience of Rachel Hauck’s set and Michael Krass’s costumes.
Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada are heartbreaking and tender as the separated lovers. Patrick Page’s rumbling bass and stern presence make for a frightening and powerful Hades while Amber Gray contrasts as a loose-limbed, boisterously joyful Persephone. Veteran Andre De Shields is an elegantly arch narrator Hermes for this hot and captivating Hadestown.
