I had the privilege of seeing Hadestown in the Lyric Theater in London for my birthday recently, and I absolutely could not stop thinking about it afterwards. I had listened to the soundtrack once a few years ago and enjoyed it, but to actually see it in person was electrifying. The acting, the dancing, the lighting, all of it brought the musical together. Hadestown is a musical by playright Anaïs Mitchell which intertwines two myths: Orpheus and Eurydice, and Hades and Persephone. It takes heavy inspiration from 1920s Jazzy music, and to my delight, used the introductory songs at the beginning of each act to introduce the cast and the musicians, all of whom were playing on stage the entire time in plain sight. Hadestown is a story of cycles, of tragedy, of doubt, and most importantly, of hope. 

Each song was rife with meaning, especially “Why We Build the Wall” and its message about capitalism. Why do they build the wall? “And the war is never won / The enemy is poverty / And the wall keeps out the enemy / And we build the wall to keep us free / That’s why we build the wall” (Why We Build the Wall). The song almost perfectly explains how despite the dead working to build the wall, it will never be done, and they will always keep working, unable to form human connections, while Hades benefits. The Underworld is unnatural as a result of their forced labor: Persephone comments that “It ain’t right and it ain’t natural” (Chant). I found the song individually a really interesting, and it demonstrates how underneath the more obvious themes of the musical are less explored songs, still rife with meaning.

Throughout the play, the relationship between Orpheus and Eurydice is paralleled to the relationship between Hades and Persephone, both their stories riddled with doubt. Hades destroys his relationship with Persephone due to doubt: “His loneliness moves in him, crude and black / He thinks of his wife in the arms of the sun / And jealousy fuels him and feeds him and fills him / With doubt that she’ll ever come / Dread that she’ll never come / Doubt that his lover will ever come back” (Epic II). As a result, he increases his empire and builds walls around it and envelops himself in greed to feel less alone, because he knows he can trust the machinery. This coldness affects Persephone in turn, who dives headfirst into substance use to numb herself to the codl, singing “Give me morphine in a tin / Give me a crate of the fruit of the vine / Takes a lot of medicine / To make it through the wintertime” (Way Down Hadestown). As a result, both turn away from each other, riddled with doubt, and do not attempt to break through the walls separating them. It is ultimately when Hades embraces his doubts and lets them go, and learns to trust Persephone again. In the Wait for Me reprise, he shows kindness to Orpheus and Eurydice, and agrees to try again with Persephone when she returns in the spring. He says that he will wait for her, echoing the constant “Wait for Me” that runs throughout the musical. Just as Orpheus begs Eurydice to wait for him, so too does Hades beg Persephone to wait for him, each dreadfully in love. This mirrored love is ultimately how Orpheus breaks through to Hades to get him and Eurydice a chance to escape hell: in his Epic, he sings “And I know how it was because / He was like me / A man in love with a woman.” I find it beautiful that it is ultimately empathy for Hades that breaks through to him, when he sees his own story in Orpheus and Eurydice, and realizes that if they have a chance at love, so can he and Persephone. It is the hope of their relationship that breaks through Hades’ doubt—the message being that sometimes, when you cannot muster up hope from within, outside hope is needed.

Even more cyclically, just as Hades and Persephone’s relationship begins with doubt and ends with hope, so too does Orpheus and Eurydice’s relationship begin with hope and end with doubt. At the beginning of the story Orpheus is confident that nothing can break him and Eurydice apart, that his music will sustain them. By the end, as he leads Eurydice out of Hell, he sings, “Who do I think I am? / Who am I to think that she would follow me into the cold and dark again?” Despite Orpheus’s hope, doubt creeps in by the end, and it is ultimately his downfall, as he turns around and loses Eurydice forever. All four protagonists feel doubt and hope in equal measures, and as the musical is retold, so too does the cycle continue.

Hermes, who functions as a sort of narrator throughout the musical, starts and ends the musical with the same lyrics “it’s a sad song / we’re gonna sing it anyway” (Road to Hell). Why? Because “to know how it ends / and still begin to sing it again / as if it might turn out this time” is a message of hope. The play is about hope overcoming doubt and fear, and thus narratively, there is a slight fourth wall break when Hermes explains that this story is being told over and over, despite the knowledge that it is a tragedy. It is this juxtaposition of a tragic retelling that makes it hopeful, ultimately. This theme of hope is exemplified by the perpetual motif of the rose that is passed around throughout the musical. First Orpheus gifts it to Eurydice, then Hades to Persephone, each time symbolizing their love. Roses are cyclical: they bloom, then wither, then bloom again come the next spring. This almost perfectly matches the relationship between Hades and Persephone, split apart for 6 months of the year, but with time for their love to rebloom in the spring. Just as the rose cycles, so too does the story cycle, and love of Hades and Persephone cycle. There are so many places the story could be better, if only our protagonists embraced hope instead of fear. The message is not to give up like Orpheus did, like Hades starts out doing, but to embrace hope, to not give it up, to keep trying. It sounds awfully sentimental when I put it like that, but it was so moving when I was watching the musical. Overall, a definite 10/10.

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