If you’re in the mood to take a cinematic trip to Hades this weekend, you don’t have to go broke trying to acquire a hard-to-find ticket to an Imax 70mm presentation of The Odyssey. The Broadway-to-film translation of Hadestown: The Musical is now open in theaters around the U.S., and is expected to finish in the Top 10 alongside Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster epic adapted from myths that have endured since Ancient Greece.
A filmed version of Hadestown‘s West End production featuring Tony-winning members of the show’s original Broadway cast — including André De Shields, Patrick Page, Amber Gray, Reeve Carney, and Eva Noblezada as Eurydice — the movie preserves Anaïs Mitchell’s soulful music and Rachel Chavkin’s dynamic staging of the myth of Orpheus (Carney), who descends into the lair of Hades (Page) to rescue his lover Eurydice (Noblezada), but fails a crucial test on the way back up.
Asked about why audiences are clearly responding to hearing these old myths told in new ways, De Shelds, who won a Tony for Best Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Hermes, says that it directly connects to the enduring power of performance. “The wisdom of the ancient Greeks was to build these large amphitheaters, hoping that down from those mist-covered mountains would come the gods and the audience,” the actor muses. “That’s the metaphor that Hadestown is built on, and it becomes reality in the theater, because of its immediacy and inability to edit. You cannot lie to your audience.
“And now that it’s on film, it becomes a second meeting with the gods,” De Shields continues. “The mountaintop is now the silver screen — and at a much more affordable price!”
For his part, Page says that the Orpheus story, as well as The Odyssey, tackles questions that defy the ages. “With Hadestown, that question is: ‘Do you have the courage to do the right thing?'” he observes. “Those are the same questions that comic books as, too. All of these things have repackaged ancient myths in a form that young people find quite appetizing. What people are discovering with Hadestown and The Odyssey is that these questions can be addressed in red capes and blue tights or in ancient togas.”
Both Noblezada and Carney directly experienced how audiences can get newly entranced by stories they already know on a nightly basis. Hadestown inevitably ends with Orpheus’s fateful turn to look behind him on the way out of Hades’s domain, a turn that sends Eurydice back down below. That moment never fails to elicit gasps from the crowd, even those that proclaimed to know what was coming.
“That happened every time,” the actress says with a smile. “It’s like going on a rollercoaster that you love — you just want to feel that part where your stomach drops. Sometimes you can’t really prepare yourself, especially when in the story sets it up so beautifully.
“I was the recipient of the turn every night, and it’ll never not be devastating to be in that position,” Noblezada adds. “The freshness that we feel as actors having to perform it eight times a week is the same for the audience. They might know it’s coming, but it’s fresh because the story has a life to it and a vibrancy to it that really can’t be dimmed.”
One of the benefits of filming a Broadway production for posterity is that the actors can have moments they treasure preserved forever. For Noblezada, that moment is a small piece of business involving a flask she’s been handed by Persephone (Gray). “It’s just me opening Persephone’s flask, because she asks me to hold it,” the actress says. “So when I’m holding it, I’m like ‘I wonder what it is,’ and I smell it and it’s so strong! That reaction is minuscule, but when I watch the movie and hear people laugh, I think, ‘I didn’t know that was going to be in there!'”
“The the thing about Hadestown — and anyone who’s performed it will probably attest to this — is that there’s so much to this show that’s not on the page,” Carney echoes. “For the first time, those things are captured in this film in a way they wouldn’t be from the front row. I do think that that’s a very special aspect to this film; there’s storytelling that is a requirement of performing the piece for us as actors, but it isn’t necessarily even seen by the audience. We hope it’s felt — but now it’s also seen.”
Speaking of myths playing out in the world of comics, Broadway nerds know that Page and Carney have a hero-and-villain history that pre-dates Hadestown. Back in 2011, the duo starred in the ill-fated Marvel Comics musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, with Carney playing your friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, while Page portrayed his mortal enemy, the Green Goblin. As conceived by director Julie Taymor, Turn Off the Dark also notably drew on ancient legends, drawing a connecting web between Spider-Man to the mythical figure, Arachne.
Sadly, Turn Off the Dark didn’t turn on audiences at the time, even with a score by U2’s Bono and the Edge and some spectacular Spidey stunts. The show was plagued by behind the scenes troubles, onstage accidents, and poor ticket sales. But those who were able to experience it never forgot it — including this writer and the two stars.
“What I remember most is the overwhelming experience of being part of something remarkable and extraordinary and that we knew was a once in a lifetime event,” Page says, reflecting on the musical 15 years later. “And in the case of Reeve and I, it cemented a friendship that’s lasted and will last as long as we’re both alive. I’ve watched him grow over the years and it’s been a marvel.”
“It was such a blessing for me,” Carney says of his time in the Spider-Man suit. “It was certainly challenging. I think it’s a great first show for anyone to have done, because the stuff that we were doing [was wild]. I remember asking the senior members of the cast, ‘Is this normal?’ And they were like, ‘No!’
“I think it was probably good for the project as well that someone was as green as me at the time was coming in, because I had no idea that some of that stuff wasn’t normal,” Carney adds. “But I made such great friendships, and we all banded together because there were a lot of really tragic things that happened during the run of that show. That bonded us as a cast in a really unique way.”
You might say they’re all still caught in Spider-Man’s web… just like flies.
