Robber barons and moonshine: This show about the road to Hades is a hell of a good time
MUSICAL THEATRE
Hadestown ★★★★
Her Majesty's Theatre, until July 6
Ancient Greek and Roman myths involving the underworld tend to agree on the ease with which mortals can find the road to hell. In Anais Mitchell's folk-musical Hadestown – a retelling of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, draped in a distinctly American mythos and musicality – the road becomes a railway line, and Hades a pinstripe-suited robber baron, whose train ferries denizens of jazz-age speakeasies to 'eternal overtime' in a factory at the end of the line.
The other point on which the myths agree is how difficult the underworld is to escape. As Dryden put it in his translation of Virgil's Aeneid:
The gates of hell are open night and day;
Smooth the descent, and easy is the way:
But to return, and view the cheerful skies,
In this the task and mighty labour lies.
We know that Orpheus will fail, that a fatal glance backward will condemn Eurydice to the underworld forever, but the tragic love story swells with every repetition and Christine Anu's Hermes – glam emcee in this steampunk adaptation – is determined they're going to tell it anyway.
If Hadestown is too schematic to provide much emotional depth or tragic catharsis, it is musically superior to most Broadway blockbusters. This production delivers Mitchell's score (which started as a concept album and bloomed into a stage show) with propulsive catchiness and assurance.
It's usually billed as a folk-musical, though the range of popular music referenced is much wider than that term suggests.
Anu unleashes brassiness for the opening scene-setter, Road to Hell. Adrian Tamburini's Hades has a gravelly, embittered bass with dark country vibes going on – infernal shades of Johnny Cash or Nick Cave or even Tom Waits lurking in the low notes.
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