#Hadestown!hades

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Okay I’m thinking about this again so I want to address this line: I played a song so beautiful, the stones wept and they let me in.

Listening to the album, I always interpreted this in the same way that I had the lines I was talking about above; talking about the workers who have metaphorically become the wall, not the literal bricks. I have since been wonderfully lucky enough to see the show live just a few weeks ago, and therefore have learned about the incredible staging that arguably lends this to a more literal interpretation. Personally I think I still consider Orpheus to be talking about the workers here and choose to believe that the workers response to the song was to move the bricks and allow him in, but I just wanted to bring up because oh my goodness it’s beautiful either way. The simultaneous personification of the bricks and dehumanisation of the workers is a poetic motif carried throughout the musical and I am obsessed with it

“But everyone knows that walls have ears/And the workers heard him”

This line, this FREAKING LINE, hits me so hard every time. Walls have ears and the workers heard him. Because the workers have literally become a part of Hadestown, and nothing else. Your place on the assembly line/replaces all your memories. The wall and the workers that build it have become one and the same. They are Hadestown and Hadestown is them. Show them a crack and they’ll tear down the wall/lend them an ear and the kingdom will fall.

What if I screamed? What then?

[starridge]

dropping this and fleeing like a deer in the woods

[sidras-tak]

I went to a high school performance of Hadestown this weekend (it was fantastic btw, so polished and professional and all the actors, pit, and tech did a marvelous job). The audience was great too, full of applause and enthusiasm after every song. But one of my favorite moments was at the end, when Orpheus turned around. You could hear audible gasps from the audience, and then there was perfect silence for a full minute while the actors transitioned to Road to Hell (Reprise). No scattered applause as sometimes happens when a song ends and the next scene doesn’t immediately begin. No murmurs or whispers. Just silence. And Hermes’ actress milked that silence for all it was worth. She had total control of that silence. It was glorious. I’m sure many people in that auditorium— parents, teachers, supportive community members— showed up that night, not knowing the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. My mother-in-law certainly didn’t, sitting just a few seats down from me. And that collective gasp, followed by heavy silence is exactly what it’s all about. That’s the whole point— it’s a sad song. It’s a sad tale, it’s a tragedy. But we sing it anyway.

[xeebs]

way down hadestown 🌹🎶

[kurzler]

in my opinion, many modern greek retellings/stories inspired by greek mythology don't fail because they're inaccurate. they fail because they have nothing new to say.

i don't mind changes to the original myths, as long as they make sense and they have a narrative purpose! i understand that making changes is sometimes necessary to convey a certain narrative, especially to modern audiences.

is epic the musical mythologically accurate? hell no! but the changes serve to tell a specific story and to convey a certain message. also, epic the musical is self aware about its "inaccuracies". and the music just bangs.

is hadestown accurate? no! does it make the change that I always dread, removing the kidnapping from the hades/persephone myth? yeah. but hadestown is barely about them, and it uses greek mythology as a "narrative frame" to tell a certain story. it has a point. it has a message.

what are stories like lore olympus trying to say? what is the messagge of the hundredth persephone/hades retelling? what are we supposed to take from them? "don't listen to your mother she's a bitch"? "mothers are irrational and you should forsake her for a man"? very feminist.

why are we still doing the medusa "feminist" retellings? it's BEEN done. too many times. and they're ALL the same. it's a worse crime than being bad: they are boring.

i'm tired of retellings that are just "what if this very famous story was THE OPPOSITE and the protagonist was an ASSHOLE the whole time and the villain was MISUNDERSTOOD and the real VICTIM" okay but why. why would that be the case. what's the point of the story you want to tell. or do you just want to use shock value.

of course, i dislike retellings that are so different from the myth that they go AGAINST the spirit/message of the original, because in that case what's even the point of retelling the myth? just tell an original story. but i would take stabbed poseidon and capitalist hades any day over the same basic story of medusa being a girlboss or demeter being bad because of... reasons?

tl;dr: stop being unoriginal and tell a good story. or at least an entertaining one. i beg you

[where-that-old-train-goes]

not normal about orpheus and eurydice. you loved someone so much it opened the stones of the underworld. so much that death had to listen. so much that everything stopped for your love. so much that you turned around. so much that even when you did wrong. she forgave you.

[isthemicon]

Kaos on Netflix is a bit as if someone who loved Percy Jackson growing up was told they are too old to like it so they took their love for it and combined it with Succession while listening to Hadestown soundtrack and watching Romeo + Juliet by Baz Luhrmann

[littleeliza-lotte]

The most unreal night ever, good thing I have proof it happened.

*DO NOT SHARE OUTSIDE OF TUMBLR WITHOUT PERMISSION*

[itscosmicnerd]

Chant I in a nutshell…

(OG meme under the cut!)

[cincinnatibeef]

girl dinner

[pininghost]

watch me turn into the most annoying person on the internet (it is now confirmed that hozier has watched hadestown. my world's are colliding)

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

If you see someone online talking about how some weird girl sitting near them properly ran into Hadestown exactly one minute before the show was scheduled to start and sat down panting, then started crying during Road To Hell and pretty much did not stop: that was me. Hi! 👋

In my defence about the timing, I was supposed to have arrived in London like three hours ago but there was a signalling failure before Euston and they sent me all over the damn country. I arrived in London about twenty minutes before the show started, got the tube, and fucking RAN I didn’t even think I’d make it it was a miracle

I don’t have a defence for the crying that was a reasonable reaction.

[pdouwes]

Make the king feel young again. Sing for an old man!

[jaxs-beanie]

Update on Patrick Page--he has a cane and a boot ready, and the boot is gonna get a costume design!

[kav3h]

is this too niche? svsss hadestown au starring 79

[tatsumiboobs69]

got rlly into hadestown over the summer. I have a favorite but I don’t think anyone can tell 🤣