Hadestown Musical Soundtrack Review
Like many people with more bookshelves than friends in his youth, I got really into mythology when I was younger, starting with Greek/Roman around 6th grade and evolving from there to "whatever I can find" territory. One of my favorite myths of all time, of course, was Orpheus and Eurydice (which I first encountered in Neil Gaiman's Sandman run,) so of course I was all set to love Hadestown for retelling one of my favorite stories. But I wasn't prepared for how Anais Mitchell and the cast would complicate, reinvent, and retell the story.
I mean let's be real: Hadestown is a post-apocalyptic (probably?) and Great Depression era (Kind of?) Broadway musical retelling of an ancient Greek tragedy featuring jazz, folk music, and a whole lot of "La la la la la las." It really shouldn't work. Mostly, though, it does, and the how and why of pulling that off is just as mind-boggling as how much it doesn't.
Let's start with basics. Orpheus is the son of a Greek muse, which makes him a supernaturally talented musician. He falls in love with Eurydice, a world traveler trying to struggle through an environment that's usually trying to kill everyone because the gods Hades and Persephone, usually in love, are in conflict, and the world is suffering for it. Orpheus is trying to write a song so majestic it fixes the world. Eurydice falls for Orpheus' talent, but they're running out of food. Then Hades strolls in, offering to take her to the underworld where she'll never go hungry again. Orpheus wants to follow her, no matter what it takes.
Adventure, true love, character growth, and heartbreak ensue.
Apart from the songwriting and score, which are terrific throughout, Mitchell makes some smart updates to the myth that really work: Eurydice chooses (under duress) to leave Orpheus, instead of just dying like she does in the original myth. Persephone and Hades' marriage closely mirrors some of Orpheus and Eurydice's troubles (a wife who leaves, a husband who obsesses, strained trust) in a way that gives the play structure AND humanizes the god characters. Last but not least, Orpheus here has REAL character development, as opposed to the original in which he... well. Spoilers.
It's not a spoiler to say that the ending is not a thoroughly happy one. The play opens with a narrator telling us it's "an old song from way back when... it's a sad song, it's a tragedy! But we're going to sing it again..."
It's the ending that I keep getting stuck on. At its heart, Hadestown is about retelling sad stories in the hopes that the endings can change... even when they can't. It's not far different from a new rendition of any Shakespearean tragedy: we want to hope, even as the characters start swallowing seeds of their own defeat. And like any Shakespearean tragedy, finding the sin that makes it all go wrong is the most interesting part. It's easier to blame the Fates when they're literal characters on the stage, or the setting when the world is being destroyed, but some characters find their own ways to hell. And others, like certain characters in The Great Gatsby, retreat "back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together."
I don't know if Hadestown sticks the landing on the ending. Ambiguity and open interpretations are hallmarks of great, complex literature. But for my money I still can't tell if the ending develops naturally, or ends up rushed, or is viciously fighting the rest of the story to make a point. I'd like to revisit this when I've seen the entire thing on stage, but for now, doubt creeps in.
It's a hell of a ride though. 4.8 songbirds out of 5. Soundtrack available on Spotify.