Hadestown is old now. 

on that topic, its honestly kinda crazy that hamilton is nearing 10 years on broadway. like thats so long. hamilton felt like the biggest new show for so long, but looking back, 2015 was ages ago, the world was a different place (even compared to when hadestown started on broadway). the show feels old (not necessarily dated in a bad way, but just... like its been around for a while). hamilton felt revolutionary, we all knew it would change the musical theatre landscape. and now we can look back and see how it has done that. whats changed in theatre in those soon to be 10 years and honestly thats so weird.

I really hope to see Hadestown performed in a small-scale outdoors production whenever it’s licensed out. Being a little bit closer to nature and sitting under the vast sky feels appropriate for it, and could make it more powerful. When I saw it on tour, being in a humongous fancy theater felt jarring in a way I hadn’t experienced before. It clashes with the anti-capitalist themes, the ancient roots of a story that we’ve been telling since long before those sorts of buildings existed, and the story’s start and end in Persephone’s realm of the natural world

The “it’s an old song” line gets me every time. I hope they get to sing it again and again, for ever!

I do think Hadestown is really interesting in the fact that we can see the tweaks made to the show over time. Like, many show have Broadway vs West End/Off Broadway versions. But Hadestown has three very distinct versions out there. And you can just...go listen to all three of them whenever you want.

I want to see a production of Hadestown set in New Orleans at Mardi gras. Masks and the whole shabang.

Idk if this is what you were going for, but this video looks like what nerdfighters might call “the format”

Holy smokes, you're making videos again?! You've always been one of my favorite channels that stopped posting! So pleased to see you're making more!

Someday broadway's version will close... how would you feel if on that final presentation, orpheus doesn't turn back?

I would love to see them mount some non-replica professional productions somewhere around the world, whether it be in a big city in the US or Europe, South America, etc.

Note the third (I’m so sorry for the spam) about her being the one wanting to write the song to save the world- that’s, if I remember correctly, why she liked the myth of Orpheus so much, she felt it spoke to that desire for artists to be able to fix everything if they could just write a good enough song

Comedically and obnoxiously stupid nitpick: the show’s first performance was December 6, 2006, so it will turn 18 at the end of this year. It probably has a learners’ permit

Your timing is on point. I'm going to see Hadestown for the very first time on Saturday, my first time seeing a Broadway show since Come From Away six years ago!! While I've never sat down and listened to it the whole way through, every note I've ever heard has utterly enchanted me. Thank you for somehow getting me more excited for the show that I already was!!

This show has such a place in my soul. The only show I’ve seen on Broadway, I saw Anais Mitchell sing some songs from it a few feet away from me, I’m a regular student of Patrick Page’s classes, I bonded with my notoriously picky brother by showing it to him, and above all, my favorite version is the NY Theatre Workshop version. There is a weird sense I feel about how few people know of that one that I feel captures all of what you talk about the best, yet the actors and Mitchell disagree and it has no less impact on the people who see the latest incarnation. It’s simple in the way it gets to its emotional core that seems to come across all its renditions. It does feel, like you said, very odd to think of it at all as a finished piece of art. It feels more metaphysical than that.

I can’t believe how massively the new place is

Thank you so much for taking my suggestion! I'm glad i got your point of view and your reflections on it. Did you know it was Anaïs Mitchell's goal to write a piece that entered the american theatre canon? She did it. 🙂 Hadestown is in my top three, along with Company and Gypsy.

I kept wondering where you were going to pop up next!!

"This show is complete, it is finished" have you heard about the West End changes though? It hasn't even had its official opening night here and Anaïs is STILL rewriting it! Which is an insight as much into her as it is into the show.

(What mic did you use for this video, Tommy?)

I remember sitting down in that Broadway theater - going into this musical "cold," as they say. I hadn't heard the music, I didn't know a ton about it. I knew I loved the myth. I knew it won Best Musical. And I was lucky enough to see Anais Mitchell open for one of my favorite singers way back in 2002. So I was pretty sure, I would like it. 1. I didn't like it - I loved it. It quickly became a favorite and I wanted nothing more than to see it again. 2. I sat in that theater wondering the entire time how they were going to END the musical. Anyone who knows the myth knows it's not a happy ending. But sad tragic endings and Broadway musicals don't often get along. Would they cop out and change the entire point of the myth? Would they leave us feeling like they pulled the rug out from under us by ripping Eurydice away? How would they do it?! And then they did it. And I was astonished. And I was so happy. The ending is my favorite part (except for "Chant" - Chant will always be my favorite part 🙂) I do get to say that I am gonna see the National touring company in Boston in a couple months. And that makes me happy.

But... (if a 2500-year-old story can be spoiled, don't read any more...) . . . . he fails. Again and again and again. It is a very discouraging story really--that argues that no matter how goos the art is, nothing ends up changing.

Eloquent commentary. Thank you.

once Concord Theatrical releases the rights, it's on the top of my list to direct. I've always loved the roots of this show, and would love to take this on as a concert version in a small black box theatre. Something about telling this story to a very small group of people each night gives me chills. The NYTW is my favorite production - though I've only seen clips of it, but it was a very intimate space to tell a grandiose, mythical tale. Big feelings in a small room is my jam.

Everything is old. We're all getting old. There are people who are three years away from becoming teenagers who were mere infants when Frozen came out. People who are in their late 20s are now the same age Elaine Hendrix was when she played Meredith Baxter in The Parent Trap. That fact really threw me for a loop when I found that out the other day.

Saw the Hadestown tour last January, and I loved it so much. One of my favorite musicals.

what a coincidence! i saw it for the first time here in the carolinas just 4 days ago (while being very mildly familiar with it) and falling in love with it, playing it during work (i'm a mailman so it's pretty easy) and i can see the obsession with it creeping in, in a very good way!

And its still developing eith new lyric changes over in englands west end cast and staging differences!!

Great video.

great to have you back!

Love this video, everything you said and how you kept it interesting visually 😂 i only recently discovered Hadestown and Come Home With Me/Wedding Song is one of the most beautiful song ever.

Hadestown is all I listened to in my walks during the long, long greek lockdown of 2020-21, and I never got tired of it (the 2016 NYTW version especially).

You know, I presume that the show is about to open in the West End of London? Next Wednesday (21 feb) The Broadway version started life in the National Theatre GB, and now it has moved into the West End proper. Hopefully for a good long time.

"this is part of the canon" is such an interesting take to me because most people I talk to musical theatre about got into it right around the Hamilton-Hadestown-Heathers boom ca 2016-2018. Their notions of famous musicals (and to a degree my own) are very rooted in those years and it seems to me that now that that moment is over there isn't really a fanbase for the contemporary scene. You have the dig-deepers who look at that list and use it to check off what they've seen and what they haven't and then there's the crowd that was with it but then they changed what it was and now what they're into isn't it anymore. It will happen to you! What were we talking about?

I am… as old as this show…

Can’t wait for Saltburn the musical…!

“Starting off not even as a musical” 2:20 Nitpick the second, while she was writing songs as early as before 2002, the first actual put-together production was the one you mentioned in 2006, and it was a sung-through musical. They called it a folk opera back then. Lyrics and chords by her turned to orchestrations by Michael Chorney (performed by his Sun Ra tribute band at the time called Magic City). All of this was co-conceived and directed by Ben T. Matchstick, who also played Hermes; his involvement with the show ended sometime after its 2012 workshop.