A new Broadway musical that takes audiences to hell and back, Hadestown looks and sounds terrific, and yet it lacks something vital. Drawn from a classical Greek legend, the musical somehow reminds me of a handsome ancient statue that is missing its head.
True, the tuner that opened on Wednesday does not always make sense, nor is its text so faithful to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice from which it is drawn. Fortunately, the show is brilliantly staged and designed, and there’s no denying the infernal red-hot charms of the jazzy, jumping, blues-streaked score created by songwriter Anaïs Mitchell.
Evolving over a dozen years, Hadestown first gained attention as a concept album in 2010. Director Rachel Chavkin (of Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 repute) subsequently began developing this project with Mitchell, who also wrote the libretto and flavorful lyrics.
[Read Elysa Gardner’s ★★★★ review here.]
A dozen more songs were crafted before the musical premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016. Between then and its appearance now at the Walter Kerr Theatre, the show was performed in Canada and at the Royal National Theatre in London.
The mostly sung-through saga of Hadestown transpires above and below the earth, which ace set designer Rachel Hauck imaginatively depicts. The upper world is a 1930s honky-tonk New Orleans, while a steampunk-style industrial hell glowers down below. A lively seven-member band, seated on risers flanking the action, blares out Mitchell’s rhythmical, often raucous music that propels the show along swiftly.
Ancient deities and semi-mortals keep their Greek names and traits but otherwise are Americanized and duded up by designer Michael Krass in fanciful Depression era clothes.
Narrating this “old tale from way back when” as Hermes is a hip-swiveling, finger-wagging Andre De Shields, shimmying away in his most vivacious manner. Eurydice (Eva Noblezada) is a runaway waif who succumbs to the boyish Orpheus (Reeve Carney), a guitar-strumming musician intent on completing a song that will make a barren world bloom again.
Colliding with their romance is the troubled twosome of vernal queen Persephone (Amber Gray) and Hades (Patrick Page), the ruler of the underworld who forges his realm into a cross between a foundry and a sweatshop. With Orpheus preoccupied searching for the lost chord or something like for his unfinished song, Hades seduces Eurydice into hooking up with him down in Hadestown, which she shortly realizes is not the paradise she was promised.
And so it’s up to Orpheus to journey below to rescue Eurydice. Can he possibly?
Mitchell’s mythical musical features three Fates, raffish songbirds who play instruments and sweeten the score with their voices, and a hulking chorus of five workers who vigorously toil through David Neumann’s muscular choreography, which is often magnified by the set’s triple turntable and designer Bradley King’s extremely dramatic multi-colored lighting effects.
The chorus of workers, the Fates, and these atmospherics powerfully merge for “Why We Build the Wall,” the show’s most memorable sequence. This is a rhythmic, dirge-like anthem led by Page, who accents Hades as a big ole Deep South Daddy type with a rumbling basso voice. Hades exhorts his followers into building a wall to keep them free of an enemy—“Because we have and they have not/Because they want what we have got”—although why people are fighting to get into Hell seems puzzling. This dark hymn to isolationism, by the way, was composed by Mitchell in 2010, long before Donald Trump was little more than a punchline.
Performances, for the most part, are fine. As always, André De Shields is a crowd-pleaser. Amber Gray, who portrays Persephone as a wild party girl whenever she gets sprung from down below, is a saucy pleasure to watch. Patrick Page’s diabolical presence dominates the proceedings. Eve Noblezada gives Eurydice an earnest nature and clear, bright vocals.
The weak link is Reeve Carney, whose lightweight Orpheus is underwritten and whose tenor at times wavers towards falsetto. There’s too little heat to the young couple’s relationship, which perhaps is why the musical lacks punch in spite of its rousing score. Such absence of emotional resonance, as well as lapses in character motivation in the storyline, are flaws partly masked by the striking stagecraft of Rachel Chavkin’s sterling production.
While Hadestown scarcely shapes up into an essential Broadway destination, it is among the better attractions in what so far has been a lackluster season for musicals. Let’s hope that it doesn’t take another dozen years for the splendidly talented Anaïs Mitchell to deliver the score for her next musical.
Hadestown opened April 17, 2019, at the Walter Kerr Theatre and runs through September 1. Tickets and information: hadestown.com
