It’s a love song…it’s a sad song… it’s an old song. Today’s world of theatrical revivals is a challenge in how to find relevancy in works that are now 60-100 years old, which are being met with mixed success. When the question arises of how to update a piece that is 3000+ years old, the only answer is trust it to visionary director Rachel Chavkin.
Composer/lyricist Anaïs Mitchell’s Tony Award winning opus Hadestown is a modern retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus’ descent into the Underworld to rescue his intended, Eurydice. In an inspired vision of resetting the story to New Orleans and telling it with jazz music, Chavkin, 2018’s Tony Award winning Best Director for this piece, picks up the piece and runs, well, to hell and back with it. Chavkin’s previous Broadway triumph, Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812 was visionary. Transforming the Imperial Theatre into a giant Russian Tea Room, she draped the theatre in red velvet, removed the front half of the orchestra seats, replacing the area with a series of ramps and catwalks, moved the audience onto the conventional stage in banquettes, and added stairs that reached from the stage to the box seats to the balconies and designed a literal 360⁰ extravaganza to retell War & Peace as a Russian cabaret act in what I have deemed Chavkin-vision. Her Great Comet was literally the most elaborate and most visually amazing event I have ever seen in a theatre. Chavkin brings her talent to a smaller but no less impressive scale to Hadestown, transforming a French Quarter nightclub to tell the epic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Quick Greek Mythology 101 lesson here, to make the story more accessible for those who aren’t up to date with the 3000-year-old source material. Backstory: Hades, God of the Underworld, became obsessed with Persephone, the beautiful and beloved daughter of his sister Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest and Agriculture, and kidnapped her to be his bride in his Underworld lair. At the despair of his sister, he agreed to an arrangement wherein he would share his wife with his sister, 6 months with him down under, 6 months with her mother atop on earth. Demeter was happy and pleased for the 6 months she had Persephone with her, and blessed the earth with bountiful produce and foliage, and wept for the 6 months she was gone, leaving the earth barren and cold, accounting for the change in seasons.
Enter Orpheus, son of the Muse Calliope and the God Apollo. Blessed with his father’s looks and his mother’s artistic inspiration, he was a gifted musician ahead of his time with a golden voice and talent for the lyre. He fell in love with Eurydice, but alas on their wedding day, she was bitten by a snake and died. Orpheus began composing songs that moved everyone, and he decided to venture into Hades and bring back his bride. Where any other soul would have died and remained in the Underworld, his talents were so moving that he charmed all the spirits and souls, and even Cerberus, Hades’ vicious 3-headed guard dog. Presenting himself before an astounded Hades and Persephone, he sang a song so moving that he persuaded the Dark Lord to allow him to take his intended back to earth with him, but on one condition: she must follow behind him and he must not look back until they had arrived back atop Earth. All went well, until mere feet from the exit, Orpheus, no longer able to hear her behind him, reflexively turned to check on Eurydice, and when their eyes met, she was drug back to the Underworld for eternity. Orpheus’ fate back on Earth is varied depending on the source, be it actual mythology or early tellings by Virgil or Ovid, but suffice it to say none of them were positive or relevant to the resolution of Hadestown.
Chavkin takes her typical strong hold of the material, and she and Mitchell make a few changes to the tale to make it a little more palatable for today’s sensitive audiences. Persephone and Hades fall in love and she willingly cooperates with the bargain with her mother (kidnapping her would be human trafficking and zero consent) and to give the story some social issues, Eurydice, homeless and hungry, willingly enters the underworld at the promise of warmth and food if she agrees to labor for Hades, signing her own contract to sell her soul to him (again, consent, and avoiding the implications of slave labor, but also eliminating extra plot points to move the story along).
The visuals Chavkin uses to tell the story in the setting of the nightclub are stunning. Rachel Hauck’s detailed two-story unit set, complete with authentic French Quarter touches such as elaborate wrought iron railing and distressed faux plaster walls works in tandem with Bradley King’s saturated jewel tone washes, which appropriately tint the set from cool turquoises, blues, and the occasional romantic fuchsia up top to vivid, fiery reds and oranges for the high-temperature Underworld. King also makes great use of concert-like conical pinspots for effects. For a set that never moves or changes, the trio give us a distinct feel of different locales between their combined work.
