#Nytw!Orpheus

[icantrecallaskysoclear]

NYTW!Orpheus how I miss you 🥺🤍

let the world we dream about be the one we live in now.

[holly-mckenzie]

But that was in another life That was in another world When I was a young girl!

nytw hadestown appreciation  →  Chant II

[joyfulsongbird]

if i see one more GODDAMN tik tok comment from some 14 year old freshman in high school saying that reeve carney is the worst hadestown orpheus i am going to FUCKING CRASH OUT.

[roukabi]

Well, I said back here that I wanted to do a NYTW critter-ification. So here we are!

As usual, design notes/trivia/comments under the cut:

"Rook, none of these are animals I'd ever consider related to the Hadestown cast."

Yeah, I know. But it looks cool, right?

Orpheus strikes me as someone who was wild as a boy. And by 'wild', I mean biting and growling and hunting squirrels with his bare 10-year-old hands. He got less feral when approached with food and stable housing. With all that in mind, it made sense to give him something that matched that energy. Also, community-minded? Famous vocals? Effortlessly beautiful? The connections are there! And I stole from this drawing I made a long while back. Yeah I bet y'all forgot about that but I didn't! I still really like the idea of werewolf Orph!

...come to think of it though, we give nytw orph too much credit. I think it's easy to pin him as the brave, heroic union leader because of his confidence, but he's just a poet. He's lovey-dovey, he's gentle. He's got a very healthy ego, but it doesn't overpower his soft core. There's a reason his 'If It's True' is so sad - he's not a fighter, he's an artist, and more importantly, a lover. He has no real incentive to finish his song (for better or worse, narratively-speaking). He's an artist who talks big and loves his wife.

That said, it seems a little weird to give him such a fierce animal. But as is the case for bway orpheus's fox choice, i am a fan of designs that betray the real character underneath. His big snarky wolf persona (fursona?) falls apart when he looks at Eurydice for more than 3 seconds.

Wow, that could've been its own post tbh. Moving on, the star-like speckles in his fur were added because of his name - "the darkness of night". Canis Major is somewhere on his fur.

Now, could a catgirl and dogboy really fall in love?

With regards to Eurydice, you can't improve upon perfection, which is why my design looks very similar to @riveracheron's Eurydice design. You can see most of ismene's design here (I can't find the original ref image, sorry!) for reference. I wasn't sure about making Eurydice's nose yellow, but she needed yellow somewhere in her palette, and a black or pink nose looked kind of wrong. She's a loner kitty built for the snow. Not that she enjoys it. Also I wanted to add a cute white/yellow bow around her neck but forgot :( pretend it's there

Anyway, probably the most interesting animal decision was Hermes. I mentioned in my Broadway critter designs that I wanted to keep the neutral characters as birds. That meant I had to find a bird to match Chris Sullivan's Hermes, and, idk, I liked the barn owl the most. Barn owls are screechy and painfully unexpressive, but if Legend of the Guardians: the Owls of Ga'Hoole has taught me anything, it's that anything can be expressive if you break just enough rules. So there.

Barn owls are associated with doom and death in old English tales, and they're known to live in abandoned houses. It would sound like the barn owl should be given to Hades, but I like to think that since Hermes is the one telling the story, he's in charge of the cycles of death and renewal that take place in the story. He's a harbinger whether he likes it or not.

For the Fates, I already had cat designs in mind, but I almost made them birds to fit my neutral rule. Then I kinda waffled on it and said "well, the Fates are kind of mean, and you know what would be fun? Wild animals vs domestic animals". Cats it is! And they are anything but dressed the same: we got stripes, spots, and swirls. They torment their fellow kitty Eurydice for being 'wild', they're invasive, and they get in fights with the local wolf. The relationships write themselves.

I didn't draw Hades and Persephone since they'd already been covered in the Broadway lineup, and there wasn't much of a difference between bway and nytw to justify new drawings. They're still critters though, trust me.

And that's it! I guess had a lot more to say about these than last time. As always, the designs are free to use with credit.

[jaxs-beanie]

A fun thing about the song 'If It's True' is how it's a big moment not only for Orpheus, but Persephone as well, since it's this song she refers to when pleading with Hades in How Long. Depending on the Orpheus it's a whole spectrum from 'depressed' to 'furious' (in the album and NYTW productions it was much more 'depressed'). Sometimes he starts angry and ends sad, other times he's scared but trying, and in an interview, Reeve Carney felt the song was about the lack of love people have for each other, so he played it softer and sadder. In the old lyrics 'tell me what to do' is sung at Eurydice as he asks for help, and the final line is sung directly at Persephone.

For Persephone, Way Down Hadestown 2 and If It's True feel like Persephone's first real look at the workers 'on the floor' as it were, and she crashes hard after Way Down 2 into sleep/drunken stupor. But she can't look away in If It's True cause Orpheus and the others won't let her. In Chant her first complaint wasn't 'what are you doing with these people' it's 'why is it so HOT', so there was a disconnect.

