Hadestown
This review is from 2024.
What a long, strange trip itâs been. Indie-folk musician AnaĂŻs Mitchellâs musical retelling of the Orpheus story began life in the mid-â00s as a lo-fi song cycle, which she gigged around New England before scraping the money together to record it as a critically acclaimed 2010 concept album that featured the likes of Bon Iverâs Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco on guest vocals as the various mythological heroes and villains.
Going through the next 14 years blow-by-blow would be time-consuming, but in short thanks to what I can only describe as THEATRE MAGIC, Hadestown is now a full-blown musical directed by the visionary Rachel Chavkin, its success as a show vastly outstripping that of the record.
It played the National Theatre in 2018, on its way to becoming the most unusual Broadway smash of the modern era. And itâs finally come back to us.
Now in a normcore West End theatre, its otherness feels considerably more pronounced than it did at the NT. The howling voodoo brass that accompanies opener âRoad to Hellâ is like nothing else in Theatreland. Mitchellâs original songs are still there but have mutated and outgrown the original folk palette thanks to the efforts of arrangers Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose. Rachel Hauckâs set â which barely changes â is a New Orleans-style saloon bar, with the cast all dressed like sexy Dustbowl pilgrims. Itâs virtually sung through. It is essentially a staged concert, but itâs done with such pulsing musical...