![]() Marable’s Persephone finds temporary rescue from her woes in honky-tonk. There are moments when his singing could be better modulated, but the character is clearly lost in the somber whirlwind of his own amorous thoughts. The figures in this show are differentiated more by their distinctive musical essences than by their dialogue.īarasch brandishes a piercing falsetto to impress upon us Orpheus’ innocent intensity. Unfurling like a dream, “Hadestown" speaks most eloquently through its sultry jazz score, which not only won a Tony but also received a 2020 Grammy Award for musical theater album. The surreal effect of this layout is enhanced by David Neumann's choreography, which keeps the mass of bodies in hypnotic motion. Rachel Hauck’s scenic design manages to convert a jazz club ambience into a Karl Marx-esque hellscape as the musical descends into the underworld. A chorus of workers (Lindsey Hailes, Chibueze Ihuoma, Will Mann, Sydney Parra, Jamari Johnson Williams) in a Hades that's conceived as an industrial wasteland provides powerful proletariat backup. The Fates (Belén Moyano, Bex Odorisio, Shea Renne), who provide this explanation of Eurydice's actions, add an additional choral layer to a musical that is as much about interpretation as dramatization. The stage is crowded with vibrant musical performers. Eurydice's behavior is illuminated in a few lines from "Gone, I'm Gone": "You can have your principles/When you've got a bellyful/But hunger has a way with you." In "Hadestown," the personal is never vacuumed-sealed from the political. The book can admittedly get blurry, but the emotional weight of the story comes though in the songwriting. Eurydice gives up her happiness with Orpheus for a less impoverished afterlife in Hades. Persephone is under the thumb of Hades, who oppresses his understandably skittish wife with the same impunity that he uses to exploit his indentured workers. “Hadestown” directs a gimlet eye on the power imbalance in male-female relationships without sacrificing romantic mystery. ![]() Hades (Kevyn Morrow), the jealous tyrant of the underworld, and Persephone (Kimberly Marable), his wife who gets to return for half of every year to the land of the living, have equal prominence in Mitchell’s retelling. And thus begins the saga of two young lovers whose attempt to hold on to the paradise they've briefly found in each other will lead them to the depths of hell. ![]() Orpheus (Nicholas Barasch), a struggling songwriter whom Hermes has taken under his wing, is instantly smitten when Eurydice (Morgan Siobhan Green) walks into his life.Ī ragamuffin looking for a meal, Eurydice receives instead a feast of affection that includes a proposition of marriage. The initial setting resembles a New Orleans speakeasy. A mercurial character whose main role is master of ceremonies, Hermes entices us to once again resurrect this ancient tale of love and loss to see what fresh insights might be gained through another communal encounter. The story of Eurydice and Orpheus is presided over by Hermes (Levi Kreis, who won a Tony for playing Jerry Lee Lewis in “Million Dollar Quartet”). Developed by Rachel Chavkin, the resourceful director who won a Tony for her staging, “Hadestown” achieves a fluidity of musical theater storytelling that makes an old tale seem startlingly new. ![]() “Hadestown,” the 2019 Tony-winning musical reimagining the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice as a New Orleans-style folk opera, has arrived at the Ahmanson Theatre in smoldering fashion.īorn out of a concept album by Anaïs Mitchell, who wrote the book, lyrics and music, the show travels to the underworld and back again with liquified grace. ![]()
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