Walking into the Tennessee Performing Arts Center lobby, the audience excitedly chattered, waiting to take their seats as the eight-time Tony Award-winning musical “Hadestown” prepared to take the stage.
Filled with laughs, loss and triumphs, “Hadestown” has captivated audiences with its powerful and ever-prevalent retelling of the classic Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice for nearly 20 years since its inception in 2006.
What started as a small piece of work, written by singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and only sung to an audience of dedicated theatre enthusiasts, has now ballooned into one of the most celebrated and successful works out of the Broadway circuit.
The national tour respects the larger-than-life legacy that “Hadestown” has made for itself and does not take for granted the fandom that has swarmed around the rich allegorical nature that popularized the musical in the first place.
Rachel Chavkin, the original Broadway director, and Keenan Tyler Oliphant, the touring director, take great care with the written work, transforming a tale as old as time into one set in a dingy Depression-era dive bar.
While that may be a far cry from the Grecian source material, the thematic elements of need versus want and the scrappiness that comes with an insatiable hunger for something more are ever-present, even if Hades presents more as an American robber baron than the king of the underworld.
The music is one of the biggest standouts within the show.
Mitchell, who wrote the book and the music for the show, created a compositional journey that employed unique instrumentation to tell as much of the story as the actors did.
Between accordions, trombones, violins and wind chimes, the atmosphere created by the always-on-stage band harkened back to the oral tradition of Greek culture.
However, the music wouldn’t be complete without the voices that carried the show's message.
Nickolaus Colón, as Hades, and Megan Colton, as Eurydice, stole the show. They not only had some of the strongest voices in the cast but also some of the strongest characterizations for the complex characters they each play.
The set design by David L. Arsenault added to this characterization as well by allowing the ever-present cast on stage to use the different levels of staging as a playground for expressing their characters' wants, desires and ambitions.
One of the night's most memorable moments came from the set itself.
As Orpheus traveled into Hell, the set cracked and moaned as the bar's walls lifted to reveal the rusted steel walls of Hade’s domain.
Despite the Grecian myth being around for many centuries, Mitchell looked at how history repeats itself. She allowed the epic to find new meaning when placed in the context of the American experience.
From the intricate production design of the show to the outstanding writing “Hadestown” is worth the watch and leaves audiences glad they took the trip down to Hadestown.
To go and see the show:
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This article was written by Zach Watkins
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