OceanofPDF.com Working on a Song - Anais Mitchell (1)

PLUME
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Copyright © 2020 by Anaïs Mitchell
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Lyrics reproduced by permission of Treleven Music / Candid Music Publishing
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
has been applied for.
ISBN 9780593182574 (paperback)
ISBN 9780593182581 (ebook)
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, internet addresses,
and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes
any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does
not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or
their content.
The inclusion of lyrics in this book should not be construed as authorization for the dramatic
performance of any material contained herein. Applications for the right to perform Hadestown
should be addressed to Concord Theatricals: concordtheatricals.com.
pid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r0
For “Team Dramaturgy”
CONTENTS
Foreword
About This Book
People & Places
ACT ONE
Road to Hell
Any Way the Wind Blows
Come Home with Me
Wedding Song
Epic I
Livin’ It Up on Top
All I’ve Ever Known
Way Down Hadestown
A Gathering Storm
Epic II
Chant
Hey, Little Songbird
When the Chips Are Down
Gone, I’m Gone
Wait for Me Intro
Wait for Me
Why We Build the Wall
ACT TWO
Our Lady of the Underground
Way Down Hadestown Reprise
Flowers
Come Home with Me Reprise
Papers Intro & Papers
Nothing Changes
If It’s True
How Long?
Chant Reprise
Epic III
Epic III Instrumental
Promises
Word to the Wise
His Kiss, the Riot
Wait for Me Reprise Intro
Wait for Me Reprise
Doubt Comes In
Road to Hell Reprise
We Raise Our Cups
Photographs
Acknowledgments
FOREWORD
A
s I’m writing this there is no theater in New York or anywhere else in
the world that I know of. That’s a heartbreaking statement to see staring
back at me from my computer screen because theater is, and always has
been, my favorite art form. After all, I am, when all is said and done, a
storyteller, and theater is storytelling with a complete box of sensory tools
at your disposal, and poetry in 3D to boot.
That’s why I moved to New York: to make music for theater, knowing
full well that the odds were against me. Bigger and better singersongwriters than myself had been handed their heads when they turned up
in the City, refugees from a dying record business who couldn’t have cared
less about theater until they woke up one day to find that downloading was
real and people just weren’t buying records the way they used to.
Well, we’ll see.
Anaïs Mitchell came to Broadway much as her Orpheus went to Hell:
“around the back.”
Her odyssey began on the folk circuit, a world of coffeehouses and
house concerts peopled with fiercely free spirits who aren’t waiting around
to be discovered. They simply bypass the gatekeepers in LA, Nashville, and
New York and make music, recording and releasing it themselves if
necessary. Then they go out on the road, and after proving the worth of their
wares before a live audience, they sell CDs and vinyl directly to the people,
sometimes right off the stage. It was in that DIY, fly-by-the-seat-of-yourpants environment that Hadestown was born.
I loved the New York Theatre Workshop production so much that I saw
it three times, so I knew the show pretty intimately by the time it closed in
July of 2016. I returned to New York after nearly two years of nonstop
touring just as it opened at the Walter Kerr on Forty-Eighth Street. So I
bought a ticket online, rode the train up, and sat down in the first row,
excited, but frankly, a little apprehensive.
I knew Hadestown would be bigger on Broadway, grander in every
sense. But I see a lot of theater (it’s kind of all I do, at least until baseball
season starts), and I was aware that the upgrade afforded by the jump from
not-for-profit to commercial theater isn’t always a good thing artistically.
I was stunned.
Oh, it was bigger alright. It was also better, more focused, and more
joyous and heartbreaking at the same time than ever before. I went away
wondering what on earth had transpired during those months that made
something I believed to be pretty near perfect so much more than it had
been before.
This book is the answer to that question in Anaïs’s own words,
presented in two simultaneous narratives, separate but both distinctly hers.
There is the unique and invaluable document that is her concise, firsthand
account of the sometimes triumphant, often humbling experience of
practicing a collaborative art form. And there is, of course, the deep, dark
poetry of the lyrics that are at the heart of Hadestown, which could have
only been arrived at by the act of a great songwriter sitting down alone and
putting pencil to paper (or fingers to a QWERTY keyboard).
Steve Earle
Fairview, TN
April 2020
About This Book
A
musical is a living, breathing animal, so much more than the sum of
its text. It’s music, arrangements and orchestrations, staging and
choreography, sets and props, costumes, sound and lights, directing and
acting choices. Every one of these elements, and the creative minds who
dreamed and wrestled with them during the making of Hadestown, could
fill a book like this one. This book, though, is about the show’s lyrics, and
my writing and rewriting of them over many years and productions.
In these pages you’ll find the complete Broadway version of each song
or scene (Hadestown is a sung-through show, so even “dialogue” is rhymed
and metered), followed by notes on where it came from, how it evolved,
and old and discarded lyrics. Some of these lyrics appeared in productions,
others never did. At the bottom of every draft I sent around to my
collaborators, I included a little section called “Orphans.” It was the name I
gave any lyric I liked enough to share but couldn’t find a home for. A few
of them, at least and at last, have found a home in this book!
This book is for anyone interested in a behind-the-scenes look at
Hadestown. It’s also, I hope, a book for writers, especially songwriters
crossing over into dramatic storytelling. It’s not really in my nature to make
a “how to” out of my process, which has mostly been one of feeling my
way in the dark, one foot in front of the next, holding the hands of my
collaborators. But I hope the process described here will be useful to you. If
nothing else, I hope it gives you faith in, and on, the long road of writing.
A couple more Hadestown metaphors for you: there were so many
times, searching for a line, verse, or chorus, when I felt like I was “banging
my head against a wall,” and I used to describe it like that. For the last few
years I was working in a small band practice room the size of a closet in
Gowanus, Brooklyn (I briefly shared the composer Dave Malloy’s studio,
since I work early and he works late; later I got my own spot in the same
building). There were no windows in those concrete walls. The headbanging attitude was: the line was “wrong, wrong, wrong . . .” until it was
“right.” As if the right thing was the only one that mattered.
But looking back on these old drafts and even the orphans, I see that
writing is more like gardening. You’re raking around in the dirt, pulling up
weeds. Flowers you love and find beautiful die on you. But not for nothing;
they go back into the soil, and they nourish it. It’s the act of raking that
prepares the ground, and it’s the seeds of those dead beautiful flowers that
replant themselves in it and eventually come up right. The “right” thing
could not exist without the “wrong” ones.
People & Places
H
adestown began as a DIY community theater project in Vermont in
2006–7. I had written just a handful of songs when I asked arranger /
orchestrator Michael Chorney and early director / designer Ben t.
Matchstick to work on a “folk opera” (its first working title was A Crack in
the Wall). The cast and band were all friends and neighbors of ours, and I
played the role of Eurydice. We did just two weekends of shows the first
year, but in 2007 we set out on a mini-tour of Vermont, traveling through
blizzards in a silver school bus full of sets and props. We had very little
time or money to prepare for those productions, but Ben is a shoestring
genius who pulled together a gorgeously gritty show, and Michael set the
rich tone of the “Hadestown sound,” complete with trombone and strings.
Hadestown was just one act back then, and more abstract than any of the
later productions.
In 2010 Righteous Babe Records released a studio album of the music
of Hadestown. It took a couple years to make: I revised a bunch of songs,
wrote some new ones, and the recording was meticulously produced by
Todd Sickafoose (who later became an arranger / orchestrator, together with
Michael). I again sang the part of Eurydice, and the album featured guest
singers Justin Vernon (Orpheus), Ani DiFranco (Persephone), Greg Brown
(Hades), the Haden Triplets (Fates), and Ben Knox Miller (Hermes), as well
as ensemble vocals from the original Vermont cast. For a few years after the
album release, Michael’s band and I traveled around performing Hadestown
as a concert. We worked with different singers in different regions; for
California Sings Hadestown! we had fourteen people (and a dog!) in a
fifteen-passenger van. It was on that tour—at McCabe’s Guitar Shop in
Santa Monica—that I met Dale Franzen, who later partnered with Mara
Isaacs; they became the lead producers of the show during its continuing
expansion.
My husband, Noah Hahn, and I moved back and forth between Vermont
and New York City twice during these years. We were living in the city
when I met Rachel Chavkin in 2012 and fell absolutely in love with her
work on Dave Malloy’s Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812. Rachel
and I began working together the next year, with the support of Mara, Dale,
and, soon after that, the folks at New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW),
who hosted developmental workshops for us long before they committed to
a production. Rachel is a brilliant director, an insightful collaborator, and
she’s also relentlessly “tough love.” After the first table-read we did
together, she came at me with a laundry list of dramaturgical notes. I was
dismayed by the depth of rewriting she was suggesting. “You have to
understand,” I said, “I’ve been living with this show for seven years
already.” She said, without batting an eyelash, “Well, if we’re going to work
together, you’ll have to find a way to move past your fatigue.”
We had our off-Broadway debut at NYTW on East Fourth Street in the
spring and summer of 2016. In the lead-up to that production, artistic
director Jim Nicola introduced us to Ken Cerniglia, a dedicated dramaturg
he thought could be helpful to us (a dramaturg is, among other things, a
story expert who tracks a show’s clarity and consistency). Ken is whipsmart, sweet of heart, and seemed to cover different bases, dramaturgically
speaking, than Rachel. We began working with Ken in 2015 and continued
right through our Broadway production. I loved having three perspectives,
rather than two, in questions of dramaturgy (Mara would periodically weigh
in on behalf of the producers, so sometimes there were four). If both Rachel
and Ken felt strongly about something, I usually went with it. If the jury
was hung, I went my own way.
The NYTW production was a wild ride. I’d never been through a
professional rehearsal, tech, and preview period as a writer before and I was
learning a lot: what a writer’s role is in the rehearsal room, how to rewrite
on the fly, what the extremes of anxious joy and sleep deprivation look like.
It was hard to eat or sleep, the way it is when you’re in love, and I was in
love with everyone: cast, band, creative team. Many of the collaborators we
assembled for NYTW continued on with us for all subsequent productions
—scenic designer Rachel Hauck, choreographer David Neumann, costume
designer Michael Krass, lighting designer Bradley King, music director /
vocal arranger Liam Robinson, and of course, Michael and Todd. We
recorded a live version of our off-Broadway production and released about
an hour of that music—mostly the newer stuff—for Warner Music Group.
In 2017 we traveled to the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Canada. Ours
was the final show in the final season overseen by executive director Penny
Ritco, a vivacious, huge-hearted lady who supported the show
unconditionally through what we all now think of as an awkward but very
necessary phase of development. It was late fall / early winter in Edmonton,
and freezing cold. The creative team drank a lot at late-night production
meetings. Once, after many bottles of red wine, in a group discussion about
the state of show, I hid my eyes behind two spoons. I wanted to express
myself without having to make eye contact with anyone. There is a
photograph of me behind the spoons that seems to capture the mood of the
entire creative team in Edmonton. Still, we learned a ton about the show:
what it wanted to be, and what it didn’t want to be. At the Citadel we also
began working with sound designer Jessica Paz, who together with Nevin
Steinberg continued with us to Broadway.
In 2018, we took that team—and the five principal American actors we
hoped to transfer to Broadway—to London’s National Theatre. We had a
luxurious amount of time and space in London. For example, Rachel and
David had working turntables for the entirety of the rehearsal period (for
Edmonton and Broadway, the turntables appeared in tech). The National
Theatre is one of the wonders of the world, and everyone working on its
behalf was incredibly insightful, capable, and supportive of our process. In
every production we fell in love with, and bid goodbye to, magical
performers and ensembles. Some actors, like Amber Gray, Patrick Page,
and Reeve Carney, were with Hadestown many productions in a row.
