Hadestown (2019)

"We're gonna sing it again"

 

Following the birth of an epic tale

Hadestown is a musical with music, lyrics, and book by singer and songwriter Anaïs Mitchell. It tells a version of the ancient Greek myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone. Eurydice, "a young girl looking for something to eat", goes to work in a hellish industrial version of the Greek underworld to escape poverty and famine, ending up under the power of the tyrannical Hades, and her poor singer-songwriter lover Orpheus comes to rescue her. 

The original sung-through version of the musical was performed in 2006, followed by Vergennes and a tour in Vermont and Massachusetts in 2007. Mitchell, unsure about the future of the musical, turned it into a concept album, released in 2010.

In 2012, Mitchell met director Rachel Chavkin, and the two reworked the stage version, with additional songs and dialogue. The new version of the musical, directed by Chavkin, premiered off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, and ran through July 31. Following productions in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and London, England, the show premiered on Broadway in 2019 starring Broadway stars André De Shields, Reeve Carnes, Eva Noblezada, Patrick Page and Amber Gray. The Broadway production received critical acclaim. At the 73rd Tony Awards, Hadestown received 14 nominations (the most that year) and won eight, including Best Musical and Best Original Score.

Director Rachel Chavkin said addressing climate change had always been central to the show: "As we thought more and more about shaping the world that Eurydice and Orpheus are living in — a world caused, in Greek mythological terms, by the decay of the ancient marriage between Hades and Persephone, a world that is out of balance, where it is "either freezing or blazing hot", where food becomes scarcer and the idea of stability becomes harder to imagine, and a character, Eurydice, who has spent her life running – all of those things kind of crystallized while we were making the show." The show did a joint promotion with Natural Resources Defense Council to raise awareness and bring a greater sense of urgency to the push for action on the issue of climate change.

US cultural commentator Bridget Read highlights the economic themes: "Orpheus and Eurydice's tragedy becomes, in the hands of Mitchell, an argument for collective bargaining... I don't think its untoward of me to hear the class politics in a musical in which the characters sing the word poverty more times than I've ever heard it before in the vicinity of Times Square." In China, The Paper has published a review of Hadestown, "The Realm Underneath: Hadestown and Utopia" by historian Hansong Li (李汉松), who frames the musical as a work of not only musical ingenuity but also social critique.

Todd Osborne comments on the self-conscious significance of the medium of song within the work: "It is a musical both about how art can save us and how, especially in an apocalyptic world, hope might be the only thing we have left."

Recordings

Mitchell's 2007 album The Brightness contains the song "Hades & Persephone", which was renamed "How Long?" for the musical. Mitchell released a concept album, based on the musical, on March 9, 2010. A live cast recording of the off-Broadway production was released on October 6, 2017. A four-track EP entitled Why We Build the Wall (Selections from Hadestown. The Myth. The Musical. Live Original Cast Recording) was released for digital retailers on October 13, 2016, to promote the album.

A Broadway cast recording was released digitally on July 26, 2019, through Sing It Again Records. A holiday album recorded by Blackman, Gonzalez-Nacer and Trinidad titled If the Fates Allow, was released on November 20, 2020, and features guest contributions from the other original cast members.

A live recording of selections from the West End production was released on December 6, 2024 on streaming, CD and vinyl.