Likewise, Mitchell’s haunting score, save for the recurring de facto theme song, “Way Down Hadestown”, features very little as far as memorable tunes, but her compositions definitely, like a Sondheim musical, create and enhance the mood musically. Chavkin assists her with visual use of set and light effects, such as the synchronized, swinging overhead worklights employed for Orpheus’ big Act 1 ballad “Wait for Me”.
Antonio Rodriguez as Orpheus indeed possesses the requisite melodic, hypnotic voice, an effective blend of tenor and falsetto he masters to produce what could legitimately be considered an otherworldly sound. He excels on his more romantic moments like “Come Home With Me” and “Wait for Me”
Hannah Whitley is heartbreaking as Eurydice, “a hungry girl” wandering through life until she sees no other choice but to wander through the afterlife. But as stated, her Eurydice is her own woman, and freely makes her own choices for her own survival. Vocally, she has the powerful voice and physical presence of a young Whitney Houston coupled with the tragic presence of her latter day counterpart.
Matthew Patrick Quinn as Hades virtually steals the show with every entrance. With his menacing, rolling bass and middle-aged male model looks, stature, and fashion sense, he is an imposing character and easily the most memorable and commanding presence of the show.
As Persephone, Lana Gordon plays her duality between a mourner and a party girl. With a solid R&B voice throughout, Gordon owns the stage when she takes it to deliver her second act opener, “Our Lady of the Underground” with all the star power and pizzazz of a headliner at the Cotton Club.
But from the minute he pops open his tailored shark skin suit to strut and show off his silver brocade vest, chest puffed out to best display it, Nathan Lee Graham as Hermes, the show’s narrator, takes charge as our tour guide to the Underworld and back, and only relinquishes his control when allowing his costars their moments to shine. Patterning his performance somewhat after Tony Winner (and Baltimore native) Andre de Shields (obviously not a bad decision), Graham is alternately exciting, menacing, tender, and powerful as the story calls for it.
The Fates (Dominique Kempf, Belen Moyano, and Nya Watson), provide Graham with an entertaining assist as peripheral narrators and commentators, singing narration and tight trio backup throughout the show, “the voices you hear singing in the back of your mind”. They also at points contribute to the orchestrations on accordion, violin, and tambourine. And the strong Workers Chorus ensemble, a mere quintet of vocalists (Jamal Lee Harris, Courtney Lauster, Eddie Noel Rodriguez, Sean Watkinson, and Racquel Williams at this performance) deserve specific praise as they sing haunting, powerful 5-part harmonies and act as the stand-in Greek chorus, providing musical commentary as they double as blue collar bar patrons in the nightclub above and Hades’ indentured workers down below.
Costume designer Michael Krass delivers a simple but very effective costume plot for the actors and, presumably, the on-stage orchestra, who are stylistically and chromatically blended into the palette of the show. Quinn and Graham look impeccable and runway ready in their stylish tailored suits. Whitley looks waiflike in a costume that is (appropriately) a cross between Eponine and A Twilight emo fangirl. Persephone is flashy and florid in a flowy, bright lime green dance dress with a matching lace bodice (much like is traditionally seen in Ain’t Misbehavin’, but frillier and fancier, as a goddess should) with a bright floral headband in her free-flowing hair when we meet her for her arrival up top. Cleverly when she returns to Hades, she dons the identical dress in black with a more conservative snood reining her hair in, like the funereal equivalent of her day dress. To add to the fun he dresses the Fates in gray floral frocks in the style of Creole priestesses.
Eric Kang also deserves a nod for the flawless New Orleans sound his mostly female band produces onstage. Of particular note is Kang’s honky tonk piano finger work and Emily Fredrickson on the trombone which gives this score its unique flair, again providing a dual New Orleans sound that is sometimes Mardi Gras Comus Krewe, sometimes funeral brass band.
Hadestown may not be the most upbeat or flashiest of musicals as this season comes near a close, but it is unique and sometimes simply stunning as one appreciates Rachel Chavkin (one of only 4 women to ever win a Best Director Tony) and the quiet spectacle she creates in a deceptively complex touring company. It’s not often one gets the opportunity to take the Road to Hell and discover something so Heavenly.
Hadestown runs 2 hours and 30 minutes with a 15 minute intermission.
Hadestown, runs through April 16, 2023, at the Hippodrome Theatre in the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center at 12 N. Eutaw Street. For tickets call the box office at 410.752.7444. or purchase them online