Others were with us for just one or two, but we learned so much from every
single actor who took on these roles. A lot of actors appear in these pages.
In London, Rachel and I chanted together in the backseat of a taxi,
trying to manifest a Broadway production at Jordan Roth’s Walter Kerr
Theatre. In the spring of 2019, that dream came true, and by that time, Mara
and Dale had partnered with co–lead producers Tom Kirdahy and Hunter
Arnold. When we got the news, I called my manager Liz Riches in London,
who’d been a patient cheerleader during many years of development. Then
I danced with Noah and our daughter Ramona to Frank Sinatra’s “New
York, New York” in the tiny kitchen of our Brooklyn apartment. Noah, of
everyone mentioned above, is the person who has (literally) lived with
Hadestown the longest. He’s been my rock, my therapist, and my editor in
chief since the early days.
ACT I
ROAD TO HELL
Hermes (to Company)
Alright?
Company
Alright!
Hermes (to Audience)
Alright?
Audience
Alright!
Hermes (to Trombonist)
Alright!
Mmmm . . .
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes (like a train)
Mm-mmm
Company
Mm-mmm
Hermes
Chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka
Company
Chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka chucka
Hermes
Once upon a time there was a railroad line
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
Don’t ask where, brother, don’t ask when
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
It was the road to hell
It was hard times
It was a world of gods . . .
And men
Company
Mmm-mmm-mmm
Hermes
It’s an old song
Company
It’s an old song!
Hermes
It’s an old tale from way back when
It’s an old song
Company
It’s an old song!
Hermes
And we’re gonna sing it again
Gods and men, alright?
We got some gods in the house tonight!
See, on the road to hell there was a railroad line
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
And there was three old women all dressed the same
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
And they was always singing in the back of your mind
Everybody meet the Fates!
Company
Mmm-mmm-mmm
Hermes
And on the road to hell there was a railroad line
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
And a lady stepping off a train
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
With a suitcase full of summertime
Persephone, by name!
Company
Mmm-mmm-mmm
Hermes
And if you ride that train
Company
Ride that train!
Hermes
If you ride that train
Company
You ride that train!
Hermes
If you ride that train to the end of the line
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
Where the sun don’t shine and it’s always shady
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
It’s there you’ll find the king of the mine
Almighty Mister Hades!
Company
Mmm-mmm-mmm
Hermes
We got any other gods?
Oh yeah, almost forgot . . .
On the road to hell there was a railroad station
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
And a man with feathers on his feet
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
Who could help you to your final destination
Mister Hermes, that’s me!
Company
Mmm-mmm-mmm
Hermes
See, someone’s got to tell the tale
Whether or not it turns out well
Maybe it will turn out this time
On the road to hell, on the railroad line
It’s a sad song
Company
It’s a sad song!
Hermes
It’s a sad tale; it’s a tragedy
It’s a sad song
Company
It’s a sad song!
Hermes
We’re gonna sing it anyway
Now, not everyone gets to be a god
And don’t forget that times are hard
Hard times in the world of men
Lemme introduce you to a few of them
You can tip your hats and your wallets
Brothers and sisters, boys and girls
To the hardest-working Chorus
In the gods’ almighty world!
And working just as hard for you
(indicates Band) Let’s see what this crew can do!
Alright, alright . . .
Alright!
On the road to hell there was a railroad line
And a poor boy working on a song
Orpheus
La la la la la la . . .
Hermes
His mama was a friend of mine
And this boy was a muse’s son
On the railroad line on the road to hell
You might say the boy was “touched”
Orpheus
La la la la la la . . .
Hermes
Cos he was touched by the gods themselves
Give it up for Orpheus!
Orpheus!
There was one more soul on this road
Girl, come on in from the cold!
On the railroad line on the road to hell
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
There was a young girl looking for something to eat
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
And brother, thus begins the tale
Of Orpheus . . . and Eurydice!
Company
Mmm-mmm-mmm
Hermes
It’s a love song
Company
It’s a love song!
Hermes
It’s a tale of a love from long ago
It’s a sad song
Company
It’s a sad song!
Hermes
But we’re gonna sing it even so
It’s an old song
Company
It’s an old song!
Hermes
It’s an old tale from way back when
And we’re gonna sing
We’re gonna sing
We’re gonna sing it again!
Notes on “Road to Hell”
Off-Broadway
I’ve heard it said that opening numbers should be written last; that
until you truly know what the tale is, you won’t be able to set your
audience up for the telling. This was true of “Road to Hell,” which
kept evolving right through Broadway rehearsals. I started writing it in
the lead-up to New York Theatre Workshop, and at first it wasn’t a
song at all, but a rhymed, metered narration from Hermes. It kept
accumulating verses until I finally threw up my hands and said, “I
have to write a chorus for this!” In those days, “Road to Hell” wasn’t
the first song in the show; it came in spot #2, right after “Any Way the
Wind Blows.” When I wrote the call-and-response chorus for it, it
started getting troublingly fun, and the more fun it got, the more it
troubled me, because everyone started wondering, even in offBroadway previews, why it wasn’t our opening number. I remember
having a crisis meeting about it with Rachel Chavkin (director) and
Rachel Hauck (scenic designer) at a Mexican restaurant near NYTW.
But it seemed impossible for “Any Way the Wind Blows” in its then
incarnation to come in spot #2, by which point the audience is craving
genuine story information, not apocalyptic impressionist poetry. So
the choice would have been to cut “Any Way the Wind Blows” in its
entirety, and I didn’t have the heart to do it. The whole thing required
a rethink that couldn’t happen until later.
Edmonton & London
In Edmonton I moved “Road to Hell” to spot #1, and the song
continued to evolve as we rethought exactly who and what we wanted
to introduce in our opening number. One of the main Edmonton
additions was the choral and choreographic presence of a Workers
Chorus (we’d had a Workers Chorus in Vermont, but didn’t have
budget or space for one off-Broadway). “Road to Hell” started gaining
verses left and right as it incorporated an intro for the Workers: You
can tip your hats and your wallets . . . as well as one for the band:
Let’s see what this crew can do! Hades hadn’t gotten an intro at all offBroadway, and in Edmonton and London he got a nod, but wasn’t
mentioned by name:
Hermes: Him? / Oh, we’ll get to him . . . / It’s just a matter of time
/ On this railroad line . . .
But the feedback that landed like a ton of bricks post-NYTW was
this: people found Orpheus and Eurydice less fully drawn, and
therefore less compelling, than Hades and Persephone. It was the
beginning of what would become a yearslong process of trying to
bring more specificity to our young lovers. Their off-Broadway intro
went:
Hermes: On the railroad line on the road to hell / There was a
young man down on bended knee / And brother, thus begins the tale
of Orpheus / And Eurydice!
The bended knee was a beautiful, archetypal image, which got
repeated in “Road to Hell Reprise” at the end of the show (There’s a
young man down on bended knees). Ultimately, though, it didn’t give
us enough information about Orpheus, and still less about Eurydice.
For Edmonton and London I doubled the length of their introductory
stanza this way:
Hermes: On the railroad line on the road to hell / There was a poor
boy working on a song / Poor boy singin’ to himself / Waiting for
someone to come along / On the railroad line on the road to hell /
Like this young girl looking for something to eat / And brother, thus
begins the tale of Orpheus / And Eurydice!
With “Road to Hell” now in spot #1, and longer than ever, it started
begging for a “button,” a musical resolution that would give the
audience permission to applaud. The Off-Broadway version ended on
a suspension, segueing directly into “Come Home with Me.” It was
painful for me to let go of the Off-Broadway line: It’s a tale of a love
that never dies as well as its counterpart: (It’s) about someone who
tries. But the new rhymes allowed us to cycle through all three of our
choruses backward and land with a button on the line that ultimately
came to define the resilience of the story: We’re gonna sing it again!
And allowing the audience to go nuts at the end of the song was
exactly what we needed, going into this sad tale.
Broadway
For Broadway, I finally gave Hades a legitimate intro of his own. In
response to a note from Ken Cerniglia (dramaturg), I reordered the
verses so Hermes’s introduction of himself felt more prominent, and
added the Someone’s got to tell the tale stanza to let the audience
know that Hermes is, in addition to a conductor of souls, the
conductor of our story. The main rewrite, though, was (again) to the
introduction of Orpheus and Eurydice. The early feedback about our
young lovers feeling out of focus had never gone away, and Orpheus
often bore the brunt of the criticism. Was he Che Guevara, or Woody
Guthrie? A revolutionary, or a farm boy? Was he really as confident as
he came across in early versions of the show? What had been a pesky
ambiguity became a full-blown crisis after London, when review after
review commented on the unsympathetic qualities of our hero.
Audiences weren’t falling in love with him, and we needed them to,
for the story to matter at all.
There was an emergency meeting post-London between me,
Rachel, Ken, and Mara Isaacs (producer). We called this little
committee “Team Dramaturgy,” and we convened on this occasion at
the New Amsterdam Theatre, where Ken worked for Disney
Theatricals. We decided to reframe Orpheus as more of an innocent. In
hindsight, I’d been headed in that direction incrementally for a long
time, but between London and Broadway I made a massive rewriting
push. This “New Orpheus” wasn’t a shy character—that was
important to me for the guy who sings “Wedding Song”—but a
sensitive soul, the kind who gets lost in his own world sometimes.
This is exactly how we encounter him in the Broadway version of
“Road to Hell”: lost in his own world, touched by the gods as Hermes
puts it, singing his “Epic” melody. Hermes has to introduce him twice,
because he doesn’t hear the audience’s applause the first time. That
little gesture alone seemed to endear him to the audience more
quickly. It was the final, missing piece of our opening number, and it
had to be written last.
ANY WAY THE WIND BLOWS
Fates
Oooooh
Oooooh
Oooooh
Oooooh
Hermes
Eurydice was a hungry young girl
A runaway from everywhere she’d ever been
She was no stranger to the world
No stranger to the wind
Eurydice
Weather ain’t the way it was before
Ain’t no spring or fall at all anymore
It’s either blazing hot or freezing cold
Any way the wind blows
Fates
And there ain’t a thing that you can do
When the weather takes a turn on you
’Cept for hurry up and hit the road
Any way the wind blows
Wind comes up, ooooh
Eurydice
Do you hear that sound?
Fates
Wind comes up, ooooh
Eurydice
Move to another town
Ain’t nobody gonna stick around
Eurydice & Fates
When the dark clouds roll
Any way the wind blows
Fates
Oooooh
Oooooh
Oooooh
Oooooh
Hermes
You met the Fates, remember them?
Eurydice
Anybody got a match?
Hermes
Always singing in the back of your mind . . .
Eurydice
Give me that . . .
Hermes
Wherever it was this young girl went
The Fates were close behind
Eurydice
People turn on you just like the wind
Everybody is a fair-weather friend
In the end you’re better off alone
Any way the wind blows
Fates
When your body aches to lay it down
When you’re hungry and there ain’t enough to go around
Ain’t no length to which a girl won’t go
Any way the wind blows
Wind comes up, ooooh
Eurydice
And sometimes you think
Fates
Wind comes up, ooooh
Eurydice
You would do anything
Just to fill your belly full of food
Find a bed that you could fall into
Where the weather wouldn’t follow you
Eurydice & Fates
Wherever you go
Any way the wind blows
Fates
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh
Hermes
Now Orpheus was the son of a muse
And you know how those muses are
Sometimes they abandon you
And this poor boy, he wore his heart
Out on his sleeve
You might say he was naive
To the ways of the world
But he had a way with words
And a rhythm and a rhyme
And he sang just like a bird up on a line
And it ain’t because I’m kind
But his mama was a friend of mine
And I liked to hear him sing
And his way of seeing things
So I took him underneath my wing
And that is where he stayed
Until one day . . .
