![]() Just why Hades takes a shine to Eurydice is among the details left vague in “Hadestown” - perhaps during the six months when Persephone is allowed to roam the earth he grows a little restive. The orchestrations, by Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose, are simultaneously rich and spare, deftly echoing the sounds of traditional folk music while also having an indie-pop flair. While most of the words, and for that matter the melodies, feel as if they could have been written in the 1930s (or at least the 1960s), there are witty contemporary touches, as when Persephone, Hades’s wife, portrayed with a polished glamour by Amber Gray, refers to “pay-per-view” at one point. ![]() Mitchell’s lovely music and well-turned lyrics are tightly bound together, and recall traditional folk music with a distinctive Southern flavor (although she hails from Vermont). Hey little songbird, let me guess He’s some kind of poet, and he’s penniless Give him your hand He’ll give you his hand-to-mouth He’ll write you a poem when the power’s out. Mitchell’s songs as he hymns the comforts that await Eurydice down below, and mocks Orpheus’s promises: Page’s charcoal baritone seductively wraps itself around Ms. He’s the ruler of Hadestown, an underworld hell where workers toil in his foundries and factories. ![]() (The costumes, by Michael Krass, are mostly contemporary.) In any case, as the tale begins, hardship and natural disasters have come upon the land: “Flood’ll get ya if the fire don’t,” sing the Fates, portrayed by Lulu Fall, Jessie Shelton and Shaina Taub, harmonizing wonderfully.Įnter Hades, played with an air both sinister and suave by Patrick Page. We might be in the Depression, but then again we might not. The minimal props include antique lanterns, and the performers sometimes sing into old-fashioned-looking microphones. The setting for this particular reworking of the myth remains unspecified. ![]() Mitchell released in 2010, and at times those roots show.) (“Hadestown” began as a concept album Ms. Chavkin’s simple but inventive staging, which is enhanced by the fluid lighting design of Bradley King. It’s a smart tactic, because while its score is continually beguiling, “Hadestown” might feel static were it not for Ms. While the action primarily takes place in a circular playing area, with the excellent band tucked in the back, the performers intermittently move through aisles in the audience, bringing an inviting intimacy to the production. For “Hadestown,” the audience almost surrounds the stage, sitting on an assortment of wooden chairs placed on a series of tiers. New York Theater Workshop is rare among the city’s major theaters in bringing fresh imagination even to the regular reconfiguring of its auditorium. Now it has become a folk opera, “Hadestown,” by the gifted singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, which opened on Monday at New York Theater Workshop in a gorgeously sung, elementally spare production directed by and developed with Rachel Chavkin ( “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812”). The words refer to the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, which has been told and retold - sung and resung, danced and filmed - over the centuries in many genres and styles. “It’s a sad song, but we sing it anyway.” We certainly do.
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