Hadestown

[wordsofastory]

Last weekend, I went to see the off-Broadway production of "Hadestown", a 1920s-esque folk opera retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice. That's a lot of elements for one show, but yes, really. And it works. It's based on a 2010 album by Anaïs Mitchell, which you can listen to here, but which is fairly different from the show as it exists now

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[sovay]

Orpheus is the great musician, still - but he's also a penniless romantic that is not particularly concerned with figuring out how to support himself and his new wife, which is a problem in the Depression-esque "Hard Times" of this story.

I really liked the strengthening of that element in the show-it's present in the original recording in lines like Hades' some kind of poet and he's penniless in "Hey, Little Songbird" or Eurydike's dreams are sweet until they're not in "Flowers," but the show makes it impossible to ignore with the way Nabiyah Be's Eurydike almost screams shelter us-harbor us at the end of "Chant," the end of a fruitless autumn of trying to get Orpheus to get his head out of his songwriting and into the realities of food and firewood and winter coming on. Hades, in the meantime, has passive-aggressively busied himself inventing the industrial revolution in the absence of his wife, which does not impress Persephone at all. Two wrong kinds of love; what men create that has nothing to do with what women want or need. Hades builds too many walls. Orpheus can't be bothered to keep his wife out of the wind.

there's more than a tinge of A Midsummer Night's Dream here, the supernatural creatures playing out their own cold war through the proxy of hapless mortals.

And I didn't catch that: nice. And thorough this distemperature we see / The seasons alter . . . And this same progeny of evils comes / From our debate, from our dissension- / We are their parents and original.

I desperately want more people to see this, mainly for selfish reasons including but not limited to: they will write interesting meta for me to read, they will produce a cast album, they will make this the next big theater fandom.

I would be incredibly entertained if Hadestown became the next big theater fandom. I've never been in on the ground floor of one of those.

[wordsofastory]

Hades, in the meantime, has passive-aggressively busied himself inventing the industrial revolution in the absence of his wife, which does not impress Persephone at all. Two wrong kinds of love; what men create that has nothing to do with what women want or need. Hades builds too many walls. Orpheus can't be bothered to keep his wife out of the wind.

Yes! That's such an excellent way of phrasing the parallel between them. Two extremes, and neither one is right the women in between.

I would be incredibly entertained if Hadestown became the next big theater fandom. I've never been in on the ground floor of one of those.

I think it's pretty unlikely, particularly since there's not even a cast recording available yet, but it would be such fun!