Notes on “Any Way the Wind Blows”
Off-Broadway
My daughter Ramona was conceived during Hurricane Sandy in New
York. In the midst of that wet weather, I read a bit of news about
wildfires in California. It was 2012, the first year I clocked the tragic
irony of simultaneous flooding in the east and drought in the west. I
put that into “Any Way the Wind Blows,” which was one of the first
Hadestown songs I wrote in the post-studio-album era. I thought of it
as an opening number, like the scene-setting “Arabian Nights” at the
top of Disney’s Aladdin.
Soon after writing the song, I met and started working with Rachel.
The original version of “Any Way the Wind Blows” is exactly the
kind of “poetic portraiture” Rachel would have cautioned me against,
which was my stock and trade as a singer-songwriter but posed major
challenges for drama. A concert audience is happy to trance out during
three and a half minutes of music and poetry, but a theater audience
demands action from a song. It wants a song to have results,
revelations, or both. The “suspension of time” that I find so mystical
in the music world has another name in the theater: stasis, the enemy
of drama.
But it was too late; the song was written! I remember really having
labored over the original language. I was pregnant by then, and
wondered if I was annoying the baby in utero by singing the lines over
and over:
Fates: In the fever of a world in flames / In the season of the
hurricanes / Flood’ll get ya if the fire don’t / Any way the wind
blows / And there ain’t a thing that you can do / When the weather
takes a turn on you / ’Cept for hurry up and hit the road / Any way
the wind blows
Sister’s gone, gone the gypsy route / Brother’s gone, gone for a job
down south / Ain’t nobody gonna stick around / When the dark
clouds roll / Any way the wind blows
In the valley of the exodus / In the belly of a bowl of dust / Crows
and buzzards flying low / Any way the wind blows / No use talking
of a past that’s past / Set out walking and you don’t look back /
Where you’re going there ain’t no one knows / Any way the wind
blows . . .
Sister’s gone, gone the gypsy route / Brother’s gone, gone for a job
down south / Gone the same way as the shantytown / And the
traveling show / Any way the wind blows . . .
I rewrote the verses many times over the years. I rewrote the
choruses once, for a few reasons, but one was that use of the word
gypsy. Like many Americans I grew up far removed, in space-time,
from the historical implications of the word as an ethnic slur. I must
admit it’s a word I grew up loving and found very beautiful. But it’s
also true that poetic intent doesn’t matter, if the poetry is received as
hurtful. Words change over time, and that one’s time was up.
Edmonton
Once “Road to Hell” took over as our opening number, “Any Way the
Wind Blows” had to work harder on behalf of the story, paint a more
specific picture of our young lovers, especially Eurydice. In Edmonton
it remained the Fates’ song, but they sang directly to Eurydice, and
Rachel foregrounded her visually.
I had an elaborate scene in mind, and I tried to write it into the
song. It involved Eurydice asking for a match, to build a fire, and
Orpheus trying to strike one and failing. Eurydice takes his matches
and successfully strikes one, but the Fates blow it out, once! twice!
and the third time Eurydice outsmarts the Fates, the fire gets lit,
Orpheus is impressed by her practical skills (not his strong suit), and
so on—all in sixteen bars of music and spare-almost-to-the-point-ofabstraction poetry.
It didn’t work. Over the course of three productions we let go of the
fire (Rachel had the better, not to mention safer idea of a hurricane
candle) and the act of Orpheus getting anywhere near the matches
(with the candle, it was very Rent). We found we really only had time
to foreground one match-lighting moment (as it turns out, it takes time
to light a match!). But Eurydice’s lines Anybody got a match? and
Give me that survive to this day, and those seven words have become
essential to her character.
There was a final Hermes stanza in Edmonton—a summary of the
match play—that I loved at the time and knew wouldn’t last:
Hermes: This hungry young girl struck a match / And she lit a
flame in the poor boy’s heart / Wind didn’t want that flame to catch
/ But it caught . . .
(Orpheus: Come home with me . . .)
I was obsessed with the sound of that rhyme: heart and caught. I
know this is a minority opinion among theatrical lyricists, but I want
to offer a quick public defense of the slant rhyme. Never before I
entered the world of theater did I find people so dogmatic about true
or “perfect” end rhymes. What puzzles me about it is this: the sound
of words, the weaving together of them, is about so much more than
end rhyme. It’s consonance, assonance, internal rhymes wherever they
can be discreetly woven in. I appreciate these devices because they
don’t call attention to themselves; the seams don’t show. The perfect
end rhyme waves its arms and shouts, “Look, Ma, I made a rhyme!”
There’s a place for that kind of satisfying resolution, just as there’s a
place for a “button” in music. But there’s also a place for the mystical,
the modal, and the unresolved. The rhyming of heart and caught hit
me at an angle that no true rhyme ever will.
London
I give my husband, Noah, credit for asking: Should “Any Way the
Wind Blows” actually be Eurydice’s song, and not the Fates’? I started
giving her lines, and it felt very right. We still craved the Fates’
involvement, as a setup of who they are, how they function in the
story, and especially how they relate to Eurydice. But to hear Eurydice
speak for herself, so early in the show, was game-changing. I had to
rewrite the language for her, because lines like In the fever of a world
in flames / In the season of the hurricanes felt hyperpoetic and
therefore not believable from the mouth of our practical heroine. In
London Eva Noblezada brought her tough charisma to these lines:
Strange things happen in the world these days / Fall comes early,
spring comes late / One day summer comes, the next she goes. And
later: Strange things happen when the seasons change / In the east
they got a hurricane / While the west is going up in smoke. I also gave
Eurydice something like an “I Want” moment, very Eliza Doolittle:
And sometimes you think / You would do anything / Just to fill your
belly full of food / Find a bed that you could fall into / Where the
weather wouldn’t follow you / Wherever you go . . .
I remember reading, quite deep in the process of working on
Hadestown, Jack Viertel’s excellent book The Secret Life of the
American Musical and realizing that our weird little show—born in
the wild woods of Vermont and developed with a lot of downtown
artists who disdained commercial formulas—was actually coming to
resemble a classic Broadway musical structure. Our opening number
was now a full-throttle company sing-along. This was followed by
something like an “I Want” song from Eurydice. After that came
“Wedding Song,” a playful, unconsummated courtship that could
qualify as what Viertel and others call a “conditional love song.” None
of this was intentional! We were feeling our way in the dark, and when
something worked, we kept it. But it gave me a certain reverence for
those classic formulas, which aren’t merely “commercial,” but tap
deep into a human storytelling culture older than any of us can
remember.
In London there was one more beloved final stanza from Hermes
that was bound for the cutting room floor, a casualty of our Orpheus
crisis. It went like this:
Hermes: Orpheus was a poor boy / But he had a gift to give /
Eurydice knew how to survive / Orpheus knew how to live . . .
(Orpheus: Come home with me . . .)
Broadway
It was a succinct summary of our lovers, but it didn’t do enough work
for our Orpheus setup. For Broadway I exploded that four-line stanza
into a rambling meditation on Orpheus’s nature (And this poor boy, he
wore his heart out on his sleeve . . . ) and Hermes’s relationship to him
(And I liked to hear him sing / And his way of seeing things). At our
New Amsterdam crisis meeting, the outro of “Any Way the Wind
Blows” was identified as prime real estate upon which to establish
New Orpheus. One idea that came out of that meeting was to put the
boy “under the wing” of a mentor figure, Hermes. In previous versions
of the show, Hermes was an objective narrator, a shifty type who kept
his allegiances to himself. So it was a major shift for both characters
when Hermes became Orpheus’s guardian and champion.
At that same meeting, Team Dramaturgy charged me with the
exercise of imagining a more detailed backstory for Orpheus—not that
any of it would necessarily go in the show, but it might shed light on
his character. I began picturing a childhood for Orpheus as the “son of
a muse.” I pictured his mother as a free-spirited bohemian who loved
her child but might also abandon him for long periods of time in
pursuit of her own adventures. I wrote that line for Hermes: His mama
was a friend of mine—which appears twice—and I hated it at first, it
felt too specific, the stuff of realism. But both Rachel and Ken loved
it, so I humored them and left it in . . . and then I, too, came to love
this imagined “friendship” between Hermes and the mysterious lady
who had left her son in his care.
I thought of the extended “heart on sleeve” Orpheus outro as brandnew for Broadway, but I came across this orphaned line in the rubble
of some discarded Hermes lines for this same transition from 2017:
Hermes: Orpheus was a poor boy / He wore his heart out on his
sleeve / And he fell in love with Eurydice / Like an apple from a
tree
More on that tree in the next scene!
COME HOME WITH ME
Hermes
You wanna talk to her?
Orpheus
Yes
Hermes
Go on . . .
Orpheus—
Orpheus
Yes?
Hermes
Don’t come on too strong
Orpheus & Chorus
Come home with me
Eurydice
Who are you?
Orpheus & Chorus
The man who’s gonna marry you
Orpheus
I’m Orpheus!
Eurydice (to Hermes)
Is he always like this?
Hermes
Yes
Eurydice (to Orpheus)
I’m Eurydice
Orpheus & Chorus
Your name is like a melody . . .
Eurydice
A singer? Is that what you are?
Orpheus
I also play the lyre
Eurydice
Ooh, a liar, and a player too!
I’ve met too many men like you
Orpheus
Oh no—I’m not like that
Hermes
He’s not like any man you’ve met
Tell her what you’re working on!
Orpheus & Chorus
I’m working on a song
It isn’t finished yet
But when it’s done, and when I sing it
Spring will come again
Eurydice
Come again?
Orpheus
Spring will come
Eurydice
When?
I haven’t seen a spring or fall
Since—I can’t recall
Orpheus
That’s what I’m working on
Orpheus & Chorus
A song to fix what’s wrong
Take what’s broken, make it whole
A song so beautiful
It brings the world back into tune
Back into time
And all the flowers will bloom
Orpheus
When you become my wife
Eurydice (to Hermes)
Oh, he’s crazy!
Why would I become his wife?
Hermes
Maybe . . .
Because he’ll make you feel alive
Eurydice
Alive . . . that’s worth a lot
(to Orpheus) What else you got?
Notes on “Come Home with Me”
Off-Broadway
I can’t think of a scene I rewrote more times than “Come Home with
Me”! I started it for NYTW as a way of contextualizing “Wedding
Song.” Initially, I’d conceived of “Wedding Song” as a scene between
preestablished lovers who were contemplating marriage. In the course
of trying to expand the show, though (it was about an hour on the
studio record, and we were aiming for two), it made sense to explore
more of the lovers’ backstory. I started to imagine “Wedding Song” as
less of a literal wedding proposal and more of a playful courtship
between two people who had just met. “Come Home with Me” was
that meeting. I loved that Orpheus could repeat the opening phrase in
the underworld and it would no longer be a come-on, but a heartfelt
statement. For years, though, that opening line gave us trouble, and it
had to do with our Orpheus problem. I’d always imagined Orpheus as
irrationally hopeful; that seemed inherent to his mythological
character. But the line Come home with me—for years the first
statement we heard from Orpheus—did not endear him to people. It
went beyond hopeful, and painted him as cocky, with a machismo
incompatible with his “sensitive” soul. It didn’t help that many of his
other lines in earlier versions of the scene came across as selfaggrandizing. It took years to figure out how to reframe the scene in
his favor.
