Hadestown disdain?

Hi there!

I've only joined this board fairly recently (just barely pre-COVID), and noticed that I've hardly seen Hadestown mentioned and when I have, it seems to be overwhelmingly negative. I was surprised about that as the show did so well critically and scored so many Tonys. I personally saw the show and absolutely loved it and bought tickets to see it again front row. I usually am very picky about shows and it's rare for me to find one I really like, so I was shocked how many people almost hated it here.

So, if you have a strong opinion about Hadestown, what is it? Do you love it, hate it? I'm really interested to hear all your thoughts.

I love it, though I'm not convinced it couldn't be an hour-forty one-act.

The first time I saw it, I literally said "wow" out-loud during "Wait For Me" when the lamps came down. Absolutely stunning. But it's not something I'd see over and over again. I'd love to see it again, like one more time, but I think it's kind of like Great Comet (and not just because of some of the creatives) in that it has a very specific fan base. It doesn't appeal to everyone.

I wouldn’t say many people on here hated it. It has many big fans in this board. The biggest issues on this board seem to be the length of the story stretched out across 2.5 hours, which is understandable. That’s a long time and it’s a topic many people could sum up very quickly. People also seemed mixed on Reeve Carney, but many also extremely favorable about Amber Gray, Andre DeShields, and Patrick Page. Lighting and staging seemed to get a lot of praise here.

The great thing about opinions is we don’t have to have the same ones.

There has been very little disdain on these boards regarding Hadestown, and it just hadn't been spoken about a lot right before the pandemic hit because there were newer shows opening that users were going to see.

My father saw it in Broadway previews and it took a day or two for him to fully realize he enjoyed it. I've heard the cast album and the one-two punch of "Wait For Me" and "Why We Build the Wall" really packs a wallop. Mitchell's score is full of gems.

I liked it better off-broadway than on. I thought the staging in the round worked well and the shorter running time and no intermission served the material well. The source material, the poem by Virgil, is only 287 lines and it seemed like they didn't need the extra time to tell that story.

I liked it but didn't love it, though I found it deserving of the best musical Tony. It seems to me that most people enjoy act 1 more than act 2, but I thought the opposite. Act 1 seemed like a lot of unnecessary setup while also being confusing about what the "rules" of the world were (the spring/summer thing seemed weird, and the hell as a sweatshop could've been eased in a bit more imo). But I thought the last half of act 2 was just about perfect theater, starting from the Wait for Me reprise (though I didn't care much for Doubt Comes In).

There are definitely some gems in the album, though I've listened to the off-Broadway version so much that I prefer the liveliness of that one a bit more. That was probably one of the other issues I had when I saw the Broadway version, was that it felt small and contained. Even Living It Up On Top which should've seemed like a celebration just felt sparse and lifeless to me. I liked how the myths were intertwined, but I think it would've been much more interesting if Persephone/Hades were the main characters and we saw their love story through the lens of Orpheus/Eurydice (whose love story played out very much like Mimi/Roger from Rent to me, which I also did not enjoy).

Overall, I still think it was a good show, but it felt a lot like a work in progress for me, and the book just seemed really inconsistent. I wonder if I would've enjoyed its previous off-Broadway run more, or what it would look like if they had brought in a separate book writer.

I'm one of the people who was vastly disappointed by Hadestown. As much as I try to "get it," the appeal just eludes me. Much of that certainly comes down to personal taste. I don't like the music--not because I don't appreciate the style (it really irks me when people can find no other way to describe the music than "jazzy" because most of that score is a far cry from actual jazz)--but because of the frequent repetition of musical themes without development. Much like in an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, the recitative parts get really dull really fast as we hear the same melody again and again and again with no variation. Add to this the fact that many of the songs do little to move the story forward and the length of the material was expanded not because the material demanded it but because someone decided it needed to be longer to be a full evening of theatre, and I am bored to tears. Plus there's very little humor in this very bleak and depressing story. Many people have praised the staging, and I liked Chavkin's work on Great Comet (well, I liked it a lot in the tent, but on Broadway I felt it was too busy to really be able to focus on the story, but I think she's still a very interesting director), but in Hadestown, I failed to see what was so remarkable about her work. Was it just the use of the revolve? Because that's something I've seen used much more effectively in other shows. Was it just the lanterns? Because that idea was interesting to me for about thirty seconds before we saw basically everything that could be done with them and so the dancers just repeated the same patterns. That was actually my whole experience of the show in a nutshell--interesting ideas repeated ad nauseam until they lost all meaning.

For whatever it's worth, two of my favorite pieces of theatre have taken on the Orpheus & Eurydice myth in striking, emotional, theatrical, and compelling ways--Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses and Sarah Ruhl's Eurydice.

chrishuyen said: "I didn't care much for Doubt Comes In"

"Doubt Comes In" and "When the Chips are Down" are my favorite songs from score.

Some of the critiques of Hadestown are fair. It's a little too long (though I wasn't bored). The decision to portray Orpheus as too much of a simpleton made it tougher to grasp why Eurydice was drawn to him, which would be more a problem in a realistic piece but not in a musical based on a Greek myth.

OP, you'll notice many people who didn't like the Broadway show loved it off-Broadway. I didn't see it there so I don't have that as a reference point.

I thought the cast was excellent, and Andre De Shields puts on a master class - one of my favorite Broadway performances. I had no problems with Reeve Carney based on the character he was directed to play. And his voice worked for me. The direction, atmospherics and conclusion made for a rather magical evening.

Perhaps my memory is bad, but I don't recall the show getting too much criticism on these boards during its run. Every show has its detractors, as you can see.

SouthernCakes said: "I saw it and didn’t much care for it. I love “Wait for Me” and the song the girl and the 3 muses sings in the beginning, but the rest of the score didn’t grab me. Hated the falsetto and not a fan of Reeve or his voice.

The staging, to me, got repetitive.

I think they should have ended act 1 with “wait for me” and opened act 2 with Patrick’s song. The ending of act 1 was just not exciting and then the opening of act 2 wasn’t exciting."

I enjoyed the show, but these are criticisms that ring true for me. I honestly expected "Wait For Me" to be the end of Act I, and think it would have been absolutely perfect if that had been the closer. As it is, Patrick Page's song (which is good, imo, don't get me wrong) just feels tacked on and the end of Act I as a result is just really flat.

Weirdly, I haven't really listened to the cast album much since I saw the show. I think it's one of those productions that for me needs to be experienced fully rather than just in audio fashion. But to each their own!