Deep dive into Hadestown (again) & Poetry

thinking about old songs and the beginning of fall 👽

Sep 01, 2023

Hiya Magic Heads!

Here comes Fall! 🍃

I moved to New York City towards the tail end of Fall last year and didn’t get to experience the fullness of Fall in New York City. The leaves are starting to show yellow now, and the weather is cooling off. I am ready to let go of my summer tan and welcome pasty arms and sweatshirts.

A Joke:

Why are New Yorkers so sad?

Because the light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey.

🕳 Going deeper about Broadway’s Hadestown (and why it’s the perfect story)

Promised last week, here are some thoughts about one of my favorite stories, Hadestown.

"Hadestown" is a take on the Greek myth, focusing on Hades and Persephone's love story and the developing story of Eurydice and Orpheus. The musical kicks off with a song that upfront tells you this is an old, sad song, but they are going to sing it anyway. And so, the story of hope, doubt, endings, and beginnings begins. Throughout this musical, you are aware of the cyclical movement of the stage, with the beginning being the end, the changing seasons, the characters, and the inevitable train to Hadestown.

In this musical, Orpheus has the power with his song to bring spring back because the world they are in is suffering from a period of condensed seasons. Persephone spends her days intoxicated and miserable with her husband, Hades, in the underworld, and there hasn't been a spring in ages. Orpheus is passionate about seeing this change and believes this song to be discovered will be that change. As he is working on setting the seasons back-right, we see a youthful ignorance of the practicalities of life and the responsibilities of marriage, leaving Eurydice to make a deal with Hades to survive, thus sparking the journey Orpheus goes on to Hadestown to save Eurydice.

"What does a god who has everything do?" We see Hades at first painted as a simple tyrant who lets fear and doubt rule his life, his wife, and those who work for him. Yet, as the story progresses, it does so not with a simple villain brushstroke, but one with compassion and recognition that he has built all he has in spite of difficulty, and although he is a god like Orpheus, he has the same beating heart and became what he was through doubt and fear. It is only with compassion that Orpheus earns the song of his love and softens his heart. We see the contrast between a poor boy in love with a girl and a king who has everything except the passion of love he once had, which has disrupted the seasons themselves and the earth. The musical progresses with Orpheus being victorious in setting the seasons back in time by reminding Persephone and Hades of their love and, ultimately, their ability to hope and trust. He reestablishes such virtue between them. However, as the story moves forward, we see his own trust begin to wane as he is exposed to betrayal, hardship, and the coldness of life's storms—and doubt creeps in. Orpheus evolves from a boy with the gift of seeing the world as it could be to only seeing it as it is. From sunshine eyes and promising lofty wishes to Eurydice to realizing that life does not always turn out as one wishes. This brings us to the end, where, like all Greek myths and perhaps portions of our own stories, a tragic abrupt ending occurs.

The brilliance of this musical is that it doesn't end there.

It restarts to retell the story again, inviting the audience to experience hope, disappointment, and, alas, hope again. We realize that within us lives the same cyclical cycle of hope and doubt and hope again, much like the way the seasons and even the Earth itself are reborn. We reflect on the naivety we once carried in the world with ambitious dreams and the assurance that all things will work out, and we are reminded that maybe somewhere along the way we encountered Hadestown—a reason and space to forget who we were, why we hoped, and what our name was. This encounter even perhaps caused great loss, yet we are reminded of our own love and that song again that tethers us to the history of all the dreamers. A story of the gods, that is all too human.