Every version of “Come Home with Me” began with some version
of the cosmic “naming” of the lovers, which is a motif in the show.
Something about the lovers speaking or singing each other’s names
aloud invoked the cosmos, Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed
inevitability of their love. Off-Broadway, more than one person asked,
“But why does Orpheus fall in love with Eurydice?” And my response
was, “Because he’s Orpheus . . . and she’s Eurydice!” For many, it
wasn’t enough. The “naming” was followed by the “lyre / player”
joke, which seemed to have staying power because it gave our heroine
a chance to be tough, smart, and funny right out of the gate. OffBroadway, the “naming” and the “lyre / player” joke were followed by
this exchange:
Orpheus: I’m not like any man you’ve met
Eurydice: Oh yeah? What makes you different?
Orpheus: You see the world?
Eurydice: Of course I do
Orpheus: I’ll make it beautiful for you / For you, I’ll change the
way it is
Eurydice: With what?
Orpheus (shows his lyre): With this
Eurydice: I’m sure you play it well / But only the gods can change
the world / Me and you can’t change a thing (alt. Men like you
can’t change a thing)
Orpheus: You haven’t heard me sing
Eurydice: Are you always this confident?
Orpheus: When I look at you, I am
Eurydice: When you look at me, what do you see?
Orpheus: Someone stronger than me / Somebody who survives
Those last two lines I wrote under dramaturgical duress and always
hated, they felt heavy-handed, not of a piece with the poetry. But we
were in danger of a situation where Orpheus falls madly in love with
Eurydice and no one knows why. “Cosmic love at first sight” not
cutting it for most people, and Eurydice’s interior qualities being
undefined as yet, we had to assume he loved her because she was
“beautiful,” which would have been a disservice to the depth of their
love. I hunted a long time for a different line, and at one point a few
days before we locked the show off-Broadway, I had what felt like a
poetic epiphany. Rachel Hauck’s NYTW set was a spare, barnlike
amphitheater dominated by a huge, twisted, sculptural tree. The tree
was Rachel Chavkin’s inspiration, it was mythic and represented the
earth, the seasons, a gathering place . . . but it was never mentioned in
the text. I texted Rachel in profound excitement: When you look at me,
what do you see? / I see a woman like a tree [!!!] But she wasn’t
having it—we were deep in previews, she was starting to get
protective of the actors, and she probably suspected the line wasn’t
that good. And it’s true that we discovered multiple times that our set
ought not be a literal representation of the language of the show. This
hit home in Edmonton when Rachel Hauck designed a gorgeous silver
train track (On the road to hell there was a railroad line!) that ended
up getting cut between the first and second previews. Rachel Hauck,
and the producers who’d paid for the tracks, were very Zen about their
disappearance. The thing was, the railroad line had a vivid life in the
poetry of the text, but to see it represented visually seemed to cheapen
the metaphor. For the audience, it stole some of the free-associative
pleasure of “filling in the blanks.” For the creative team, one literal
choice led to another until the whole show felt heavy-handed.
Edmonton
Speaking of Edmonton, the Citadel Theatre version of “Come Home
with Me” contained such cavalier lines as:
Orpheus: I’m Orpheus!
Eurydice: And I should care because . . . ?
Orpheus: Because you’re Eurydice / So come home with me
Later, when Eurydice asked what made Orpheus different, he
replied, Well, I’m the son of a muse / And I’m gonna marry you! It was
not a good line, but the “muse’s son” concept became important years
later in my big Orpheus rewrite. There was another little exchange,
born of an attempt to “ground” Orpheus in the “aboveground” world,
that went like this:
Eurydice: And where would this home of yours be?
Orpheus: Right here
Eurydice: Right here? / This is the middle of nowhere
Orpheus: You should see it in the spring . . .
This whole line of inquiry turned out to be a distraction, but it got a
big laugh from the Edmonton audience. Our production took place in
bitter Albertan winter. The city of Edmonton has constructed an entire
system of indoor pedestrian pathways so people can avoid walking
outside; it’s bleak to say the least. It did feel like the middle of
nowhere, and I’m sure—and I’ll have to make a trip back to find out
—we should all see it in the spring.
London
The Edmonton scene had gotten long, so I went for brevity in London,
where “Come Home with Me” included the most condensed
summation yet of our young lovers:
Eurydice: You got something to eat?
Orpheus & Chorus: I got a melody . . .
For London, I made most of Orpheus’s spoken lines sung, and
asked Liam Robinson (music director / vocal arranger) to arrange
choral parts for the Workers, to back him up. I was inspired to do this
by Justin Vernon, who sang the Orpheus part on the 2010 studio
recording in many-part harmony with himself. I was listening to one
of the later Bon Iver records and noticing how that choral quality
could come and go quite naturally and set certain lines apart from
others, lift them into a celestial place—very Orphic.
It was helpful to discover that Orpheus could express his dedication
to a “project” in this scene. What exactly his project was became more
and more specific over the course of various productions. In earlier
drafts, he vowed to make the world beautiful or expressed his political
values: I’d rather have a song to sing / Than all the riches of a king.
In London I zeroed in on his “Epic”—the song he’s working on that he
believes will bring the world back into tune. That clarity of focus was
part of what audiences were craving from the character.
Broadway
But even a boy with a project isn’t necessarily lovable. He was still
delivering swaggery lines like: Come home with me, I’m not like any
man you’ve met, and Because I’ll make you feel alive. It wasn’t until
Broadway, when I added the cautionary little Don’t come on too strong
exchange with Hermes to the top of the scene, that his opening—Come
home with me—became hilariously earnest. Now Hermes was able to
act as Orpheus’s wingman (yeah, that pun was intended) and deliver
all the lines formerly assigned to Orpheus that, while poetically
satisfying to me, did not help us fall in love with the boy.
WEDDING SONG
Eurydice
Lover, tell me if you can
Who’s gonna buy the wedding bands?
Times being what they are
Hard and getting harder all the time
Orpheus
Lover, when I sing my song
All the rivers’ll sing along
And they’re gonna break their banks for us
And with their gold be generous
All a-flashing in the pan
All to fashion for your hand
The river’s gonna give us the wedding bands
Eurydice
Lover, tell me if you’re able
Who’s gonna lay the wedding table?
Times being what they are
Dark and getting darker all the time
Orpheus
Lover, when I sing my song
All the trees gonna sing along
And they’re gonna bend their branches down
To lay their fruit upon the ground
The almond and the apple
And the sugar from the maple
The trees gonna lay the wedding table
Eurydice
So when you sing your song
The one you’re working on
Spring will come again?
Orpheus
Yes
Eurydice
Why don’t you sing it, then?
Orpheus
It isn’t finished
Eurydice
Sing it!
You wanna take me home?
Orpheus
Yes
Eurydice
Sing the song
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la
Company
La la la la la la
Orpheus
La la la la la la
Orpheus & Company
La la la la . . .
Eurydice
How’d you do that?
Orpheus
I don’t know
The song’s not finished, though
Eurydice
Even so, it can do this?
Orpheus
I know
Eurydice
You have to finish it!
Lover, tell me when we’re wed
Who’s gonna make the wedding bed
Times being what they are
Hard and getting harder all the time
Orpheus
Lover, when I sing my song
All the birds gonna sing along
And they’ll come flying from all around
To lay their feathers on the ground
And we’ll lie down in eiderdown
A pillow ’neath our heads
The birds gonna make the wedding bed
Eurydice
And the trees gonna lay the wedding table
Orpheus
And the river’s gonna give us the wedding bands
Orpheus & Eurydice
Mmmmm . . .
Notes on “Wedding Song”
Vermont
“Wedding Song” didn’t exist in the early Vermont productions; there
was a different love duet that came early in the show called
“Everything Written.” It was beautifully arranged and orchestrated by
Michael Chorney. The song was quite pretty, but to me it felt tonally
too “sweet” in the midst of what I thought of as a “gritty” show. It had
cosmic, star-crossed love in spades. First, the Fates invoked a series of
constellations:
Fates: Seven Sisters / Little Dipper / Great Bear, Hunter / Drinking
Gourd / Libra, Leo / Pisces, Pluto / Venus, Virgo / Capricorn . . .
Then we heard from Eurydice:
Eurydice: Don’t it make, don’t it make you feel so small? /
Orpheus, when you look up at it all? / When I look into the skies / I
lose my head for scale and size / And still you’re larger in my eyes /
Than any star / You pull on me like gravity / I want to be where you
are
The chorus went:
Eurydice: They say that everything is written / Everything written
in those stars / The very lives we’re living / The very love in our
hearts
Then Orpheus came in:
Orpheus: Who could write, who could write this kind of love? /
From such a height, all those light-years up above? / And all these
light-years down below / I don’t need any star to show me / What
my heart already knows / Eurydice / You pull on me like gravity / I
want to be where you are
Then they both sang the chorus . . . in cosmic harmony. For the
second Vermont production, I added a little coda, which I can see now
had the seeds of their essential characters embedded within it, with
Eurydice calling the night cold and dark, and Orpheus seeing only the
beauty of it:
Eurydice: Come near
Orpheus: I’m here
Eurydice: It’s so cold
Orpheus: So clear
Eurydice: It’s so dark
Orpheus: So fair
Eurydice: Come near
Orpheus: I’m here
Eurydice: You’re there . . .
Off-Broadway
I wanted to replace “Everything Written” with a different duet for the
lovers, a number with more conflict and panache. I wrote the first
version of “Wedding Song” for the studio album that came out in 2010
and that is exactly the version we delivered on the NYTW stage. It
was mythically on point for a few reasons. It invoked the “wedding”
of Orpheus and Eurydice, which is, in the ancient tale, the scene of
Eurydice’s tragic snakebite. In the mythology, the music of Orpheus
has the power to charm animals, change the course of rivers, and
cause trees (and even rocks!) to dance—these spirits of nature appear
in the song. It felt right for Orpheus, with his faith in the impossible,
to wax poetic about the power of song. It also felt right for practicalminded Eurydice to counter his faith with realism.
Edmonton
But the song was not without its problems. The exuberant confidence
of Orpheus got us in trouble because it painted him, again, as a
braggart—not an underdog poet we could root for. I made one change
to the body of the song between NYTW and the Citadel, in an effort to
temper his self-focus: And they’re gonna break their banks for me / To
lay their gold around my feet became: And they’re gonna break their
banks for us / And with their gold be generous. And bend their
branches down to me / To lay their fruit around my feet became: And
they’re gonna bend their branches down / To lay their fruit upon the
ground. And: And they’ll come flying round to me / To lay their
feathers at my feet became: And they’ll come flying from all around /
To lay their feathers on the ground. To this day I prefer the poetry of
the original; it was connected, in my mind, with the ground beneath
your feet lines in “Chant” (the Hades / Persephone verses in “Chant”
are a dark inversion of “Wedding Song”). But I can’t deny that our
audience’s love for Orpheus, and their genuine desire for him to
succeed, was more important than any lyric.
