It's A Turnip

captainholts:

H A D E S T O W N

I saw Hadestown last week and it blew my MIND and since it’s closed now I wanted to share some of the staging that you wouldn’t be able to get from the original album or the future cast recording!! I probably am not remembering everything so feel free to tack on

So characters-wise there are Eurydice, Orpheus, Persephone and Hades, as well as the three Fates and Hermes, who functions as sort of a chaotic neutral narrator?? 

The theater is set up in the round, with the entire band on stage in the back and the only set piece being a giant tree where the band is. The cast uses the whole space, including the aisles in the audience, and interacts with the audience at points!

The show begins with the Fates coming onstage, minimal lighting except for lanterns they each hold. They sing Any Way The Wind Blows as they slowly walk around the stage and aisles. Then Hermes enters, blowing a kiss at them like the winds from the song, and blows them away so he can start his introduction. He’s mic’d but holds a microphone as well. 

When Persephone arrives for summertime, a light shines out of one of the audience entrance corridors as if a train has just arrived in a tunnel. The same effect happens when Eurydice later takes the train the Hadestown. Hermes has a whistle he blows for the train noise (but I’m pretty sure it’s for show and that they played a sound effect bc it was Loud)

When Persephone arrives in Hadestown, she enters through a door above the band, above the audience, so that she’s looking down on the entire theater, and you realize, YOU are in Hadestown now too. It’s such a great and jarringly immersive way to create that setting. That door placement is one of my favorite things the show did tbh

Orpheus has an acoustic guitar with him At All Times and it is a credit to the actor that I wasn’t dreading an “anyway here’s wonderwall” the entire time

When Eurydice is in Hadestown the Fates wear long dark leather trenchcoats over their hella layered maxiskirt Regular Fates outfits 

Hades wears a business suit and those sunglasses that only movie villains and ambiguously amoral businessmen wear, the kind that are the same size and wire rims as regular glasses but tinted. you know the ones

His voice is SO DEEP lord

During Wait For Me Orpheus has to take “the long way round” and you guessed it, it’s through the audience, with the fates holding up different obstacles for him to get past very slow and stylized and trying to see his face so he keeps turning away. Eventually he makes it up to that door that Persephone used towards the beginning. 

During Why We Build The Wall everyone is on the audience risers all facing the middle, with Hades holding one of the large microphones directing them. Eurydice sings the beginning of the last verse (what do we have that they should want, we have a wall to work upon) and it is CHILLING. the whole song is chilling bc it’s coming from all around you and it’s so. wow

The second act opens with Our Lady of the Underground and it is such a good way to transition back from intermission!!!! It’s just Persephone on stage singing like a sad lounge singer to the audience, reminding us once again that WE are the citizens of Hadestown, and Hermes passes out cups to some members of the audience to drink with her. It’s great

How Long is….so great. so powerful. wow. Persephone and Hades share a microphone in the center of the stage and it’s so great

When Orpheus has to sing for Hades to get their chance to leave, he’s in the middle of the stage with Hades sitting on a stool in the audience judging him and everyone else ranging around in the audience as well

When Orpheus and Eurydice are on their journey out in Doubt Comes In, it’s very similar to when Orpheus was making his trek in. Orpheus is first of course, with Eurydice behind, facing the same obstacles in turn that the Fates in leather trench coats are putting in front of them. It takes them so long and it’s so hard fought that by the time Orpheus gets to the door above everything you really are so heartbroken when he turns around. There’s no dramatic music, nothing but the disappointed gasps from the audience. And the way it’s set up, instead of taking the same long looping way back, Hermes holds Eurydice’s hand and helps her jump down off the ledge as if she didn’t even get very far at all.

Finally in the finale, I raise my cup to him, they pass out cups to some audience members again and immerse everyone in the mourning. 

TO ORPHEUS, AND ALL OF US,

i can’t wait for a cast recording but here are a few of the songs on soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/bassoonsandbroadway/sets/hadestown and obviously the original album is out there as well 

Jesus Christ was a refugee

note-a-bear:

kiskidee:

Mary and Joseph fled the terror of King Herod before settling in Bethlehem.

Now, I’m no theologian, but I think the Bible is very clear about how we should treat the stranger and the dispossessed.

But that’s just me.

God literally destroyed two cities just because they didn’t treat visitors (disguised angels) with the correct hospitality

(via transboypippin)

javeliner:

think about the concept of a library. that’s one thing that humanity didn’t fuck up. we did a good thing when we made libraries

(via onionsjuice)

nexus-princex:

I really love the entire Anish Kapoor and and Stuart Semple drama because after all this petty back and forth bs all it really is at it’s core is:

“Anish doesn’t want to share his black crayon, so we won’t share ours.”

(via stardustschild)