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When "Hadestown" premiered on Broadway's Walter Kerr Theater in April 2019, practically every review of the production mentioned the unintentional resonance of the big Act One closing song, "Why We Build the Wall." In the context of the musical, songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin's fusion of Greek mythology with 1930s jazz, the number sees God of Death Hades (played in the original Broadway cast, with an earthquake-inducing deep bass voice, by Patrick Page) revel in his dominance over the Underworld and his subjugation of the dead he's enslaved as his miners and builders. Mitchell had written the song in 2006, when she first workshopped the show in small Vermont regional theaters, and it appears on the released 2010 concept album. But in 2019, the concept of building a wall was so inextricably linked to modern politics that it couldn't help but make a fantasy tale hit all too close to home.
Not that "Hadestown" needs Trump parallels to feel relevant. Mitchell and Chavkin's show is a timeless one, and not just because it's literally retelling two of the most iconic myths in Western tradition. An occasionally cloying but ultimately moving sung-through tale of love and the power of storytelling, the musical is also a story about trying to find happiness in a time of struggle, situating the romance of Orpheus and Eurydice in a hardscrabble landscape of Great Depression bars where resources are scarce and a deal with the devil might well be preferable to starvation. Anti-capitalist messaging might always feel a wee bit hypocritical coming via one of the most inaccessible and expensive places for entertainment on the planet, but with its decade-long road to the Great White Way, "Hadestown" succeeds by feeling like the scrappy underdog that made it big.
And it's stayed big: "Hadestown" is one of those rare few Broadway musicals to succeed both critically and commercially, winning eight Tonys - including Best Musical - after its debut season and running with continuing healthy box office sales since. It's launched two different national tours, and expanded to a run in London's West End.
Now, for the starving artists the show celebrates, "Hadestown" is more accessible than ever via a new filmed recording, released in theaters as a one-week event. Compiled from footage captured during three live performances of the West End production over a five-week period in which all five main actors from the original Broadway cast reprised their roles, it's a handsome, sharp translation of the stage to the silver screen. If it doesn't fully recapture the electricity of watching these performers live, it at least confirms that the show, seven years past its Broadway debut, still has the ability to sweep you into its world.
And what an intimate world it is - despite running on Broadway and the West End for so long, "Hadestown" has always felt a bit small in big proscenium theaters, a tiny jazz performance blown up as large as it can possibly be before getting swallowed whole. The musical's band sits to the side of the stage, giving audiences full view of the musicians performing Mitchell's score, an eclectic fusion of modern Broadway sound with New Orleans jazz. On just one unchanging set, an old-time concert hall designed by Rachel Hauck and made appropriately ominous, a tiny ensemble enacts a whole Greek tragedy of love and sacrifice that goes from the land of the living to the underworld and back. Chavkin's stripped-back direction ably uses minimal light fixtures, props, and a central rotating stagepiece to make this bare stage transform into an entire industrial hellscape.
Narrating this "sad song," as he puts it in the opening number, is God of Heralds Hermes, played by Broadway treasure André de Shields. Shields, who won a Featured Actor Tony in 2019 for his performance, is 80 years old but an impossibly silky smooth performer; guiding the tale through its beats as a master of ceremonies in a decadent mercury-colored suit, his calm, warm confidence is a necessary anchor for a show about four figures bursting with big emotions, and he delivers Mitchell's lyrics - rich with potent, specific imagery and jagging turns of phrases - with a fitting quicksilver slyness.
In the land of the living, idealistic poet Orpheus (Reeve Carney) dreams of writing one great song and finds a potential muse in the form of Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), a cynical, spunky type who initially scoffs at his earnestness before warming to his chivalry. But Orpheus' dreams don't provide warmth and food when winter comes, and Goddess of Spring Persephone (Amber Gray) departs to her husband's domain, and a desperate Eurydice agrees to follow Hades - imagined in this landscape as a slick Henry Ford-flavored tycoon - into Hadestown, choosing the comfort of death over the pain of living. It's a brutal choice, but as the Fates (Bella Brown, Madeline Charlemagne, and Allie Daniel), serving as a secondary Greek chorus, put it in song, "You can have your principle when you've got a belly full, but hunger has a way with you."
