The road to Hell (aka Hadestown) is proverbially paved with good intentions. In this case, take it and don’t look back!
(That advice will prove important later.)
There’s “vicious and delicious” fun to be had in “Hadestown” through Sunday evening at Chrysler Hall. (That’s playwright/composer Anaïs Mitchell’s smack-on pair of adjectives for her three singing Furies, played on opening night by Marla Louissaint, Hannah Schreer, and Cecilia Trippiedi.) You may want to pack your old copy of Edith Hamilton’s 1942 “Mythology” since you’re bound to meet a bunch of Greek gods and mortals, none wearing their usual togas.
Look, instead, for a flashy three-piece suit and some feathered feet on our guide-in-chief Hermes (delightfully hammy Will Mann, in a role made famous in the 2019 Broadway production by André De Shields). Hermes’ job is emcee, maître d’ and overall friend to lost souls. He says things such as “I’ll tell you where the real road lies:/ Between your ears, behind your eyes/ This is the path to paradise/ Likewise the road to ruin.” And folks in Hadestown (or in transit there) need advice, with King Hades (Matthew Patrick Quinn) overwhelming us with his kingly boffo bass and insatiable lust for environment-wrecking wealth.
Reluctantly sharing his throne in Hadestown is Persephone (luscious Lana Gordon displaying her dancer’s training and actor’s wiles), the daughter of Ceres, the goddess of corn and the seasons. I mention Ceres in passing (she’s not in the show) only because the world nearly froze to death until she and Hades struck a deal to share Persephone, each getting her half the year. She spends fall and winter in Hades, blessed spring and summer on Earth. Hades and his main squeeze Persephone form our older now-not-so-loving couple, suffering marital malaise.
But do meet their younger counterparts: Eurydice (wonderfully gamine, almost feral Amaya Braganza) and Orpheus (tenor-to-falsetto John Krause, equally adept at guitar work, our contemporary version of a lyre). Our younger couple is hot-to-trot in love until the always-hungry Eurydice grows tired of Orpheus’ constant composing and is seduced by Hades’ promises of steady (sex) work.
Credit for cleverly re-spinning these related love tales goes to Mitchell, who is also responsible for clothing her ancient figures for the streets of a vaguely modern New Orleans and relating them to our current political scene.
Hades as a lascivious Donald Trump? It’s really not that broad a jump. There’s even a song “Why We Build the Wall,” sung by Hades and Co. Note the circular logic:
Hades: Why do we build the wall?/ My children, my children/ Why do we build the wall? …
Persephone, Fates and workers: We build the wall to keep us free/ That’s why we build the wall …
Hades: How does the wall keep us free? …
Persephone, et al.: The wall keeps out the enemy/ and we build the wall to keep us free …
Hades: Who do we call the enemy? …
Persephone, et al.: The enemy is poverty/ And the wall keeps out the enemy/ And we build the wall to keep us free …
Hades: Because we have and they have not!
Persephone, et al.: Because we have and they have not/ Because they want what we have got …
Mitchell and her creative team, especially scenic designer Rachel Hauck, carry through the circle theme in other ways, including a revolving turntable in the floor for walking hellishly long distances, and light tricks galore: e.g., swinging circular lamps that come perilously close to beaning the actors. Hauck’s design to distinguish the Earth from Hadestown below includes a portal created when the New Orleans-style bar morphs into a freight-style elevator — just right for marking the all-important gate between realms. Band members sit onstage, completing a semicircle of musicians (and actors) with impressive, even memorable musical skills.
Nearly every character in this story about Earth’s ultimate musician (Orpheus) plays an actual instrument, sings and/or dances. Krause as Orpheus excels in singing and playing guitar. (Dancing, as in his “punishment” dance in Hadestown, is not his forte.)
But step aside when Persephone (Gordon) starts to move. Formerly a dancer for Alvin Ailey and other companies, she does a back bend that almost closes a circle and brings the audience to rapt attention — all this while believably acting as a woman who drinks (and worse) to excess.
There’s nothing like mythological material to remind us of — forgive me, Lion King — the circle of life. Great Canadian literary critic Northrop Frye has explained how myths tend to relate to seasonal and human cycles: birth, growth, maturation, decline, death. Literary genres have evolved to feature various points and movements on the circle: from fall and winter (tragedy and bitter satire) to spring and summer (comedy). Christianity’s Easter celebration of rebirth and renewal is notable this week with Jesus of Nazareth also completing his destined eternal circle.
Though Mitchell ends her version of the Orpheus myth with a suggestion that the young folks will get another try at overcoming wily old Hades, the rest of the original Greek myth is more unsettling. After Eurydice returns to Hades (presumably forever), the original Orpheus is distraught. He wanders into the wrong woods and gets his head ripped off by the maenads (worshippers of Dionysus who did dreadful things when drunk). The head was eventually recovered and buried by the muses. Edith Hamilton, the scholarly doyenne of Greek mythology, continues: “His limbs they gathered and placed in a tomb at the foot of Mount Olympus, and there to this day the nightingales sing more sweetly than anywhere else.”
Well, that’s some compensation.
Do see this sweet and raucous, delicious and vicious show — so much like real life.
May the (mythic) circle be unbroken. / By and by, Lord, by and by.
Page Laws is dean emerita of the Nusbaum Honors College at Norfolk State University. prlaws@aya.yale.edu
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If you go
When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday
Where: Chrysler Hall, 215 St. Paul’s Blvd., Norfolk
Tickets: Start at $30
Details: sevenvenues.com
