It's an outing I gladly countenance, which is not to say my opinion is worth much in the whole matter. My daughter's passion for musicals is well-fed by trips she and her mother take to Omaha every other month to see whatever is playing at the majestic Orpheum Theater. They've got season tickets, have had them for years. Occasionally--not often--our daughter, for some punishing reason, can't go. Then, the mother/daughter thing shipwrecks, and I get the ticket.
Like Saturday. "So, this weekend, what am I seeing?" I asked my wife last week.
"Don't know exactly," she said. She's not the devotee our daughter is. My wife likes the shows, but goes along as much for the company. "It's Hades, or something."
Fine, I thought. On Saturday, I'm going to hell.
'T'wasn't. Not at all. I loved it--and it's not Hades, it's Hadestown, a change someone made, I'm sure, to sidestep the bad joke I thought I'd created.
Anyway, we're eating lunch in some sweet dive in the Old Market when I pull out my phone, type in Hadestown, and realize that the show's story-line loosely follows two Greek myths intertwined, both of them love stories--the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, which features an idealistic young man with a golden voice, who sets out to rescue his true love who has descended to the underworld. And there's Hades, ruler of the underworld, and his wife, Persephone, the goddess of spring and flowers. The conflict is right there in the description.
The thing is, Hadestown is darker than night--and yet not. When it comes down to it, there's loss all around--death and loss and even some hell; but somehow the what's up there on stage pulses with life and manages, against the odds, to be almost embarrassingly uplifting. You've got to see it to understand.
Like Hamilton, Hadestown flat-out throbs with energy. The music is an odd mix of genres, and the dancing is electric. If we could harness the energy of Hadestown and put on a couple thousand performances, I swear as a nation we'd sweep away our dependence on fossil fuels.
Don't fool yourself. There's no happy endings. Still, oddly enough enough, there's a clear and vibrant message nonetheless, and it couldn't be any more clearly stated than it is at the end, a message delivered by Hades himself, when he tells the audience plainly and passionately that the darkness of the world is unmistakable. That it's all around us doesn't mean that humankind should throw in the towel on hope. Instead, he says, we keep telling the story, time after time after time. We keep believing anyway. We keep hanging on. We keep spreading the gospel of hope because it's in us.
The thing is, Hadestown is darker than night--and yet not. When it comes down to it, there's loss all around--death and loss and even some hell; but somehow the what's up there on stage pulses with life and manages, against the odds, to be almost embarrassingly uplifting. You've got to see it to understand.
Like Hamilton, Hadestown flat-out throbs with energy. The music is an odd mix of genres, and the dancing is electric. If we could harness the energy of Hadestown and put on a couple thousand performances, I swear as a nation we'd sweep away our dependence on fossil fuels.
Don't fool yourself. There's no happy endings. Still, oddly enough enough, there's a clear and vibrant message nonetheless, and it couldn't be any more clearly stated than it is at the end, a message delivered by Hades himself, when he tells the audience plainly and passionately that the darkness of the world is unmistakable. That it's all around us doesn't mean that humankind should throw in the towel on hope. Instead, he says, we keep telling the story, time after time after time. We keep believing anyway. We keep hanging on. We keep spreading the gospel of hope because it's in us.
Hadestown is far more Greek than Christian, but that doesn't mean that the spirit isn't in it. It's an inspiration, immensely rich entertainment, a tribute to the very human insistence that life is always better with hope.
I loved it.
When we drove home, I told my wife I couldn't have drawn a better ticket or we couldn't have spent a better Saturday afternoon.
I loved it.
When we drove home, I told my wife I couldn't have drawn a better ticket or we couldn't have spent a better Saturday afternoon.
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