Hannah Whitley, J. Antonio Rodriguez and Company in Hadestown North American Tour 2023.T. Charles Erickson/Supplied
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- Title: Hadestown
- Book, Music and Lyrics by: Anaïs Mitchell
- Director: Rachel Chavkin
- Actors: Nathan Lee Graham, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Matthew Patrick Quinn, J. Antonio Rodriguez, Hannah Whitley
- Company: Mirvish Productions
- Venue: Royal Alexandra Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: To Aug 20, 2023
Critic’s Pick
Would you go to Hell and back again for the one you love?
If you’re Orpheus, that enchanting minstrel of Greek mythology, we know the answer. His ill-fated attempt to retrieve his dead wife Eurydice from the clutches of Hades in the Underworld has been retold endlessly in many forms, from operas to graphic novels. My own favourite Orphic riffs include Jean Cocteau’s surreal film Orphée, Tennessee Williams’s poetic melodrama Orpheus Descending and Sarah Ruhl’s memory play Eurydice.
Now I’ve added Hadestown to that list. Anaïs Mitchell’s thrilling musical is an inspired take on the myth that succeeds at being timely, old-time-y and timeless, all at once.
The 2019 Tony Award winner, whose North American tour is currently burning up the stage of Toronto’s Royal Alexandra Theatre, is a tale for today. As Mitchell reconceives it, her idealistic Orpheus journeys down into a capitalist Hell to save an impoverished Eurydice who has suffered a death of the spirit, having sold herself to an industrial magnate to avoid starvation.
Along the way, Mitchell touches on climate change, populism and xenophobia, and even recasts her hero as a nascent union organizer.
Musically and visually, however, Hadestown looks back to bygone eras. Mitchell’s songs have deep folk and jazz roots (not to mention echoes of seminal musicals Rent and Les Misérables). Director Rachel Chavkin’s splendid production locates the story in what looks to be a Depression-era New Orleans.
Speaking of Tennessee Williams, when you first see designer Rachel Hauck’s set, which suggests a French Quarter bar, you might think you’re about to watch a revival of one of his plays.
Orpheus (J. Antonio Rodriguez) is waiting tables there when he falls head over heels for Eurydice (Hannah Whitley), a vagrant who has wandered in from the cold. She’s smitten, too, but wary – world-wise and world-weary, she isn’t about to commit to the poor musician with nothing more than the gift of song.
Nathan Lee Graham in Hadestown North American Tour, 2022.T. Charles Erickson/Supplied
But what a gift! In the delightfully folksy Wedding Song, he wins her over by countering all her pragmatic questions with poetic promises – extravagant claims that he seems able to make good on.
After all, he’s busy writing an epic tune so powerful that, even in its unfinished state, it already appears to have coaxed back a long-absent spring to the increasingly unstable climate.
When spring arrives, she blows in as the brash, bountiful Persephone (Maria-Christina Oliveras). Wife of Hades (Matthew Patrick Quinn) and queen of the Underworld, she’s returned for her annual above-ground visit to bring abundance and good cheer.
But even as she sings about “livin’ it up on top,” frequent swigs from a hip-flask suggest things aren’t going well with her marriage. Down below, in Hadestown, her tycoon husband (the original plutocrat) is preoccupied with relentlessly extracting the Earth’s riches – silver, gold, oil, coal. He’s also building a wall to keep out the undesirables.
When Eurydice, lured by the promise of a steady job, reluctantly decides to join his work force, a distraught Orpheus is determined to fetch her back.
It’s a dark story with a tragic outcome – the show’s narrator, the messenger god Hermes (Nathan Lee Graham), reminds us of that at the very beginning. But Mitchell and Chavkin counter that inevitability with the seductive originality of their concept and the sheer exuberance in which it’s delivered.
For this touring production, they have a charming Orpheus in Rodriguez, who has an innocent, teddy-bear quality and a voice that’s high and sweet, as befits a symbol of poetic naiveté. Whitley’s Eurydice, looking like a goth urchin, is his perfect counterpoint, with an appealing toughness that recalls Mitchell’s mentor, singer Ani DiFranco.
Meanwhile, Oliveras’s Persephone, a classy lady in a verdant green gown, evokes such blues queens as Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith. As an embodiment of spring, Oliveras takes a little time to warm up, but by the second act she’s in full life-force mode, making a sympathetic plea on behalf of Orpheus to her callous husband.
The dapper Hades is partly a wry homage to Leonard Cohen, complete with rumbling bass voice, and you could easily imagine Cohen singing the stark, chilling Why We Build the Wall. Quinn, angular and Mephistophelian (to borrow from another myth), gives him a sombre paternal air even when he’s stirring up hatred of the other. He’s a calm contrast to the world’s current crop of populists.
Hannah Whitley in the Hadestown North American Tour, 2022.T. Charles Erickson/Supplied
Besides, as fans of the show know, the Trump analogy is fortuitous – Mitchell penned her wall song in 2006, back when Hadestown was just a song cycle.
The flamboyant figure here is Graham’s slinky, silver-clad Hermes. With his eyes twinkling like the sequins on his vest, his elastic voice keening one moment, a knife-thrust the next, he gives a wildly kinetic performance. He almost manages to supplant the memory of André De Shields in the original Broadway production.
Where Hermes guides Orpheus, those ineluctable sisters, the Fates – Dominique Kempf, Belén Moyano and Nyla Watson – needle him at every turn. They also pick up instruments and augment the onstage Dixieland band, which boasts a pair of sizzling soloists, Emily Fredrickson on trombone and Michiko Egger, on guitar.
Chavkin’s staging is spare but artful, relying on occasional striking effects, such as the work lamps that swing out through the gloom when Orpheus sings the desperate Wait for Me on his descent to Hadestown.
That factorylike Underworld as conceived by Hauck includes an automated version the jaws of Hell and an infernal circle in the form of a turntable – both a treadmill for the beaten-down workers and, later, a circuitous path for the lovers’ escape.
In some ways, Hadestown, like its Orpheus, is simplistic, even a little corny. But also like its Orpheus, that’s part of the show’s charm. It’s the familiar tragedy of pure love and pure intentions thwarted by hard reality. And, like Hermes says, we always hope it will have a different ending.
Matthew Patrick Quinn, Hannah Whitley, Dominique Kempf, Nyla Watson, Belén Moyano in Hadestown North American Tour, 2022.T. Charles Erickson/Supplied
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)