Last Updated on May 31, 2024
The Devil Has all the Best Tunes
Everytime I’ve been in Soho over the last few months I’ve been struck by the crowds of young fans waiting outside the stage door of the Lyric Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue to grab a peek at the stars of Hadestown. There hasn’t been as much excitement about a musical since Hamilton.
This production opened at the Lyric Theatre In February on the back of 8 Tony® Awards including ‘Best Musical’ and a Grammy® Award for ‘Best Musical Theatre Album’. There was also an earlier sold-out run at the National Theatre in 2018. Hadestown was written by Grammy®-winning singer-songwriter and BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winner Anaïs Mitchell. The show started its life nearly twenty years ago as a Tony® Award-winning indie theatre project and then an album. Mitchell brought in director Rachel Chavkin who shaped the show into the success it is today.
The story is based on Orpheus in the Underworld classical myth that opera fans will know from Jacques Offenbach’s opéra bouffon of that name. Hadestown is reset in a post-apocalyptic dystopia, but the show’s heart is a simple love story. Orpheus is working as a waiter in a (cocktail) bar writing songs in his spare time. He falls in love with Eurydice, a young woman who doesn’t have much support in the world. Orpheus is busy writing his latest song so doesn’t pay Eurydice the attention she needs. Eurydice is cold and hungry and is taken in by Hades’ offer to sign away her freedom to become a worker drone in his underworld kingdom Hadestown in exchange for the security that this offers. A distraught Orpheus follows her down and tries to convince Hades to release his beloved.
The show moves from the surface world to the underworld of Hadestown. Designer Rachel Hauck has set the first act in an evocative New Orleans French Quarter style basement bar. There are tables and chairs scattered around the stage with a balcony and shutters at the back and a band of behatted louche-looking musicians spread across the back raised up on risers. When we move ‘downstairs’ we are into a steampunk version of hell using the full height of the stage. The stage is framed by rust-coloured walls and pipes, with this post-industrial underworld peopled by anonymous worker drones decked out in leather-patched dungarees.
The music is through-composed with only a couple of moments of dialogue. The score is a glorious stylistic gumbo that crosses Celtic-influenced folk with blues, gospel, Bo Diddly-style R&B, Joni Mitchellesque singer-songwriter songs, New Orleans jazz and Cuban Salsa. There are even some Bulgarian-style vocal harmonies with others being more gospel-influenced coming straight out of the Amen Corner. The songs are poetic and emotional often moving into fabulous acapella moments with sterling support from a band that features violin and cello, accordion, trombone, guitar, double bass and drums with some terrific arrangements by Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose bridging the stylistic divides.
With much of the music being groove-based it provides the perfect foundation for David Neumann’s muscular choreography.
Dónal Finn, a young Irish actor, made the part of Orpheus his own. He has a resonant tenor voice with a plangent piercing falsetto that reminds me of Brian Kennedy. Finn captures the fey idealism of Orpheus and is convincing as both lover and artist. On the night I visited, understudy Madeline Charlemagne had taken over from Grace Hodgett Young as Eurydice. Decked out in a sleeveless black tunic dress laddered black tights she was every bit the strong contemporary heroine, but lacked the vulnerability that comes with the part and much in the way of chemistry with Orpheus.
Zachary James plays Hades looking like he had stepped out of one of the Matrix movies. In a long black leather style coat, pinstripe suit and black shades he dominated the stage with his imposing physicality and a basso profondo voice that reaches down to the darkest pit in hell. James is perfectly cast as the god of the underworld and despite his size is nimble when needed while he reveals a sensitive side in his interactions with his wife Persephone (Gloria Onitiri) who provides the bridge between the two worlds.
Onitri as Persephone is dressed in a series of 1920s bordello-style dresses and brings bucket loads of personality to the stage, She is the perfect foil for Hades, a hard-drinking, blues-singing, chicken-dancing goddess who spends half the year in Hadestown and the spring and summer months on the surface.
Special mention must go to the three Fates, not quite a Greek chorus, played by Bella Brown, Lauren Azania and Allie Daniel who sashay around in black and white frocks creating sparkling harmonies and a magical energy.
Hadestown is a show that sticks two fingers up to mortality; a joyous celebration of renewal, youthful idealism and love, all scaffolded by some great tunes. If you haven’t already gone over to the dark side then you should see it.
Hadestown
Booking until December 2024
The Lyric Theatre
29 Shaftesbury Avenue
London W1D 7ES
