**Spoilers for Hadestown ahead**
Greek mythology has had a large impact on the culture of today, in both obvious and subtle ways. The brand Nike, the medical symbol of a caduceus, and the superhero Wonder Woman all take inspiration or symbolism from different parts of Greek myth. Hundreds of songs and books have been written about Greek mythology, taking established stories, characters, and dynamics to build off of. One of the best Greek myth adaptations of recent years has been the musical Hadestown, following the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Written in 2006 and performed on Broadway for the first time in 2019, Hadestown is about a young couple that meets and falls deeply in love, with a tragic ending. Orpheus and Eurydice struggle to find food and resources to survive a long, cold winter, while Orpheus gets lost in writing a song to bring back spring to the land of the living. Eventually, a desperate Eurydice is found by Hades and goes with him to the industrial hellscape of Hadestown. Orpheus comes to save her when he realizes that she’s missing, but Hades refuses to let her leave because she willingly signed the contract to work in Hadestown. When Persephone convinces Hades to let Orpheus plead his case, Orpheus sings a song reminding Hades and Persephone of their love, and Hades decides to let them go but with a condition: Orpheus must lead the way and he can’t look back. As Orpheus and Eurydice are almost free, Orpheus is overcome by doubt and turns around at the last second, and she returns to Hadestown. The story repeats after she returns, as we end up back at their first meeting.
Hadestown has four omnipresent narrators in Hermes (the train conductor) and the three fates. They impact the story, but they exist half outside of it. All four of them know that they are in a doomed story, and they know how it’ll turn out. The fates only interact with one character at a time, serving as voices inside of their heads and communication with the audience. Hermes, on the other hand, guides everyone, which is a role very fitting of the messenger god.
The Hadestown soundtrack has the feeling of a musical, where there’s a clear story being told through song, but the music itself takes heavy inspiration from jazz, blues, and folk music. Guitar, trombone, and violin are some of the most prominent, but every instrument in the pit orchestra has an important role to play and the show makes that clear. The pit is onstage, and in the Act Two opener “Our Lady of the Underground,” all the members of the pit are called out by name and instrument by Persephone, before they get a quick solo. Most shows have the pit as close to out of sight as they can be, but Hadestown has them on stage and gives some of the musicians the chance to move around and dance a little while playing. This works so well for Hadestown for many reasons, but a big one is because of the role that music takes in the show.
Orpheus is a musician, and his appeal to Hades to let him and Eurydice go is done through song. Music is a vessel for hope and love, as well as doubt and grief.
The original myth doesn’t give Eurydice much agency, but the musical turns Eurydice into a fleshed-out character with the agency to make choices. She has motives for going to the underworld, and she fears and she loves. She is not simply a possession of Orpheus, but a woman who knows what she wants and what she prioritizes. Eurydice is flawed and she doesn’t always make the best choices, but all of her choices are understandable. When she signs her soul away to Hades in exchange for steady work and food, she abandons Orpheus, but she’s a starving woman who has spent years by herself. The fates make that clear to the audience members that judge her: “You can have your principle / When you’ve got a bellyful.” She is only human, which is why she does these things. She’s trapped within her fate, because she ends up the same every time.
Eurydice and Orpheus complement each other. She’s practical and jaded while he’s hopeful and dreamy, but they’re both kind. Most importantly, they love each other.
The two of them parallel Hades and Persephone, and their relationship and Orpheus’ song appeals to those similarities. He appeals to the love between Hades and Persephone, reminding Hades that he too was once just a man in love with a woman.
Some of the themes of Hadestown are arguably even more relevant today than they were when the musical was written, considering the world around us today. Hadestown argues that the power of community and hope is important for forward progress, and highlights the issue of industry versus nature.
Persephone is a nature goddess married to Hades, and when she returns to the Underworld from the world above she comes back to the “neon necropolis” that he’s created. He tells her that he built up this world of “Coal cars and oil drums / Warehouse walls and factory floors” because he missed her, but she calls him out on the way that he prioritizes his factory and town over their relationship, while telling her that he did all this for her. He lets people starve up above, while he keeps getting richer. Hades is a billionaire who cares about his money and his industry while letting everyone else rot, just like billionaires today. The rich get richer while the poor get poorer. Hades is also a man who abuses his power against others, but Persephone is who can get through to him. He loves her and she loves him, even when their relationship is rocky, but they don’t always show it well.
Industry versus nature is one of the key motifs, along with the power of collective bargaining. Hadestown is an industrial city ruled by Hades, who instills a fear of poverty into his workers. The song “Why We Build The Wall” focuses on this fear that he’s created to keep his workers in line, and the way that they’ve been brainwashed by their environment. Once Orpheus comes to the Underworld, he rallies the workers and Eurydice with his lamenting of the state of the world, singing, “Is this how the world is? / To be beaten and betrayed and then be told that nothing changes? / It’ll always be like this?” The industry is trying to keep the workers down, while Orpheus, who comes from above, is the one trying to set them free. He isn’t doing it just to get their help or to stick it to Hades, but because he believes that they deserve to have a choice and to have freedom. He stands for what he believes, and what he believes goes directly against the industry that Hades runs.
And when they work together, they can have that. He sings, “I believe in us together / More than anyone alone,” because he knows the power of collective action. One person can’t get much done, but a group of people who band together can create change. Without community and collective action, nothing changes.
Orpheus goes to Hadestown for Eurydice because he loves her, and it’s undisputable. But this same love that drove him to chase after her, is what drove him to look back. He doubts the circumstances and that he is someone who deserves this opportunity, and starts to think that Hades is tricking him just to make him leave. He doubts that she’s behind him, not because he doubts her but because he’s afraid that he’s being taken advantage of. He’s so worried that she’s not there that he can’t help looking back at the last second, because he loves her. That love is what leads to their downfall, but it’s also why the story exists.
“This is a very old story. There is no other version of this story,” says poet Richard Siken in his collection War of the Foxes, and it applies here, too. We still sing it: “‘Cause here’s the thing / To know how it ends / And still begin to sing it again / As if it might turn out again this time.” We have hope that maybe this time, they’ll get their happy ending. They won’t, and yet we still think that maybe this time, it will be different. Hermes says that Orpheus “could make you see how the world could be / In spite of the way that it is,” and that is one reason we keep watching. This motif of hope also ties into the prominent ideas of collective action and industry versus nature, because their hope is why they can do anything. They may not succeed in getting out this time, but the only reason that Orpheus, Eurydice, and the workers had a chance to get out is because they worked together. They supported each other, and if they hadn’t, then Orpheus never would have gone anywhere.
Without hope, there’s no forward progress. The story repeats over and over, but it’s only because of the hope and community that they have that anything can happen. Wherever there’s hope there’s also doubt, and that is Orpheus’s final downfall. Despite being the most hopeful character, he doubts himself at the last second and everything falls apart. There’s no version where he makes it, but they don’t know that. The doubt is what kills them, not the hope. Even though they aren’t successful, hope and collective action are beneficial. They never had a chance, but without hope and collective action they would have had even less.