Hadestown Review Revisited
I got into the Hadestown soundtrack about two years ago, and last year I wrote up my feelings about the soundtrack here. But guess what? I’ve got more opinions.
I’ve seen the play in a new light, mostly because this time I’ve actually seen it. I caught a great show by a touring company last week, and getting the full Hadestown experience gave me a lot to think about.
To begin with, the stage design, choreography, and technical effects for the show are wonderful. At first glance, the stage is deceptively simple: an open barroom, a balcony, and a spiral staircase. For a play about a journey to hell (a literal one, not a Eugene O’Neill alcohol-fueled breakdown kind of hell), it seems a little out of place. But as the show continues, the stage opens up, literally, and with some clever lighting, movement, and showmanship, it takes the audience on a journey that truly fits the score. Special mention has to go to the musical number for “Wait for Me,” a song that has to cover the journey to the underworld, a journey that I think really needs the visual effects to emphasize the eerie quality of Orpheus’ descent into the unknown.
And as another quick note, Hadestown also makes the most of a very small cast. There are four main characters: Orpheus, Eurydice, Hades, and Persephone. Hermes is mostly just a narrator, and the Fates provide the exposition that is too dark even for him. That’s only five named characters, plus three fates and an ensemble of five. That’s thirteen actors total. I compare that to something like Hamilton, which has ten actors playing key characters (doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling up on roles,) and about eleven ensemble members for a total of 21. To have such a comparatively small cast, the story still feels sweeping and larger than life.
Those are all things that I simply couldn’t experience with the soundtrack alone, but there were also some things that just clicked better putting the soundtrack and visuals together. Each of the main character’s crises of faith felt more genuine on stage, and gave me a common impression: depression. When each of the leads is at their lowest, they find it easier to give up or behave badly or doubt themselves because they just can’t believe that things will ever get better. Given the past few years, it’s hard not to empathize at least on some level. The actors I saw really sold that despair and made me feel greater sympathy for each of the named characters. That same stage presence helped solidify the Fates as memorable villains: their costumes are ghostly 1920’s flapper attire, they make strange, syncopated movements, and they just seem to delight in tormenting the rest of the cast. I didn’t realize something was missing from their songs until I saw it played out on stage.
The other thing that hit me harder upon viewing the play was the final toast to Orpheus at the end of the story. As I alluded to in my last review, this play advertises itself as a tragedy. But seeing the show last week, I was really moved by the explanation of what makes Orpheus important within the story and, in a meta-textual sense, as a story. Despite his failings, Orpheus managed to create something truly beautiful in an impossibly bleak time, and our need for beautiful things, even if they are sad, unfinished, or imperfect, has always been there. It’s part of what the show aspires to be: a thing of beauty in dark times. Overall, I think it succeeds.
Last time I gave the soundtrack 4.8 songbirds out of 5. And while I know the show isn’t perfect, I still give the experience of seeing it 5 songbirds out of 5. If you have a chance to do so, I can’t recommend it highly enough.