Let the world we dreamt about be the one we live in now

The latest in a (very) occasional series of musical reviews...

Hadestown : The Lyric Theatre

Three musicals in a year - what's going on? I actually booked this one because I've listened to the soundtrack and enjoyed it - I thought it was part of #AOTD but I never wrote it up, so I've no actual proof that's the case. 

There is one mention of the album in the blog though which is in the 2010 year-end write-up as one of the critics' choices of the year so that gives you an idea as to how old the musical is (it actually premiered in 2006 and has quite a complex history).  It's not very well known over here - it did play in London in 2018 and was quite well received, but it then played Broadway in 2019 and went down a storm, winning 8 Tony awards including Best Musical and Best Original Score.  And that was very much borne out by the fact that I was surrounded by Americans in the audience - interestingly the woman next to me (from Seattle) was saying the theatre was so much bigger than anything she'd been in over there and the Lyric isn't one of London's bigger theatres.

Quite what's coming up isn't very clear from the stage beforehand - a bass trombonist appeared on the stage about ten minutes before things were due to start and my immediate thought was "wow, bass trombones are big" but that's all I've got for you.

The musical is based around the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology, which I personally think is one of their better ones - I'm not going to give you any details here though because if you don't know the story then telling you anything could be very spoilerish.  There are five main characters who are Orpheus & Eurydice (unsurprisingly), Hades & Persephone (the King of the Underworld and Mrs Underworld - for half the year, anyway) and Hermes (the narrator) and the overall vibe is New Orleans jazz, with the obvious slower numbers for when they want to dial up the emotion.  It tells the story well with no prior knowledge required and it comes to a very satisfying conclusion - I knew the ending to the myth and was impressed with how they adapted it for the musical,

So, if I'm not going to talk about the story, what did I think about the performances?  Melanie La Barrie as Hermes is very much called on in the first half to set the scene and she's got a lovely voice. Dónal Finn and Grace Hodgett Young are Orpheus and Eurydice and both do a good job, although I can understand that some people might find their voices annoying - Dónal does an awful lot of falsetto, which doesn't feel absolutely necessary (he's also a dab hand on the guitar as well).

Hades (Zachary James) or Persephone (Gloria Onitiri) aren't in the slightest bit annoying though - neither of them have loads to do in the first half, but they really come into their own in the second half and they've both got great voices.  Zachary's is super, super low (impressively so) and Gloria is just smoking - she got a round of applause for the way she sang a note at one point.  I'm also going to call out Bella Brown, Madeline Charlemagne and Allie Daniel as The Fates, who are half the chorus and share some gorgeous harmonies.

In a lot of ways it's a very standard musical - there are the usual solos, duets and chorus numbers and everyone gets their turn in the spotlight (having said that, sometimes it didn't work out that way because there was some very wobbly spotlight action going on). All of the major characters feel like they could be of interest to star names - Beverley Knight would make an excellent Persephone and for some reason Orpheus put me in mind of a young David Essex (I'm not sure he's available these days though). I'm also going to mention the musicians who are on stage the whole time except for the drummer, who's locked in a glass cupboard (for reasons of volume, I assume) - they add a nice bit of life to the production (as well as sounding pretty fine as well)

The set looks impressive, but doesn't do an awful lot - the overall staging is quite interesting because at the beginning, although I was enjoying the performance, I didn't feel like I was really getting an awful lot more than just listening to the album.  However, all such thoughts just disappeared in the second half - there's some really clever use of light and movement on the revolving stage which works really effectively.

For all the Americans in the crowd, the audience reaction was actually quite muted for most of the time - possibly because it was a matinee performance?  There was a lengthy standing ovation at the end though - it was impressive even considering how keen people seem to be to jump to their feet these days.

I do have a couple of complaints about the theatre.  Firstly, they were perfectly happy to let people through the doors early to buy merch or go to the bar, but the foyer really ain't big and the house wasn't open, so it got very crowded very quickly.  And secondly, the return mechanism on their seats is far too enthusiastic which meant that many people who tried to quietly leave during the performance failed miserably as their seat base noisily clanged into the back.

Apart from these devastating critiques, it was a very enjoyable performance - so yes, this is me recommending another musical!  I don't think this is as clever as Standing At The Sky's Edge, but I think it's more straightforwardedly enjoyable and I would say (after a whole one listen each) that the songs are better in this one - I should mention Anais Mitchell (who wrote them) as well, I guess).  It's a good story, well told with some very impressive singing - I do think the staging has some room for improvement, but I'm just quibbling here.  It's currently booking until December - if you like a musical then I think there's far worse you can do than this.

Standing At The Sky's Edge