London & Broadway
There remained something decidedly static about “Wedding Song” as
a dramatic scene that no amount of rewriting “Come Home with Me”
could solve. We contemplated cutting it various times. It was Rachel
who suggested somehow introducing Orpheus’s “Epic” melody in the
scene, and I resisted at first, afraid it would compromise the structure
of the song. But I started messing around on my guitar, segueing back
into the lovers’ “Come Home with Me” banter in the middle of the
song and then shifting into the unveiling of Orpheus’s “Epic” melody
and its magical effect on the world. It was a test Orpheus could win
right before our eyes, which made it a turning point for both Eurydice
and the audience, and it seemed to change the alchemy of the song so
that, by the time we got to the end of it, the air in the room felt
different.
It wasn’t the first time I’d attempted a spoken “Wedding Song”
interlude—here’s an exchange that appeared once in a workshop:
Eurydice: You have a way with words, don’t you? It’s too bad none
of them are true
Orpheus: It’s not a lie—it’s poetry
Eurydice: How many mouths does a poem feed?
Like the So when you sing your song . . . section on Broadway, the
lines came over the “Come Home with Me” chords, a continuation of
that introductory banter. Unlike the Broadway interlude, though, it
didn’t represent any kind of new revelation or elevation of stakes, and
therefore didn’t earn its keep. One of the lessons I learned slowly and
thoroughly over the course of working on Hadestown is that a classic
three-and-a-half-minute “songwriter’s song” can be exploded any
number of ways in the theater without compromising its integrity, as
long as the additions provide new information. When I started writing
intros, outros, bridges, and interludes, often I was concerned about
“breaking” a song that sounded, to my songwriter ears, structurally
perfect. Usually, though, I found the songs less fragile and more
flexible than I’d given them credit for. Not 100 percent of the time; I
did have the experience of adding too much to a song and then finding
it overstuffed (as in the London version of “Chant” with its extra
Orpheus language), or taking away too much and then finding what
was left wasn’t really a song at all (as in the Edmonton version of
“Any Way the Wind Blows,” which had only one proper verse and
chorus; the rest was narration / dialogue). But nine times out of ten it
turned out that a healthy song could absorb plenty of new information,
that the element of change and surprise kept the audience engaged,
and that, once a successful addition was written, it was hard to
imagine the song had ever existed without it.
EPIC I
Hermes
Where’d you get that melody?
Orpheus
I don’t know—it came to me
As if I’d known it all along
Hermes
You have
It’s an old song
A song of love from long ago
Long time since I heard it, though
Orpheus
You’ve heard that melody before?
Hermes
Sure . . .
Orpheus
Tell me more
Hermes
Remember that tale I told you once?
About the gods?
Orpheus
Which ones?
Hermes
Hades and Persephone
Remember how it used to be
Their love that made the world go round?
Orpheus
Yeah, I remember now
But that was long ago
Hermes
Tell it again, though . . .
Orpheus
King of shadows, king of shades
Hades was king of the underworld
But he fell in love with a beautiful lady
Who walked up above in her mother’s green field
He fell in love with Persephone
Who was gathering flowers in the light of the sun
And he took her home to become his queen
Where the sun never shone on anyone . . .
Hermes
Go on . . .
Orpheus
The lady loved him and the kingdom they shared
But without her above, not one flower would grow
So King Hades agreed that for half of each year
She would stay with him there in the world down below
But the other half she could walk in the sun
And the sun in turn burned twice as bright
Which is where the seasons come from
And with them the cycle
Of the seed and the sickle
The lives of the people
And the birds in their flight . . .
Hermes
Singing . . .
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Hermes
Down below and up above
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Hermes
In harmony and rhythm
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Hermes
The gods sang a song of love
Orpheus
La la la la la la
Hermes
And the world sang it with them
But that was long ago
Before we were on this road
Notes on “Epic I”
Vermont
Brother, thus begins the tale of my epic struggle with the “Epics.”
These songs, called variously “Epic I,” “Epic II,” and “Epic III” (there
was also an “Epic 0” at one point, as well as an “Epic IV”), date back
to the second Vermont incarnation of Hadestown in 2007. The early
concept for me was that the songs were a chance for Orpheus to show
himself as a working poet and musician, something like a community
bard. They were called the “Epics” because they comprised a ranging,
narrative folk song about Hades, Persephone, and how the world came
to be the way it is. Fun fact: Orpheus’s mother is not just any muse;
she’s Calliope, the muse of epic poetry.
I unearthed this 2007 version of “Epic I”—at the time, it was the
very first song in the show, followed by “Way Down Hadestown.” It
made very little sense to anyone, coming at the top of the show, but
here it is in its entirety:
Orpheus: King of diamonds, king of spades! / First there was
Hades, king of the dirt / Miners of mines, diggers of graves / They
bowed down to Hades who gave them work / And they bowed
down to Hades who made them sweat / Who paid them their wages
and set them about / Digging and dredging and dragging the depths
/ Of the earth to turn its insides out / Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Then came Persephone, Hades’s wife / Our Lady of Shadows and
Meadows entwined / Made to spend half of the days of her life /
Right alongside of him down in the mine / But the other half she
could walk in the sun / And the sun in turn burned twice as bright /
Which is where the seasons come from / And with them the cycle /
Of the seed and the sickle / The lives of the people / And the birds
in their flight / Singing la la la la la la la . . .
So it was and it might have stayed / And the sun came up and the
sun went down / A circle of fourths, a perfect cadence / The
serpent’s tail in the serpent’s mouth / But the strong will take what
they want to take / And the weak can only tell the tale / And the
king began to lay his heavy hand upon the scale / What did he
want? He wanted Our Lady / To have and to hold, not half, but
wholly / To love him and never to leave him again / And as for the
seasons, to hell with them! / And the earth warmed over in the dead
of the winter / The stillborn spring lay cold beneath / Summer gave
a stormy sermon / Autumn walked in the wake with a wreath / And
the people moved like weather patterns / Looking for shelter,
looking for warmth / Helter-skelter the four winds scattered / The
scavengers over the ravaged earth / Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Off-Broadway
Off-Broadway, the scene and song looked like this:
Hermes: Orpheus and Eurydice
Eurydice: So, what’s your song about?
Hermes: They lived off of the land
Orpheus: It’s about the gods
Hermes: It was sometimes famine, sometimes feast / Depending on
the wind / Eurydice was a hungry young girl
Eurydice: Well, go on . . .
Hermes: Young and hungry as anything
Eurydice: Sing your song
Hermes: And Orpheus was a poor boy . . .
Orpheus: It’s not finished . . .
Eurydice: Sing it!
Hermes: Till he opened his mouth to sing . . .
Orpheus: Gather round, you vagabonds / Picking fruit and hopping
freights / And anyone who’s wandering / Wondering why the winds
have changed / I’ll sing a song of a love gone wrong / Between a
mighty king and queen / Gather round, I’ll sing the song / Of Hades
and Persephone
Queen of flowers, queen of fields / Queen of the green and growing
earth / Lady Persephone, half of the year / Was bound to stay down
in the underworld / But the other half she could walk in the sun . . .
And from there it resembled the Persephone verse from Vermont. In
fact, the main purpose of this radically shortened off-Broadway “Epic
I” was the introduction of Persephone. I was rightly cautioned that our
audience might not have Mythology 101 at the forefront of their
minds, and might therefore need a reminder about Persephone and the
six-months-above, six-months-below situation that was so essential to
our plot. At the end of the scene, when Orpheus trailed off, there was a
sweet exchange between the lovers. Eurydice, overcome by his music,
kissed Orpheus on the mouth. “That’s good!” she exclaimed (referring
to the song, but maybe also the kiss). “It’s not finished,” he said, and
he kissed her again . . .
Edmonton
In Edmonton, there was no “Epic I” at all. Instead, I put some of the
Mythology 101 into a new intro for “Livin’ It Up on Top” (an intro
that only ever appeared in Edmonton). But skipping “Epic I” felt
wrong to me. It was a missed opportunity to explore Orpheus’s gifts as
a poet and falsetto singer, but it was also musically unsatisfying to go
from the up-tempo, major / bluesy “Wedding Song” directly into the
up-tempo, major / bluesy “Livin’ It Up on Top.” I missed the mystical
modal palate cleanser of “Epic I,” however brief.
London & Broadway
“Epic I” reappeared in London, along with a version of the intro and
outro recitative exchange with Hermes that moved on to Broadway.
That new exchange: Where’d you get that melody? / I don’t know—it
came to me was a revelation. From their earliest incarnation, the
“Epics” had this haunting wordless la la refrain that switches from
minor to major and back again. It was the first musical fragment that
came to me in the writing of the “Epics,” and I thought of it like any
old folk ballad with a nonverbal “nonsense” refrain (a lot of the old,
long ballads have these because they give the singer a chance to
remember the lyrics of the next verse). But the question came: What
did those la las mean, if anything? Just before London, I stumbled
upon the idea that the refrain was a melody Orpheus had channeled
from the gods themselves—the forgotten love song of Hades and
Persephone—a gift for Orpheus to deliver back into the underworld. I
found this idea endlessly mythically rich, and it went a long way
toward answering the question “What’s so special about Orpheus?” in
a sung-through musical in which every character is a great singer. But
shifting the spotlight to those la la choruses came at a price, because it
fundamentally changed what was required from the “Epic” verses I’d
labored over for years.
Just before I discovered the Where’d you get that melody?
exchange, I wrote the following intro for Hermes as a way of
contextualizing “Epic I.” I can remember André De Shields singing
these words in a workshop, and I’m not sure why, but they still make
me cry. It has to do with how many times I rewrote the “Epics,” and
still, they never felt finished. It has to do with artists the whole world
over, restlessly pursuing their work:
Hermes: Orpheus was a poor boy / But he had a gift to give us /
There was one song he’d been working on / He could never seem to
finish / A song about this broken world / That he rewrote again and
again / As though if he could find the words / He could fix the
world with them.
LIVIN’ IT UP ON TOP
Hermes
And on the road to hell there was a lot of waiting
Company
Mmmm . . .
Waiting . . .
Hermes
Everybody waiting on a train
Company
Mmmm . . .
Waiting on the lady with the . . .
Hermes
Waiting on that train to bring that lady
Company
Mmmm . . .
Lady . . .
Hermes
With the suitcase back again
She’s never early, always late
Company
Waiting . . . Waiting . . .
Hermes
These days she never stays for long
But good things come to those who wait
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
Here she comes!
Persephone
Well, it’s like he said, I’m an outdoor girl
Hermes
And you’re late again!
Persephone
Married to the king of the underworld
Hermes
She forgot a little thing called “spring”!
Persephone
Are you wondering where I been?
Workers
Yeah!
Where you been?
I’m wondering
Persephone
Been to hell and back again
But like my mama always said:
Brother, when you’re down, you’re down
And when you’re up, you’re up
If you ain’t six feet underground
You’re living it up on top!
Let’s not talk about hard times!
Pour the wine!
It’s summertime!
And right now we’re livin’ it
Company
How are we livin’ it?
Persephone
Livin’ it—livin’ it up
Brother, right here we’re livin’ it
Company
Where are we livin’ it?
Persephone
Livin’ it up on top!
Who makes the summer sun shine bright?
That’s right! Persephone!
Who makes the fruit of the vine get ripe?
Company
Persephone!
Persephone
That’s me!
Who makes the flowers bloom again
In spite of her man?
Company
You do!
Persephone
Who is doing the best she can?
Persephone, that’s who
Now some may say the weather ain’t the way it used to be
But let me tell you something that my mama said to me:
You take what you can get
And you make the most of it
So right now we’re livin’ it
Company
How are we livin’ it?