Earlier Hermeses (around NYTW and Edmonton) had a verse in if it's true where they narrated that Persephone heard the song and felt sad over it: 'Persephone heard the poor boy sing and it broke her heart in two / so she went to go find that mighty king to see what she could do'

I think that was changed when she became more complicit with Hadestown and what it was, so instead of 'oh no that was sad' it's 'oh gods what have I been allowing?'

[trobeds]

to know how it ends and still begin to sing it again road to hell + road to hell ii, hadestown

[optimistic-autistic]

i looove 2018 london orpheus. he's so utterly pathetic.

[sipping-ambrosia-wine]

further lyrics and info below the cut. even if you havent seen the show i want opinions!

NYTW-> BROADWAY

1 2 3 4 5 6

EPIC III-

Where is the man with his hat in his hands/Who stands in the garden with nothing to lose -> Where is the man with arms outstretched?/ To the woman he loves with nothing to lose

DOUBT COMES IN-

Doubt comes in/ And strips the paint/ Doubt comes in/ And turns the wine/ Doubt comes in and leaves a trace/ Of vinegar and turpentine -> Doubt comes in/ The wind is changing/ Doubt comes in/ How cold it's blowing/Doubt comes in and meets a stranger/ Walking on a road alone

IF IT'S TRUE-

If it’s true what they say/If my love is gone for good/They can take this heart away/They can take this flesh and blood/Take my mouth that kissed her mouth/Take my tongue that sung her praise/Take my arms that used to reach out/ In the dark to where she lay -> If it's true what they say/if theres nothing to be done/If its true that its too late/And the girl I love is gone/If its true what they say/Is this how the world is?/To be beaten and betrayed and then be told that nothing changes

[...]

Take this voice, take these hands/I can’t use them anyway/Take this music and the memory/Of the muse from which it came -> (Absent, replaced with the workers' lyrics?)

WAY DOWN HADESTOWN-

Everybody dresses in clothes so fine/Everybody's pocket are weighted down/Everybody sippin the ambrosia wine/ It's a goldmine, in hadestown -> [Cut, replaced with she's gonna ride that train" build up after "that was not six months"]

CHANT II-

When I was a young girl like you/Sister, I was hungry too/Hungry for the underworld/When I was a young girl/Now you know how it tastes/The fruit of Mr. Hades’ ways/Sister, it’s a bitter wine-Spit it out while you still have time/Take it from a woman of my age/Love is not a gilded cage/All the wealth within these walls/Will never buy the thing called love/Love was when he came to me/Begging on his bended knees/To please have pity on his heart/And let him lay me in the dirt.../I felt his arms around me then/We didn’t need a wedding bed/Dark seeds scattered on the ground/The wild birds were flying around/That’s when I became his wife/But that was in another life/That was in another world/When I was a young girl!-> [Cut entirely]

ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS

In the fever of a world in flame/in the season of the hurricane/flood'll get ya if the fire dont/any way the wind blows/Sister gone gone the [nomad*]'s route/brother gone gone for a job down south/gone the same way as the shanty town/and the traveling show/any way the wind blows

In the valley of the exodut/in the belly of a bowl of dust/crows and buzzards fly in a row/any way the wind blows-> [replaced by hermes's exposition on the fates]

*initial use of the word g*psy, which is a slur against the roma/romani people. mitchell was unaware of the hateful connotations and cut the lyric once made aware.

[theshockinglyeloquentdog]

[hopecel]

[thesweetnessofspring]

The last tribute alive receives a life of ease back home, and their district will be showered with prizes, largely consisting of food. All year, the Capitol will show the winning district gifts of grain and oil and even delicacies like sugar while the rest of us battle starvation.

HungerTown 14/?

[singerorpheus]

15 songs on the album, 5 of 18 songs from act ii 😭 say it isnt true 😭

[holly-mckenzie]

Are you always this confident? When I look at you I am. When you look at me, what do you see? Someone stronger than me, somebody who survive. So why should I become your wife? Because I make you feel alive. That’s worth a lot... What else you got?

nytw hadestown appreciation  →  Come Home With Me (Non-Album Track)

[aperture-of-bullshit]

Help! Local idiot keeps listening to hadestown songs and imagining animatics

[jaxs-beanie]

Got some new Hadestown memes from Vermont, NYTW, Edmonton, Broadway, and the tour! :)

[trobeds]

oh my god

i was thinking about "youre early" / "i missed you" AGAIN and. it was hades n persephones first interaction of the show but it was orpheus n eurydices last (as per nytw. will never get over hadestown bway not including this exchange)

and the tone is so incredibly different for both of them because hades n persephones seems light n kinda humorous while orpheus n eurydices is. they get a second before shes gone again. what hes defending is already gone. god. fuck. the way both pairs parallel each other while having this stark contrast. the way orpheus n eurydice lose each other (again) just when hades n persephone find each other (again). the horrors are never ending i will never stop crying about this holy fucking shit