As a story, "Hadestown" has long suffered from an - to use decidedly unpoetic parlance that would make Orpheus wince - aura gap between its two central couples. Eurydice and Orpheus can be cute, and Noblezada and Carney, who have been in a relationship since the original production and married last year, don't necessarily lack in chemistry. But they're also a bit drippy in that way so many young, wide-eyed smitten couples in musicals often are, their love more based on looks and weepy proclamations of devotion than a compelling meeting of personalities.
Orpheus, in particular, is more a vehicle for the show's themes of sacrificing comfort for love and passion than a dynamic lead to hang a show around. Carney has a lovely tenor and a light falsetto, and he crushes the central ballad "Wait for Me" - which, in the most positive way possible, brings to mind mid-2010s "stomp clap" indie music - but he's not able to elevate Orpheus into anything but a pair of wide eyes and floppy hair. Noblezada, with her resonant alto belt, is a little more lively, but Eurydice's pluckiness is of the sand-downed, palatable variety all too common for musical theater.
These doomed lovers end up most enthralling not as the main attraction, but as chess pieces through which Persephone and Hades can wage the cold war their whirlwind romance has devolved into over centuries of bitterness and resentment. Page and Gray were sensational in these roles in 2019, and they slip back into these parts as if not a day has passed. Page, an imposing figure in his double-breasted suit, can add a seductive lilt to his booming bass or an icy edge that provides a peek into his embittered soul. With a raspy lilt that feels indebted to Eartha Kitt, Gray is the most at home of any of the performers within the musical's tonal palette, and her alcohol-guzzling party girl Persephone is the funniest and eventually most poignant character in the ensemble.
Together, they have a testy, scorned chemistry that reflects the tortured history these gods share without a lick of exposition. Watching them go tit-for-tat against each other in the withering "How Long?" as Persephone pleads for the king to let the younger couple reunite is the most emotionally combustive moment in the show's two-and-a-half-hour running time.
On screen, this confrontation only feels more intimate, depicted as a series of close-ups that melt the world of the show away until it's just these two figures in the darkness. The filming of this "Hadestown" performance was done by Brett Sullivan, who has handled the tapings of numerous other live musical shows. Aside from B-roll footage of the cast preparing before stepping on stage and the odd aerial shot of the stage from a birds-eye view, he mostly keeps things simple, opting for a film experience that more or less closely resembles what it would be like to experience a night out watching "Hadestown" in the theater, mixing wide shots of the entire stage with close-ups to zero-in on the leads when the spotlight rolls to them. It's nothing flashy, but the editing makes the entire experience seamless, ensuring you never lose track of where any of the performers are at any given time.
Of course, a taping of a stage musical can't necessarily hope to fully capture the energy of being there in the room, and there is especially something lost in translation with a musical like this that so intensely foregrounds the live music aspect. There's something to be said, though, about getting the opportunity to see these performers up close, and how well their work survives the jump in the medium - it's a joy to fully appreciate Gray's weary resignation, or the light twinkle in De Shields' eyes, from a distance closer than 10 rows away.
You can really see De Shields' eyes light up in the show's emotional coda, which isn't that big scene from the Orpheus and Eurydice myth everyone knows - as staged in "Hadestown," it's actually decidedly underwhelming. The real tearjerker moment of the show has always been what follows: Hermes leads the company in singing this song and telling this tale again. It's both a meta moment about how theater will ensure a story lives forever and a warm statement of hope: not giving up in a bleak world, but instead keeping up hope for a better one. Watching the finale in 2026, you can understand why "Hadestown" has remained so popular for the past seven years, and why its earnest message of perseverance has struck the right chord with its audience. As long as "Why We Build the Wall" remains, unfortunately, relevant, "Hadestown" will continue to sing its sad song, and there's comfort to be found within its sorrow.
Grade: B
"Hadestown: The Musical" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June. Crosswalk will release the film in theaters on July 24.
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