I may have mentioned before that Eva is a bit obsessed with musicals at the moment and “Hadestown” is one of her particular faves. So when we were on the bus to school, she looked at my phone over my shoulder and noticed an extremely well-targeted Facebook ad that told me I could not miss Melanie La Barrie’s last performance as Hermes.
Eva concurred. We could not. So right there, on the top deck of the bus, I went on to the Lyric Theatre website and managed to nab the last two £25 tickets in the whole theatre. They weren’t in the same row but one was just in front of the other. They were sold as restricted view but Eva assured me that they were the same ones she’d sat in before and the view was just fine. This was not her first “Hadestown” experience, you see, but it would be mine. I had seen the snippets at Musical Con but this would be the first time I watched the show all the way through.
She also insisted that she would be dressing as Hermes for the occasion. It took a little bit of charity shopping and eBaying but we got something together that I think looked pretty authentic:
I didn’t know that much about the show, compared to Eva, but I looked at some pictures on Sunday morning and thought I could cobble together a reasonable approximation of a Fates costume:
We were heading to the show from church – in fact, I was really meant to be at a partners’ meeting instead of at the theatre but I passed it off as spending the afternoon ruminating on the nature of Hell and the afterlife. We so rarely discuss that in partners’ meetings.
We spent a long time on the 38 but it did go pretty much door to door and dropped us right outside the theatre with an hour to go before curtain up. There was a queue formed already and a number of people who’d joined Eva in cosplaying, which she was very excited about. We needed food before we went in so we nipped to the Trocadero branch of That Fries Emporium to carb up for a lengthy show.
Still, we had plenty of time to climb up those hundreds of stairs before the show started and time to buy a programme as well. Our seats were steeply banked and my plan of climbing from Eva’s row to mine almost cost me a thigh muscle but I made it. Just. The view was indeed a little restricted but we could see nearly everything that we needed to.
I’m aware that this performance was a bit of a superfan event so I was probably a bit out of place as a first-timer. I was wrangling a legitimate La Barrie fangirl though and she was dressed to prove it. So I feel like we justified our seats on this most special afternoon.
And it was indeed special. As soon as the cast walked out, the applause was so thunderous that I thought the whole thing might never get started. Everyone – on stage and off – was emotional already and it hadn’t even kicked off yet. It was going to be totes emosh. Sorry, I did promise Eva I’d never use that phrase again but hey, she’s at Shakespeare while I’m writing this so she will never know.
If you don’t live with a “Hadestown” fangirl, you might not be familiar with the plot but I’ll explain it. It’s basically a Deep South jazz setting of two Greek myths – Orpheus and Eurydice mixed with Hades and Persephone. There are a few Greek myth shows on the “to-see” list at the moment so this could be a bit of a theme for 2025. And for those of you not familiar with Greek myths, heed my warning….they don’t often have a happy ending.
There isn’t a huge amount of plot, especially over a 2.5 hour show. Orpheus sees Eurydice and falls in love with her, only to lose her while he’s busy writing a song. Anyone who’s ever dated a musician will understand how that happens. Then he needs to go to the underworld to bring her back only to be offered a very specific deal by Hades – he can lead her out of Hell as long as he never looks backwards to check that she’s following him. You know, that ropey kind of deal that Greek gods are always trying to make with mortals. Hades’ wife is Persephone, who is trapped in an equally ropey deal – she has to spend half the year in the underworld in order to be free to enjoy the sunshine in the other six months of the year. When we meet Persephone in the show, she’s not enjoying the arrangement and Hades, quite frankly, does not seem like a good husband.
Hermes, messenger to the gods, acts as narrator to the whole tale and the Fates intervene to bend the characters to their own will. Just for transparency, Eva has now returned from Shakespeare and is reading this over my shoulder so she knows about the totes emosh thing. Totes awks.
The show is almost pretty much sung through, with dialogue usually mid-song rather than between songs. The style is quite jazzy but some of the slower songs have a different feel. “Wait for Me” sounds like a Celtic ballad – possibly because the last two Orpheuses (Orpheusi?) have been Scottish and Irish respectively. My favourite songs were all from the Fates. I’m an absolute sucker for three-part harmony, which I blame on being brought up listening to the Supremes. I even had a plan to go and live on ZingZilla Island as a Beach Byrd one day when the London winter was a bit too much. So I loved the way they sang together and songs like “When the Chips are Down” had a different feel to the full-on ensemble numbers. I have heard reviews of the show that complain about the band being too loud for the vocals but I can’t say we had that issue – we could hear everything that was sung or said. It might be different closer to the stage but up in the extreme gods (not Hades) we could hear just fine.
We’d had a preview of Dylan Wood (Orpheus) and Madeline Charlemagne (Eurydice) singing their duet at MusicalCon but it was lovely to see them a few months on, being so much more confident in their roles. Dylan will be returning as Orpheus after the OBC have their stint and I think Madeline is currently reprising her old role as a Fate but it was the last time they were going to be singing together in this way and so it did feel extra special, like Eva and I had been there at the start and end of their journey. Similarly, Rachel Tucker (Persephone) and Trevor Dion Nicholas (Hades) were playing out their toxic but passionate relationship for the last time and that too we’d seen the start of back in October. When “Wicked” came out and my entire social media feed was nothing but Oz-related content, Rachel Tucker was often cited as one of the great Elphabas. So it’s been a real privilege seeing her sing live not once but twice now.