Persephone
Livin’ it—livin’ it up
Brother, right here we’re livin’ it
Company
Where are we livin’ it?
Persephone
Livin’ it up on top!
Hermes
It was summertime on the road to hell!
Fates
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
There was a girl who had always run away
Fates
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
You might say that it was in spite of herself
Fates
Mmm-mmm-mmm (like “tsk-tsk-tsk”)
Hermes
That this young girl decided to stay
There was a poor boy with a lyre!
Persephone
Who says times are hard?
Hermes
The flowers bloomed, the fruit got ripe
And brother, for a moment there . . .
Persephone
Anybody want a drink?
Hermes
The world came back to life!
Persephone
Up on top we ain’t got much, but we’re
Company
Livin’ it—livin’ it up
Persephone
Just enough to fill our cups
Company
Livin’ it up on top!
Persephone
Brother, pass that bottle around, cos we’re
Company
Livin’ it—livin’ it up
Hermes
Let the poet bless this round!
Orpheus
To the patroness of all of this: Persephone!
Hermes
Hear, hear!
Workers
Hear, hear!
Orpheus
Who has finally returned to us
With wine enough to share
Asking nothing in return
’Cept that we should live and learn
To live as brothers in this life
And to trust she will provide
Workers
Alright!
Orpheus
And if no one takes too much
There will always be enough
She will always fill our cups
Persephone
I will!
Orpheus
And we will always raise ’em up
To the world we dream about!
And the one we live in now . . .
Cos right now we’re livin’ it
Company
How are we livin’ it?
Orpheus
Livin it’—livin’ it up
Brother, right here we’re livin’ it
Company
Where are we livin’ it?
Orpheus
Listen here, I’ll tell you where we’re livin’ it
Up on top!
Company
Up on top!
Orpheus
Livin’ it up and we ain’t gonna stop!
Livin’ it, livin’ it
Company
Livin’ it, livin’ it
Orpheus
How are we livin’ it?
Company
Where are we livin’ it?
Orpheus
Livin’ it, livin’ it
Company
Livin’ it, livin’ it
Livin’ it up on top!
Notes on “Livin’ It Up on Top”
Off-Broadway
We had done one or two residencies and workshops with NYTW
when Rachel, Mara, and I sat down to dinner with its artistic director,
Jim Nicola. He was running late to the restaurant and I’d had a certain
amount of wine on an empty stomach before he arrived. We were all
really hoping Jim would say he was ready to give us a production, but
his headline was: “The show’s not ready.” He gave all kinds of
intelligent feedback that I probably couldn’t hear at the time, but the
really tough blow was—in his opinion, the show was “missing a first
act.” We had a mindless industrial world below, and an apocalyptic
world of poverty above, but there wasn’t a lot of indication of the joy
of the aboveground world. There wasn’t a lot for the audience to
imagine the lovers walking back to in their final ascent. My frustration
was peaking with the wine and Rachel asked if I should take a walk to
the ladies’ room. I hotly protested the idea that we were “missing an
act” but I said I would “maybe write one or two more songs” that
could paint a picture of a season of joyful togetherness for our young
lovers aboveground. Those songs turned out to be “Livin’ It Up on
Top” and “All I’ve Ever Known.”
I took a few early stabs at this “season of love” (Rent again!) with
different musical accompaniment. One attempt, which never even
made it into a workshop, was meant to encompass the stories of
Persephone and Eurydice in tandem. It went like this:
Persephone: A hundred sunny summer days / Till my lover comes
to find me / A hundred blooming olive trees / And a hundred
grapevines climbing / Singing songs when the sun goes down /
Light the fire in the darkness / Brother, pass that bottle around /
And we’ll raise a glass to the harvest, it’s / Just enough fruit for the
pressing / Just enough wine to fill our cups / But what we have is a
blessing / It isn’t much, but it’s enough
Eurydice: A hundred starry summer nights / Since my lover came
and found me / Picking fruit and hopping freights / With his music
all around me / Stay up late making love / All the stars are naked /
Talking sweet and sleeping rough / Our bed is where we make it,
there’s / Just enough fruit for the pressing . . .
The whole endeavor felt not “in-the-moment” enough for the
dramatic world I was suddenly getting a crash course in. It also
became clear that the two women needed separate songs, and that
pacing-wise, we needed more time to feel a progression from, as Louis
Armstrong sings, the bright blessed day to the dark sacred night. But
many images from that early attempt found a home in the song that
became “Livin’ It Up on Top.” Persephone’s off-Broadway text went:
Persephone: Well, it’s like he said, I’m a outdoor girl / Married to
the king of the underworld / Trying to enjoy myself / Six months
out of every twelve / When the sun is high, brother, so am I /
Drinking dandelion wine / Brother, I’m as free as a honeybee / In a
summertime frame of mind / When my man comes around / Oh I
know he’s gonna bring me down / But for now I’m livin’ it . . .
I remember it was important to me at the time that the first
Persephone verse “feel yellow” rather than red—the sun, the
dandelion, the honeybee. This was an instinct I couldn’t explain, but it
may have been an attempt to indicate the early as well as the late
stages of spring and summer, a gradual ripening. “Livin’ It Up on
Top” always carried with it a sense of montage, as if the scene
constituted both one day and night and a hundred days and nights.
Our Orpheus in those days was a bold counterculturalist, and in the
second verse he launched in with his worldview:
Orpheus: Now why would a man of his own free will
Hermes: He’s talkin’ ’bout your man!
Orpheus: Go to work all day in the mine and the mill?
Persephone: You think I give a damn?
Orpheus: Why would he trade the sunshine
Persephone: Tell ’em how it is, brother
Orpheus: For a coupla nickels and dimes? / Up on top a man can
breathe, when he’s / (Company: Livin’ it . . . etc.) / Orpheus:
Picking fruit in the orchard trees / No one here is a millionaire, but
we’re / (Company: Livin’ it . . . etc.) / Orpheus: What we have, we
have to share / Brother, give me a lyre and a campfire / And a open
field at night / Give me the sky that you can’t buy / Or sell at any
price / And I’ll give you a song for free / Cos that’s how life
oughtta be / So that’s how I’m livin’ it . . .
The Orpheus verse was followed by a narrative Hermes interlude,
which underwent many rewrites, but always served the same function:
to indicate the passage of time, and to launch the dance break. Then
came the final Persephone verse and the Orpheus toast, which
appeared in many forms, but came full circle; the Broadway and offBroadway versions are quite similar.
I did make one controversial change to the culmination of
Orpheus’s toast. At NYTW, Damon Daunno as Orpheus declared, all
in one breath: Let the world we dream about be the one we live in
now! Even back then, I was leaning toward the version of the line that
has appeared in every other production: To the world we dream about!
And the one we live in now . . . I tried to push the change through in
previews but by the time I suggested it a lot of people were attached to
the simple, breathless phrasing of the old line. To me, the new line
spoke more genuinely, less like a “Hallmark” phrase, and was
important to the “darkening” of “Livin’ It Up on Top,” which became
a project over the next few productions. But there are two camps here,
and strong feelings: I’ve seen one or the other version of the toast
tattooed on people’s bodies . . .
Edmonton
I started trying to temper the “joyful togetherness” of “Livin’ It Up”
right after NYTW for two reasons. One, the song felt thematically and
emotionally abrupt; I wanted to maintain an aboveground world of
hardship we could forgive Eurydice for wanting to escape, and
suddenly Persephone arrived and everyone was having a great party
without a care in the world! Two, I fell out of love with my offBroadway rhyme scheme. That singsongy patterned internal rhyming
in the verses, like I’m as free / As a honeybee started to feel too sunny
and “music-theater-ish” to me. Too “yellow,” maybe! I wanted the
whole song a few clicks “darker.”
There was no “Epic I” in Edmonton, so we had to bridge the gap
between “Wedding Song” and “Livin’ It Up” some other way. This
was the first incarnation of the Hermes intro to “Livin’ It Up”—what
eventually became: And on the road to hell there was a lot of
waiting . . . .
Hermes: Well, the boy said spring was on the way
Orpheus: Any day
Hermes: But it seemed like this year, she was late
Orpheus: Just wait
Hermes: It’s a long way from the underworld / And her train had
been delayed / By her husband, Mister Hades / Who we’ll get to
down the line / Cos he does not care for the open air / Or the glare
of the sunshine / And when you see that train a-comin’ / She is
brighter than the sun / Shield your eyes now, brother! / Here she
comes!
(Persephone: Well, it’s like he said . . .)
The rest of the song was similar to the off-Broadway version, but in
Edmonton the narrative Hermes interlude foregrounded our newly
embodied Workers Chorus:
Hermes: And that is how the summer went!
Persephone: Oh, I’m just getting started
Hermes: The grape got heavy on the vine
Persephone: Who says times are hard?
Hermes: And the workers brought the harvest in
Persephone: Anybody want a drink?
Hermes: And turned it into wine . . .
This launched a joyful, much-expanded choreographic breakdown
from choreographer David Neumann. The dance stayed, the grapes did
not.
London
In every version of the song before Broadway, Persephone came out
swingin’ with her first verse and chorus, and the second verse
belonged to Orpheus. But I struggled mightily to write a verse for him
that felt authentic. I remember miserably hunting for a new Orpheus
verse in my little flat in London. At the National Theatre only, he
sang:
Orpheus: Up on top, times might be hard / But we’re livin’ it—
livin’ it up / Cos we got our beating hearts / And we’re living it up
on top / We got breath inside our lungs, and we’re
Orpheus & Chorus: Livin’ it—livin’ it up
Orpheus: Gonna spend it singing songs
Orpheus & Chorus: Livin’ it up on top!
Orpheus: Brother, we’re gonna sing together / Gonna let the music
play / We’re gonna get this band to blow the hard times all away /
Cos the winter days were long / But this summer night is young! /
And right now we’re livin’ it . . .
Broadway
In the course of the big Orpheus shift between London and Broadway,
I realized that perhaps the reason it had been so hard to write
believable material for him in “Livin’ It Up on Top” was that it was
out of character for him to sing in that number, unbidden. He felt
much more welcome once he’d been called upon to deliver the toast.
For Broadway, I replaced the Orpheus verse with another Persephone
verse (Who makes the summer sun shine bright? / That’s right!
Persephone!), and the song became a full-on diva number for Amber
Gray.
I was still exploring language for Orpheus’s final toast to
Persephone, though. I’d written a “darker” toast for London, so that
instead of blithe gratitude for The sunshine and the fruit of the vine she
gives us every year, he indicated that all was not as it should be: May
she stay awhile this time . . . For Broadway I went even further with
the idea:
Orpheus: To the patroness of all of this: / Persephone! / (Hear,
hear!)
Who has finally returned to us with wine enough to share
So let no one go without / Let us pour the last drop out
In every cup, in every hand / So if hard times come again, then
We can all recall the taste / Of this wine, this time and place
And the way that it tastes better / When we drink of it together
And if no one takes too much . . .
I really loved that language! But the fact was, it was too long.
Producer Tom Kirdahy said so very simply at a postproduction
meeting at Hurley’s Saloon on Forty-Eighth Street, and he was right.
So the Orpheus toast came full circle—the text on Broadway is very
similar to what audiences heard off-Broadway in 2016.
