“There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”
(Note: parts of what follows are loosely adapted from my May
2015 Broadway Blog review of this show’s Off-Broadway
original.)
Be careful if you’re walking past the Walter Kerr Theatre
on W. 48th Street during a performance of Hadestown.
You may feel a blast of infernal musical theatre heat coming from inside, where
this red-hot show has finally moved following its 2015 Off-Broadway debut at
the New York Theatre Workshop, and productions in Edmonton, Canada, and London’s Royal National Theatre.
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| Andre de Shields. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
I found its script dramatically “flavorless” in its
earlier manifestation but my taste buds have matured since then. While not its
strongest feature, Hadestown’s book
now seems a fine wine accompaniment to a spellbindingly scrumptious theatrical feast.
Hadestown is a mostly
sung-through musical conflating the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone with that
of Orpheus and Eurydice, and swirling about themes of power of music, love, and
trust. It originated as a compilation of New Orleans-style jazz, folk, and
blues tunes by folk singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell.
In 2010, after being performed at various Vermont venues it
became an hour-long, concept album. The album was then developed by
Mitchell and the exciting young director Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of
1812) into Hadestown,
which runs around two and a half hours. Each song is distinctive, and several
are true show-stoppers.The 2015 production was shorter but felt longer; the
audience at the Broadway version behaved like it wasn’t long enough.
For the NYTW staging, set designer Rachel Hauck gutted the
space to build a wooden arena with the orchestra slotted in at one point and
the audience seated on uncomfortable old wooden chairs (unmoored cushions
supplied). A huge, leafless tree that no one ever climbed towered in one corner.
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| Eva Noblezada and the company of Hadestown. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Aided by lots of smoke, Bradley King’s flamboyant
lighting, sometimes enhanced by small lanterns, sculpted the action in rock
concert style, while actors in close proximity to the spectators created a
mildly immersive ambience.
For Broadway, the auditorium remains unchanged and Hauck’s
new design places the show entirely within the proscenium, with an upstage curved wall suggesting
New Orleans French Quarters architecture. In the middle rises a winding
staircase, with ornate wrought iron railings, leading to a balcony fronting
large double doors. Behind them is the dwelling of Hades, dictatorial ruler of Hadestown.
The seven-member orchestra is dispersed along the wall at left, right, and center.
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| Workers' chorus. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
At center are three turntables, one inside the other, capable of running counter to one another. The central disk also serves as an elevator
trap. Chavkin’s staging, and David Neumann’s choreography, make abundant use of
these mechanical aids with remarkably effective results, creating moving arrays
of actors moving in different directions, left, right, around, up, and down.
And King’s lighting, again making much use of smoke,
outdoes itself in evoking mood-setting effects, including a sequence when about
a half-dozen hanging metal lamps are choreographically incorporated into the
action.
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| Reeve Carney and the company of Hadestown. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Of the original leads, only Patrick Page and Amber Gray
return. Orpheus, first performed by Damon Daunno, presently playing Curly in
the new revival of Oklahoma!, is taken
by Reeve Carney (the original Peter Parker/Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark), a high tenor ranging into falsetto.
Euridice, taken Off-Broadway by the superb Nabiyeh Be, is now the responsibility
of the equally talented Eva Noblezada (Miss
Saigon).
 |
| Amber Gray and the company of Hadestown. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
The chorus-like Fates, mentioned below, are also new:
Jewelle Blackman, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, and Kay Trinidad, taking the roles
created by Lulu Fall, Shaina Taub, and Jessie Shelton. And Hermes, who serves
as narrator, is Broadway veteran André de Shields instead of Chris Sullivan.
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| Jewelle Blackman, Kay Trinidad, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
The show (whose plot summary can be found here) is principally concerned with the tragic, mythical
romance of Orpheus, the gifted lyre musician (read: guitar), who descends to
Hades to bring his lost-girl sweetheart, Eurydice, back to the world of the
living. Only after hearing the finished version of the song Orpheus has been
constantly working on (intended to bring the contentious world together) does Hades relent. He insists, however, that, if Orpheus looks back to see whether Eurydice is following
him, she’ll have to stay in Hadestown forever.