But the undoubted star of Sunday’s show was Melanie La Barrie. That was what many people were there for, after all. She’s widely regarded as one of the great Hermeses (Hermesii?) and even André de Shields himself said as much at Musical Con. She has such a calm assurance to her performance and is a fabulous storyteller, which is what the role needs. At the curtain call, everyone was crying and saying what a matriarch she was to the cast and I can well believe that.
I’m getting ahead of myself, though. There was much more to talk about before we get to the curtain call. Like the remarkable staging that allowed actors to literally descend into the underworld. I was slightly perturbed by the way the giant hole in the stage remained after the actors had descended – maybe it’s just because of how clumsy I am but I was so sure someone was about to fall into it. Also, a more obsessive person than me would have been irritated by the way the revolving stage meant that the lines of the floorboards almost never lined up. But I’m not obsessive in that way, thankfully. Given how simple the set was initially though, it was remarkable how much they did with it.
The band onstage were also remarkable – so in synch and full of energy through a lengthy show. It does make a difference having the band integrated into the action and I might be wrong but I believe Orpheus is actually playing the guitar onstage as well, rather than just miming like some other shows would have him do. I wish he’d invest in a guitar case though – if the road to hell is a hard road then he shouldn’t just sling his “lyre” over his shoulder like that. If he breaks a tuning peg, he’ll have to replace the whole machine head. I know he’s a poor boy but if he can afford a nice guitar, he can afford a case too.
Health and Safety and instrument care aside, I have no real criticisms of this show. The runtime goes quickly considering it’s full length and doesn’t have much of a plot. Persephone is a delightful drunk, skipping around in her green in the world above and sulking in black down below. Hades is suitably menacing and, as Eva tells me, the only Bass in the whole of musical theatre. I’m not sure she’s correct on that but he certain had some impressively low notes. As does Eurydice, which is interesting considering that Orpehus sings in falsetto a lot of the time. So when they’re duetting they’re tonally a lot closer together than you’d normally hear in a male-female duet. If I was going to nitpick the plot, I’d say that they make some very rash decisions based on only knowing each other for a few minutes but aren’t young people just impulsive like that? And characters in Greek myths rarely make good decisions.
The ensemble also worked together well, especially in the underworld where they moved in perfect unison as Hades’ maltreated employees. It’s not a massive cast but the stage feels full most of the time and there always seems to be something to look at. I loved the variety of actors in the cast…it really felt diverse and inclusive, both in terms of age and race. The setting is Deep South but the exact setting and era are kept deliberately vague in order to make this a story that could happen to anyone, anywhere. I mean it couldn’t literally happen but the themes of love and hopefulness and wanting a see a better world than the one you see are pretty universal.
It’s also worth saying that they have character-themed cocktails and mocktails in the bar at the interval. We stuck to the traditional ice cream (mango sorbet for her, vegan salted caramel for me) and I managed to just about get to the toilets and back to my seat in time tho it was tight. There are only two ladies’ cubicles at the balcony level, which is better than Macbeth but worse than The Tempest. Some thoughtful ushers escorted a few ladies at the back of the queue to the gents’ just to ensure we all got a chance to go before the second half….I know these details are important to my fellow middle aged women so note well…go early or use the gents’ when invited to.
I’ve skipped all over the show, chronology-wise so I might as well go straight from interval to ending and it was notable that, although everyone in the auditorium had probably seen the show before, they was still a gasp when Eurydice had to descend for the final time. I could hear Eva sobbing in front of me and she was too far away to hug so I just kind of patted her shoulder with the tips of my fingers. “We Raise Our Cups” is always an emotional song, I feel, but probably more so tonight as some of the cast were openly crying through it.
Then there were speeches to each of the departing cast members which I can’t possibly do justice to here but you should look them up on Instagram because they were absolutely beautiful. And together we chorused “story end” to wish Mel La Barrie on her way to her next stop (which was an awards ceremony where she won an award so clearly our good wishes worked). Then I lost Eva briefly.
It’s fine – I knew I could find her at the stage door and so I headed that way and found her in the rain, both sad and elated at the same time. It was always going to be a scrum at the stage door but one we were up for joining so we stood in the cold rain for a while and eventually, out popped…a hand. From these windows up here:
It was hard to tell who the hand belonged to but it was later followed by a face and then another at a different window. We had stumbled upon the West End’s most exciting Advent calendar.
I had guessed we wouldn’t be seeing any cast for a while as they were probably saying their own private goodbyes as well as the public ones. But soon enough. the charming Simon Oskarsson came out to brave the rain and sign our programme. He was followed by a few more hardy souls, including Dylan Wood. It was hard to match faces to names as Eva had the paper copy of the programme and my phone wasn’t loving the rain but I think we met Tiago Dhondt Bamberger, Christopher Short and Winny Herbert. If I’ve got anyone’s names wrong, I sincerely apologise but dang, it was extreme conditions for stage dooring. Anyway, there were all totally lovely and were very complimentary about Eva’s outfit, which made her little theatre kid heart full to bursting.
I had heard on MickeyJo Theatre that Mel herself didn’t do stage door anymore, after an unpleasant encounter with some overly physical fans. But we still glimpsed her and Madeline as they left, which is the point that Eva finally agreed to let me stop standing in the rain and go warm up in the tube. I’m glad we went round to the stage door though, as the actors we met were really very sweet and the fans were all friendly as well. From the looks of the OBC opening night stage door, I think we were lucky and it could have been a lot rowdier than it was. But no, just stagey good vibes and a lot of cold rain.
Of course, now Eva wants to go back and see the new cast when they start. So it’s a sad tale but I might well sing it again and again…..