ALL I’VE EVER KNOWN
Hermes
Orpheus was a poor boy
But he had a gift to give
He could make you see how the world could be
In spite of the way that it is
And Eurydice was a young girl
But she’d seen how the world was
When she fell, she fell in spite of herself
In love with Orpheus
Eurydice
I was alone so long
I didn’t even know that I was lonely
Out in the cold so long
I didn’t even know that I was cold
Turn my collar to the wind
This is how it’s always been
All I’ve ever known is how to hold my own
All I’ve ever known is how to hold my own
But now I wanna hold you, too
You take me in your arms
And suddenly there’s sunlight all around me
Everything bright and warm
And shining like it never did before
And for a moment I forget
Just how dark and cold it gets
All I’ve ever known is how to hold my own
All I’ve ever known is how to hold my own
But now I wanna hold you
Now I wanna hold you
Hold you close
I don’t wanna ever have to let you go
Now I wanna hold you
Hold you tight
I don’t wanna go back to the lonely life
Orpheus
I don’t know how or why
Or who am I that I should get to hold you
But when I saw you all alone against the sky
It’s like I’d known you all along
I knew you before we met
And I don’t even know you yet
All I know’s you’re someone I have always known
Orpheus & Eurydice
All I know’s you’re someone I have always known
And I don’t even know you
Now I wanna hold you
Hold you close
I don’t wanna ever have to let you go
Eurydice
Suddenly there’s sunlight, bright and warm
Orpheus
Suddenly I’m holding the world in my arms
Eurydice
Say that you’ll hold me forever
Say that the wind won’t change on us
Say that we’ll stay with each other
And it will always be like this
Orpheus
I’m gonna hold you forever
The wind will never change on us
Long as we stay with each other
Orpheus & Eurydice
Then it will always be like this
Notes on “All I’ve Ever Known”
Off-Broadway
I can remember the chorus of “All I’ve Ever Known” coming to me in
a half-sleeping, half-waking nap state in bed. We were living in
Vermont then and the sun fell on our floral bedroom wallpaper in
stripes. That liminal nap state can be so fruitful creatively; many times
Rachel would wake up from a nap with some fresh dramaturgical
insight or staging idea. “All I’ve Ever Known” was the second of the
two “missing act” songs from the Jim Nicola dinner. It was, at first, a
Eurydice feature—the NYTW version of the song was all hers, with
the exception of Orpheus’s I’m gonna hold you forever vows at the
very end.
The song was satisfying to me because it honored Eurydice’s
toughness and vulnerability at the same time. I loved it structurally,
but it made for a confusing scene because it was like—is this a
soliloquy, or is Eurydice singing to Orpheus? Does he hear her? And if
so, why doesn’t he respond?
Edmonton
The Edmonton version of the song was the same, but it was preceded
by instrumental music underscoring Hermes’s In spite of herself . . .
intro and accompanying a stylized, choreographed lovemaking scene
between Orpheus and Eurydice. I added the lovemaking in response to
the off-Broadway note that our young lovers seemed . . . young. Their
relationship felt juvenile, the stakes weren’t high enough. In
Edmonton it also happened that Orpheus fell asleep post-coitus
(men!), so Eurydice could then sing the entirety of “All I’ve Ever
Known” to his sleeping form and only wake him for the final outro
vows. It’s probably obvious, but the melody of the outro vows is a
foreshadowing of Promises.
London
I’m sure others had suggested it, but when Reeve Carney said in
London that he wished Orpheus had a moment where he could
genuinely express his love for Eurydice in the first act, it suddenly
seemed crystal clear that it had to happen in “All I’ve Ever Known.” I
couldn’t bear to touch the Eurydice lines, so I tacked on an extra verse
and chorus for Orpheus. I knew you before we met / And I don’t even
know you yet was a little gift from the gods, and that couplet pointed
the way to Orpheus’s inversion of the chorus: All I know’s you’re
someone I have always known / And I don’t even know you. Cosmic
love!
In London, our more gregarious Orpheus sang: I never walked
alone / Always had a crowd to gather round me. This idea was one
we’d toyed with for a long time: that the source of Orpheus’s power is
his audience, his communion with others. He sings, and the world
sings back. Faced with the final trial of walking and singing alone, he
fails, because his faith never resided within him to begin with. But the
Always had a crowd line had a self-aggrandizing tone that had to go in
the big Orpheus rewrite, so I arrived at I don’t know how or why / Or
who am I that I should get to hold you. That humility was more
endearing, and I was also becoming obsessed with the idea of Orpheus
repeating the language of his own love story in his description of the
love story of Hades (in “Epic III,” he sings: You didn’t know how / And
you didn’t know why / But you knew that you wanted to take her
home). I found myself very moved any time Orpheus connected his
own experience with that of Hades. That’s where the parallel lines
Suddenly I’m holding the world in my arms and It was like you were
holding the world when you held her came from, and these didn’t
appear until Broadway.
Still, the London duet version of “All I’ve Ever Known” was a
revelation. For the first time, the lovers sang together in harmony in
the first act (“Wedding Song” is mostly back-and-forth banter). I loved
the new structure, but Rachel began to despair about the staging of it,
and the reason was this: The song had accumulated length. Orpheus
was now wide awake and fully engaging with Eurydice, but the
lovemaking was over and done with before the singing even began. As
Rachel put it, all the tension had gone out of the scene.
Broadway
For Broadway, I moved the instrumental interlude (and the
lovemaking) close to the end of the song—just before the outro vows.
There was one little moment that made tears spring to my eyes many
times. It wasn’t a lyrical moment, but it seemed to unconsciously tap
into many of the show’s old and discarded lyrics. It was a brief
choreographic / staging moment, after the lovemaking, when the
lovers lay on their backs side by side, holding hands and looking up at
the sky. At the stars. It reminded me of how the stars had played such
an important role in the early Vermont version of the show, with the
Fates naming the constellations, and the idea of our destinies being
“written in the stars.” And it moved me, I think, because of the
knowledge of where our lovers were headed: a world without stars.
WAY DOWN HADESTOWN
Hermes
On the road to hell there was a railroad track
Company
Mmmm . . .
Persephone
Oh, come on!
Hermes
There was a train coming up from way down below
Company
Mmmm . . .
Persephone
That was not six months!
Fates
Better go get your suitcase packed
Guess it’s time to go . . .
Hermes
She’s gonna ride that train
Company
Ride that train!
Hermes
She’s gonna ride that train
Company
She’ll ride that train!
Hermes
She’s gonna ride that train to the end of the line
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
Cos the king of the mine is a-comin’ to call
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
Did you ever wonder what it’s like?
On the underside
Company
Way down under
Hermes
On the yonder side
Company
Way down yonder
Hermes
On the other side of his wall?
Follow that dollar for a long way down
Far away from the poorhouse door
You either get to hell or to Hadestown
Ain’t no difference anymore
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Hound dog howl and the whistle blow
Train come a-rollin’ clickety-clack
Everybody tryna get a ticket to go
But those who go, they don’t come back
They’re going
Hermes & Company
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Persephone
Winter’s nigh and summer’s o’er
Hear that high and lonesome sound
Of my husband coming for
To bring me home to Hadestown
Company
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Persephone
Down there it’s a buncha stiffs!
Brother, I’ll be bored to death
Gonna have to import some stuff
Just to entertain myself
Give me morphine in a tin!
Give me a crate of the fruit of the vine
Takes a lot of medicine
To make it through the wintertime
Company
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Fates
Every little penny in the wishing well
Every little nickel on the drum
Workers
On the drum!
Fates
All them shiny little heads and tails
Where do you think they come from?
Workers
They come from
Company
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Hermes
Everybody hungry, everybody tired
Everybody slaves by the sweat of his brow
The wage is nothing and the work is hard
It’s a graveyard in Hadestown
Company
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Hermes
Mister Hades is a mean old boss
Persephone
With a silver whistle and a golden scale
Company
An eye for an eye!
Hermes
And he weighs the cost
Company
A lie for a lie!
Hermes
And your soul for sale!
Company
Sold!
Persephone
To the king on the chromium throne
Company
Thrown!
Persephone
To the bottom of a sing-sing cell
Hermes
Where the little wheel squeal and the big wheel groan
Persephone
And you better forget about your wishing well
Company
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Hermes
On the road to hell there was a railroad car
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
And the car door opened and a man stepped out
Company
Mmmm . . .
Hermes
Everybody looked and everybody saw
It was the same man they’d been singin’ about
Persephone
You’re early
Hades
I missed you
Fates
Mr. Hades is a mighty king
Must be making some mighty big deals
Seems like he owns everything
Eurydice
Kinda makes you wonder how it feels . . .
Hermes
All aboard!
A one, a two, a one, two, three, four!
Company
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground!
Way down under the ground!
Way down under the . . . ground!
Notes on “Way Down Hadestown”
Vermont
The music and the first few lines of this song came to me well before
the show was a gleam in my eye. I was twenty-one years old, on a
brief hiatus from college and living in Austin, Texas, with my then
boyfriend, now husband, Noah. I was frustrated that I hadn’t written
anything new in a long time and I told N I was going in the bathroom
with my guitar and not to let me out until I had written something,
anything, at least two verses. We had recently made a bus trip to
Mexico and I’d been shocked by the poverty I’d seen crossing the
border at Juárez. We were also in the thick of George W. Bush’s “War
on Terror” and I had just served cocktails to some climate change–
denying oil lobbyists at the bar on Sixth Street where I was
waitressing. I came out of the bathroom with this:
Follow that dollar for a long way down / Far away from the
poorhouse door / You either get to hell or a border town / Ain’t no
difference anymore . . .
Suckin’ on the gristle and chewin’ on the bone / Thinkin’ ’bout
missiles and the old Dow Jones / All alone on your chromium
throne / And lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely . . .
When I began working on the show in earnest in 2006, I repurposed
that melody and some of the language, started writing verses, and
threw this word in the choruses: Hadestown. Until then, the piece’s
working title had been “A Crack in the Wall,” and the new title
Hadestown appeared like a bolt of lightning. The first version of the
song included many of the verses that survive today, as well as the
following, which fell by the wayside:
Persephone: Though I’m happy at his side / He’s not an easy man
to love / I used to keep him satisfied / But lately he can’t get
enough / Never enough of the mine and the mill / Never enough of
his working girls / Never enough of the wall he’s building / All
around the underworld / Way down Hadestown . . .
Orpheus: Mr. Hades is slick as an eel / Fountain pen, crocodile
shoes / Quick as a snake, and he’s hot on your heels / He’ll make
you an offer that you can’t refuse! / Way down Hadestown . . .
Hermes: Speak of the devil and the devil comes / Here comes
Mister Hades now / To gather up his chosen ones / And bring ’em
down to Hadestown / Way down Hadestown . . .
In the second Vermont incarnation of Hadestown in 2007, director /
designer Ben Matchstick and I both got excited about the idea of
Hermes as a “coyote” figure, vaguely in the employ of Hades himself.
That year Hermes, played by Ben himself, launched the song with a
pitch:
Hermes: Make room, make room for Hermes, sir! / Make a little
room for Hermes, ma’am / They call me a messenger / But that
ain’t half of who I am
I’m a man of influence / I’m connected up and down / And I got all
the documents / You need to get to Hadestown / Way down
Hadestown . . .
Tired of walking in your worn-out shoes? / Tired of running on
nothing at all? / Tired of standing your bets to lose? / Tired of
losing? Give me a call, we’ll go . . . / Way down Hadestown . . .
So Hermes was on Team Hades in this version of the song, and he
clashed with anti-establishment Orpheus:
Orpheus: Mister Hades got an iron fist / Step outta line and he’ll
have your head / In the blink of an eye, with a flick of the wrist
Hermes: Hang around here and starve instead!
