Orpheus is smitten with Eurydice before they even speak. Hermes, Orpheus’s wingman, helps him work up his courage to ask her out. “Orpheus,” he warns, “don’t come on too strong.”
Orpheus extends his hand to Eurydice, offers flowers. “Come home with me,” he says, to audience laughter. “Who are you?” Eurydice responds. “The man who’s gonna marry you. I’m Orpheus,” he says.
So begins the drama in Hadestown, the celebrated musical running now at the Shubert Theatre through May 5. With music, book and lyrics by Anaïs Mitchell, it’s a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
In the original story, Orpheus is a divinely talented musician who falls in love with and marries Eurydice, even as it’s prophesied that the marriage will not last. Sure enough, not long after the wedding, Eurydice dies from a snake bite. The grief-stricken Orpheus descends into the underworld and plays a song for the god Hades so heartbreaking that Hades agrees to let Orpheus take Eurydice back to the land of the living, on one condition: he must walk back with Eurydice behind him, and can’t look back.
Orpheus thinks he can do it, but as he reaches the end of the journey and sees daylight in front of him, he doubts; he believes the gods may have tricked him. He looks back, and sees that Eurydice has been following him all along. But by failing the test Hades has set out for him, he has sent Eurydice back to the realm of the dead forever.
The story has been one of the most popular Greek myths to retell, the subject of dozens of plays, poems, novels, films, and operas for thousands of years. Mitchell makes clear from Hadestown’s opening number that she’s aware of this lineage, that the story has been told and retold, and that many if not most people in the audience already know what the ending will be before the curtain goes up. So why tell it again?
The answer lies mostly in the music. Hadestown — which took home an armful of Tonys and other awards for its Broadway run in 2019 — is a sung-through musical, with a sound inspired pretty heavily by blues and early jazz, and as such it’s very much an ensemble piece, full of stirring melodies, rich harmonies, and driving rhythms. But Mitchell also goes for both a thematic and a character update.
She places the action somewhere in a city (the set, designed by Rachel Hauck, nods heavily to New Orleans) in the industrial 20th century, where Orpheus and Eurydice are struggling, impoverished artists. Eurydice doesn’t die from an accident; hungry and desperate, she chooses to abandon her life with Orpheus and join Hades. The underworld in Hadestown is the land of the dead and a place of hard labor, perhaps in a mine, perhaps in a factory; death is exploitative capitalism, and vice versa. Hades and Persephone lord over it as a wealthy couple whose marriage is on the skids, a situation played sometimes for laughs, sometimes not. When Orpheus enters the underworld, his music stirs Hades and the workers Hades exploits. He’s dangerous not only as a mortal who might cheat death, but as an artist who can foment economic revolution through the strength of his art.
Much relies on the overall strength of the entire cast, and the touring company visiting the Shubert, nearing the end of a run that began in 2021, has it down cold. As Hermes, our guide through the story, Will Mann is an imperious and mischievous emcee. Amaya Braganza taps deeply into Eurydice’s innocence and despair. J. Antonio Rodriguez is full of wide-eyed optimism and passion as Orpheus, and also excels at a singing part that requires extensive falsetto. Jamal Lee Harris (who played Hades the night this reporter attended; the role is usually played by Matthew Patrick Quinn) imbues his character with cruelty and frailty, and Lana Gordon vamps it up as Persephone while also letting us see the hurt. The Fates — Marla Louissant, Lizzie Markson, and KC Dela Cruz — serve up rich, sharp harmonies that forecast a sense of impending doom. The musicians, who appear in the wings onstage, are tight and swinging, especially Emily Frederickson on trombone.
Hadestown — directed by Rachel Chavkin, choreography by David Neumann, lighting design by Bradley King — is also notable for a couple sublimely transporting set pieces, especially Orpheus’s descent into and return from the underworld. His descent is marked by swinging lanterns, some held by cast members, others part of the set, that have the sense of transforming the theater. Likewise, a circular walkway and some very deft lighting make visible the rising doubts Orpheus wrestles with that ultimately lead to his fatal (for Eurydice) decision.
It all adds up to a fleet, moving, and wrenching night of theater, even, or perhaps especially, because we know already how it will end. If Hadestown ultimately has a dark view of the themes it explores — the way women are treated by men, the way men succumb to their weaknesses, the way everyone is caught in the maw of commerce and the futility of pushing back against it — the music and the energy onstage make a powerful argument that it’s still a fight worth fighting, over and over.
Hadestown runs at the Shubert Theater through May 5. Visit the theater’s website for tickets and more information.
