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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Theater tip: go straight to hell

April 18, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway transfer of Hadestown. Here’s an excerpt.

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Does the Broadway musical have a future? Only if a new generation of artists walks away from the old-hit-movie-into-stale-new-stage-show model and starts creating musicals that are conceptually more ambitious. “The Band’s Visit” and “Be More Chill,” which also broke free from the twin strangleholds of by-the-numbers pop-rock and synthetic Disneypop, both filled the bill in their very different ways. So, too, does Anaïs Mitchell’s “Hadestown,” which has transferred to Broadway after highly acclaimed runs at New York Theatre Workshop and London’s Royal National Theatre. “Hadestown” isn’t perfect, but it’s so fresh that you’ll gladly look past its forgivable flaws and savor the kaleidoscopic stylistic variety of Ms. Mitchell’s score.

Ms. Mitchell is a singer-songwriter, and “Hadestown” began life a decade ago as a concept album, an Americana-style “folk opera” (her phrase) about the evils of capitalism in which she retold the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, the story of a lyre-playing lover who travels to the dark underworld in the hope of restoring his adored fiancée (Eva Noblezada) to life. In Ms. Mitchell’s updated version, a sordid Depression-era New Orleans nightclub is the hellmouth and Hades (Patrick Page) is the slave-driving factory owner to whom the poverty-stricken Eurydice has unwittingly sold her body and soul.

As befits a folk opera, “Hadestown” is through-composed and contains only a modicum of spoken dialogue. Instead, the story is recounted by Hermes, a sharkskin-suited narrator played with urbane slyness by André de Shields who tells his tale in loosely rhymed couplets and quatrains…

Mr. Page, whose bottomless basso voice and regal demeanor have stolen many a show, would likely steal this one as well were it not for Ms. Noblezada, who gives a beautifully sincere, handsomely sung performance that you will find impossible to resist….

All this said, it is Ms. Mitchell’s down-home score, a piping-hot gumbo of folk, jazz, blues, country and gospel, that is the incontestable star of the show….

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Read the whole thing here.

Excerpts from Hadestown:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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