Hadestown: A Musical

 

Aussie director Brett Sullivan's artful filming of a live West End performance of the Tony-winning musical Hadestown does what modern musicals have been doing with greater and greater regularity lately. It uses stagecraft to transport audiences to other worlds while revealing important truths about the one beyond the wings, outside the theater, out on the streets.

Indie singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell wrote the book and composed the music for Hadestown, pulling largely from Americana (folk, country, blues and jazz), to tell the mythological tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice (Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada) who strike a bargain with the god of the Underworld, Hades (Patrick Page), and his seasonal bride Persephone (Amber Gray), who leaves the Underworld once a year to deliver spring, wine and revelry to those above ground. Broadway veteran and Tony winner Andre DeShields plays Hermes, the tale's mischievous and not wholly reliable narrator, who leads a Greek chorus of about a dozen other cast members through the rousing two-act.

Mitchell takes ancient tales already layered with earthly application to comment on despotic bosses (Hades) who exploit laborers, building great wealth (the Underworld) on the backs of the masses who are trapped in the darkness of soulless, repetitiive toil (the chorus).

Orpheus, a wandering poet and songwriter with a heavenly voice, meets and falls for the poor, begging wastrel Eurydice. She is captivated by his music but soon finds herself pulled into Hades' pit of numbing servitude. Orpheus follows her into the pit and tries to rescue her but ... well, you know what happens.

Mitchell, who won a Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album, has a remarkable ear for gorgeous melody and a nuanced sensibility about language. The score entices and energizes with soaring through lines and rich harmonies -- marvelous stuff -- and borrows from operative conventions with the heroic tenor (Orpheus), the villanous bass (Hades), the winsome soprano (Eurydice), and the brassy mezzo (Persephone). They're all singularly wonderful and make for a devilishly good ensemble, as well.