In 2015, I was disappointed that a
show inspired by a tale dramatized in countless films, plays, and operas (from
classical to rock) had squeezed so little drama from it, despite the uniformly
appealing songs and the infusion of a capitalistic exploitation theme. Because
the songs are mostly preoccupied with atmospherics and emotional responses,
their lyrics only indirectly offer exposition, reveal character, or move the
plot along.
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| Eve Noblezada, Andre de Shields, Reeve Carney. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
These factors seem secondary now; enough is revealed by
Hermes’ narration to serve the story and characters. The latter, after all, are
intended more as iconic figures than flesh and blood human beings, although we
can’t help but become affected by them as superbly embodied by these warmly
human actors.
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| Patrick Page, Reeve Carney. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
The basic myth remains intact although Eurydice, a
runaway, goes to Hadestown (by train, it should be noted), not because she’s
dead but as a personal choice, seeking to escape the hard times up on top
where, the lyrics say, “the chips are down”; her road to Hell is paved with
good intentions.
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| Reeve Carney, Eve Noblezada. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Hadestown’s existence is intentionally ambiguous; the citizenry
is composed of slave-like laborers in leather workers’ gear, moving in rhythmically
robotic fashion, like figures in an old Soviet Expressionist movie. Everyone seems
dead and everything’s symbolic, not to be taken literally, but freedom is
clearly a dream the workers’ share.
Hades’ wife, Persephone (Amber Gray, as before, sassily
sensational and a sure bet for an award nomination), represents the seasons;
she’s something of a snow bird, living half the year above ground, half under.
 |
| Amber Gray, Patrick Page, Reeve Carney. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
The suave, black and white, pinstripe-suited, cowboy-booted,
shades-wearing, white-haired Hades, who wants to protect his people by keeping
the enemy, poverty, away, sings about it in a song, “Why We Build the Wall.” One
of his arms even has a brick-wall pattern on it. The song asks “Why do we build the wall?” to be answered by lines like, “Because we have got
what they have not,” but, ironically, was written well before Donald Trump’s build-the-wall fetish. (Patrick
Page’s indelible performance, btw, definitely deserves a nomination.)
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| Eve Noblezada and the company of Hadestown. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
The Fates, a trio of gorgeous women garbed in gray and
silver turbans and dresses suggesting Roaring 20s Creole-style flappers, comment
on everything in perfect harmony, sometimes playing instruments. The main
narrative functions fall to the slick-as-ice, slim-as-a-whip Hermes, decked out in a jazzy,
vested, silver suit, with what resemble flaring feathers at his cuffs.
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| Patrick Page, Amber Gray. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Some of Michael Krass’s masterful costumes are reminiscent
of their Off-Broadway predecessors, others are totally reimagined. Orpheus, for
example, originally dressed in James Dean-like jeans, t-shirt, and red
windbreaker, now wears old sweatpants, a white t-shirt, and a red bandanna. Persephone,
though, still brings Billie Holiday to mind in her pale-green, floral-print
dress and occasionally-worn hair ornament.
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| Amber Gray. Photo: Matthew Murphy. |
Hadestown, with its extensive use of old-fashioned-looking mics,
and even a section where Persephone introduces each orchestra member for
applause, is not that far from being a brilliantly-staged concert. But it now
seems far more dramatically fleshed out than I remember, and many will be emotionally moved by
its tragic story. Judging by the unanimous standing ovation that greeted its
conclusion (wait for Persephone’s uplifting curtain-call song, "I Raise My Cup"), there are going to
be hot times in old Hadestown for
many nights to come.
Walter Kerr Theatre
219 W. 48th St., NYC
Open run
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