Never Be Bored
14 July 2020
It's an old song
Hadestown musical, music, lyrics, and book by Anaïs Mitchell. Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe; Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard; Ever After 1998 Andy Tennant film and Cinder by Melissa Meyer.
It's an old song, it's an old tale from way back when. Hadestown is a folk/jazz musical retelling of the ancient Greek myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone. Right up front, in the very first song, Hermes tells the audience: this is a love song, and this is a sad song.
Maybe you already know how the story goes—and even if you don't, you can look it up before listening to Hadestown and it won't really be a spoiler because "the song was written long ago, and that is how it goes." About a month ago, I watched NPR's Hadestown Tiny Desk Concert just to see what all the fuss was about (Hadestown won eight Tonys!) and then of course watched it three more times and spent the next few days looking through YouTube for clips, listening to the original Broadway cast album, and falling in love with Amber Gray's performance as Persephone.
The bright, beautiful, young love of Orpheus and Eurydice will make you laugh; the powerful, old love of Hades and Persephone will make you smile. The ending just might make you cry. Maybe you already know how the story goes, but it's a story worth hearing again.
It's a love song, it's a tale of love from long ago. In Hadestown, Hades and Persephone have been married a long, long time. Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe is a retellimg of how they met and fell in love (with subplots featuring many other characters from the rest of the Greek pantheon) and has some of the most stunning artwork I've ever seen in a webcomic. Each panel looks like a watercolor painting, with delicate line work and amazing texture.
It's a sad song, but we're gonna sing it even so. From the first song of Hadestown, we know that the ending won't be a happy one. Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, based on Shakespeare's Hamlet, gives it away in the title. But even so, there's humor and there's friendship, there's confusion and despair. I think this was the first play I saw at Northwestern, and I've loved it ever since.
It's an old tale from way back when, and we're gonna sing it again. This post is all about retellings, and one of the tales most re-told has to be the story of Cinderella. I adore Ever After, a movie set in 1500s France, for the way it tells the story without the fairytale magic, swapping the fairy godmother for Leonardo da Vinci. On the opposite side of the spectrum, check out Cinder by Melissa Meyer, set in futuristic New Beijing, whose heroine is a cyborg mechanic.