Orpheus: It’s a cattle pen!
Hermes: It’s a feeding trough!
Orpheus: He’ll fatten you up just to cut you down! / I’d rather
starve
Hermes: I’d rather stuff my pockets down in Hadestown! / Way
down Hadestown . . .
Off-Broadway & Edmonton
For the 2010 studio recording I boiled the song down to what felt most
essential and allowed us to hear from the major players. OffBroadway and Edmonton took the album as a jumping-off place, but I
put in two new Persephone verses: Down there it’s a buncha stiffs! and
Give me morphine in a tin. The morphine line was inspired by Utah
Phillips’s “Miner’s Lullaby,” a song I discovered via Steve Earle.
Apparently, at some point in American history, coal miners had a
(secret) practice of bringing a tin of morphine with them down the
shaft, in case of a cave-in or a flood—to numb their pain and panic, or
to take the end of their lives into their own hands. I was haunted by
this image from the moment I encountered it.
Jim Nicola said something to me in his NYTW office that sticks
with me to this day. He was eating a sandwich and said something
like, “Poetry is me bearing witness to the sandwich, expounding upon
the beauty of the sandwich. Drama is me actually eating the sandwich,
right here and now, in front of an audience.” That idea spoke volumes
and led to many moments like Hermes’s: And the car door opened and
a man stepped out . . . interlude in “Way Down Hadestown,” which
hails the arrival of Hades aboveground. The moment was electrifying
because, after many verses of “poetry” about Hades, we were treated
to the “drama” of the man himself, appearing before our eyes,
exchanging words with his wife. The challenge of rewriting
Hadestown was often the challenge of “opening a door” in the train of
the poetry so that a character could “step out.”
I credit Rachel with these lines from that same moment: You’re
early / I missed you! She threw them out casually in a dramaturgy
meeting as the kind of thing our troubled gods might say to each other,
and they were, in fact, the exact five words the moment required. A
favorite dramaturgical phrase of Rachel’s is to “hang a lantern” on
something—to draw the audience’s attention, either verbally or
visually, to some aspect of the storytelling. We often found that in a
sung-through musical, lulled by melody and rhyme, the audience is
liable to miss critical information. To “hang a lantern” sometimes
required the snappy change of pace of a spoken exchange.
London
Orpheus had always been engaged as a naysayer in the “Way Down
Hadestown” debate, but in London, we took him out of the song
entirely. Lines that had belonged to him for more than a decade (like
Everybody hungry, everybody tired . . .) were reassigned to Hermes
and Persephone. This was Ken’s suggestion, and it made a lot of sense
to me. If Orpheus knew everything there was to know about Hades
and Hadestown from the getgo, it didn’t leave a lot of room for
discovery. It was more satisfying to witness his education and
radicalization in real time.
Broadway
For Broadway, I expanded the intro of “Way Down Hadestown” to
include the lines about the underside, yonder side, and other side of
the wall. I was trying to address a note that had come from Nevin
Steinberg (sound designer). He wondered, was there a way to “hang a
lantern” on the existence of “the wall” somewhere early in the act, so
it wouldn’t come as a complete surprise? I hung the heaviest lantern I
could in an even longer version of the intro that continued:
Hermes: On the underside / On the yonder side / On the other side
of his wall!
Workers: What wall?
Hermes: The one he’s building all around his town
Workers: What town?
Hermes: Hadestown! Way down under the ground . . .
Follow that dollar . . .
I really dug it, and Team Music (Michael, Todd, Liam, and their
associates and assistants) spoke about it as a “Cab Calloway” big band
moment, but to others in the room, including producers, director, and
associate director, it was an act of spoon-feeding the audience. Also, it
further extended our already-extended intro, so I let it go. Still, the
song was now feeling long, and this came up in previews. Something
had to go, so I chose (with a bit of sorrow) to cut a verse that had been
with us since 2006:
Fates: Everybody dresses in clothes so fine / Everybody’s pockets
are weighted down / Everybody sipping ambrosia wine / In a gold
mine in Hadestown.
A GATHERING STORM
Fates
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh
Hermes
With Persephone gone, the cold came on
Orpheus
He came too soon
He came for her too soon
It’s not supposed to be like this
Eurydice
Well, till someone brings the world back into tune
This is how it is
Hermes
Orpheus had a gift to give
Eurydice
Hey—where you going?
Hermes
Touched by the gods is what he was
Orpheus
I have to finish the song
Eurydice
Finish it quick
The wind is changing
There’s a storm coming on
Fates
Wind comes up, ooooh
Eurydice
We need food
Fates
Wind comes up, ooooh
Eurydice
We need firewood
Hermes
Orpheus and Eurydice
Eurydice
Did you hear me, Orpheus?
Hermes
Poor boy working on a song
Eurydice
Orpheus!
Hermes
Young girl looking for something to eat
Eurydice
Okay
Finish it
Hermes
Under a gathering storm . . .
Notes on “A Gathering Storm”
Off-Broadway
The first version of “A Gathering Storm” was called “Wind Theme
(‘I’m Working’).” It was while working on this scene that I realized I
could intercut Hermes’s narration with dialogue lines from the
characters, which became an important storytelling tool. OffBroadway, it went like this:
Fates: Ooooh / Ooooh / Ooooh / Ooooh
Hermes: With Persephone gone, the cold came on
Eurydice: Do you hear that?
Orpheus: Hear what?
Eurydice: The wind / It’s changing / Winter’s coming on
Hermes: With Persephone gone, the nights grew long
Eurydice: We have work to do
Hermes: And the days grew short and dark and cold
Orpheus: I’m working on my song
Eurydice: Well, find me when you’re finished
Orpheus: I’ll be there in a minute
Hermes: And young love, too, grew old . . .
I loved the economy of this early version, especially that
foreboding last line. The problem was, this was a version of the scene
that made us hate Orpheus, because I’m working on my song came
across as selfish and petulant. Also, this version didn’t get at the idea
that the weather was out of whack; it described a natural cycle of
seasons.
Edmonton
Edmonton was a low point for the scene. I’m including this version
even though it embarrasses me! Many times these narration / dialogue
scenes became the place where I tried to address many dramaturgical
notes at once, since they seemed structurally more flexible than songs.
That made them dangerously ungainly in the realm of poetry. The
Citadel version began like the NYTW one, but when Eurydice
remarked, “the wind is changing,” Orpheus replied:
Orpheus: It’s fall / It’s fall, that’s all
Hermes: Cold came on and the wind came up
Eurydice: Everybody else is leaving
Hermes: Wind came up and the clouds blew in
Eurydice: Orpheus, we should go
Hermes: Clouds blew in and the pressure dropped
Orpheus: Why?
Eurydice: Look at the sky!
Orpheus: Eurydice . . . This is my home
Fates: Wind came up, ooooh
Orpheus: It’s your home too
Fates: Wind came up, ooooh
Orpheus: It’s me and you
Eurydice: So what do we do here all year long?
Orpheus: Well, I’m working on a song
Hermes: With Persephone gone, the cold came on
Eurydice: Well, it better be good
Hermes: But that ain’t all, brother, that ain’t all
Orpheus: It will be—when it’s done
Eurydice: I’m gonna go get some firewood
Hermes: Looks like the sky’s gonna fall
Eurydice: Finish the song
In that production, in an effort to bring into focus the Orpheus
character as well as the aboveground world (which people had found
pretty nebulous off-Broadway), we tried to paint Orpheus as
something like a Dust Bowl-era farm boy, deeply connected to the
land he called home and reluctant to leave in the face of a storm.
Eurydice and the Workers were migrant agricultural laborers, used to
coming and going according to the changing weather. But like the
famous Edmonton train tracks, my efforts to literalize the
aboveground world backfired. We encountered this push-and-pull
many times during the development of Hadestown. Dramaturgy
demanded clarity of focus for the characters and the world. We turned
the camera lens too far and suddenly the picture was too clear, too
focused to succeed at the level of poetry. So we pulled back, but
perhaps we’d made one or two discoveries that stuck. For example,
Eurydice’s Anybody got a match? / Give me that in “Any Way the
Wind Blows” is a residue of the exercise of imagining her as a migrant
agricultural worker. With so many lines on the cutting room floor,
those two turned out to be indispensable.
London & Broadway
The London version of this scene was similar to Broadway, story-beatwise. In both iterations, the premature disappearance of Persephone
prompts Orpheus to rededicate himself to his Epic. London Orpheus
was quite self-aware—a sleuth unraveling a mystery:
Hermes: Cold came on and the wind came up
Orpheus: It wasn’t always like this, though
Hermes: Wind came up and the clouds blew in
Orpheus: I think I know what’s wrong / Eurydice, I think I know
Eurydice: Know what?
Orpheus: How to finish the song
The delicacy of this moment over the years had everything to do
with the audience’s feelings about our young lovers. It was possible,
by the end of the scene, to wind up hating either Orpheus or Eurydice.
It’s the first inkling of trouble in their relationship. Eurydice has real,
physical needs: food, warmth, shelter. Orpheus is busy working on a
song that may or may not save the world, but either way, he isn’t
responding to Eurydice’s needs. If Orpheus came across as cavalier or
self-obsessed, we hated him. But if we absolved him completely—that
is, if he didn’t make an appreciable “mistake” of some kind—then we
hated Eurydice for abandoning him.
I remember a fascinating conversation with Reeve in London. He
was protesting a dismissive line from Orpheus in response to
Eurydice’s declaration that she was “going for food and firewood.”
Aside: that firewood line felt archetypally right in every incarnation of
the scene; there’s something so fairy-tale ominous about a character
saying they’re going for firewood, they’ll be right back . . . In any
case, both Reeve and I have had this experience as a songwriter:
you’re working on a song, but your lover / partner needs your help
with something. You express your annoyance at being interrupted in
the act of writing. Your lover / partner says, with unconcealed
resentment: “Fine, I’ll do it myself” and leaves you alone. Just what
you wanted! Except now you can’t write. You can’t put the incident
out of your mind. The notion that Orpheus could dismiss the love of
his life in one breath and return to the creative act in the next didn’t
ring true. In the lead-up to Broadway—when I began reframing
Orpheus as naive, otherworldly, touched by the gods—it suddenly
seemed natural that instead of ignoring Eurydice, Orpheus doesn’t
even hear her. He’s in his own world; he can’t really help it. We can’t
blame Orpheus for who and how he is, but we also can’t blame
Eurydice for leaving him.
EPIC II
Orpheus
King of silver, king of gold
And everything glittering under the ground
Hades is king of oil and coal
And the riches that flow where those rivers are found
But for half of the year, with Persephone gone
His loneliness moves in him, crude and black
He thinks of his wife in the arms of the sun
And jealousy fuels him
And feeds him, and fills him
With doubt that she’ll ever come
Dread that she’ll never come
Doubt that his lover will ever come back
King of mortar, king of bricks
The River Styx is a river of stones
And Hades lays them high and thick
With a million hands that are not his own
With a million hands he builds a wall
Around all of the riches he digs from the earth
The pick-axe flashes, the hammer falls
And crashing and pounding
His rivers surround him
And drown out the sound
Of the song he once heard:
La la la la la la la . . .
Notes on “Epic II”
Off-Broadway & Edmonton
Ever since the NYTW days, “Epic II” was a moment for Orpheus—
who has just witnessed firsthand the appearance of Hades and the
early disappearance of Persephone in “Way Down Hadestown”—to
rededicate himself to his song of how the world came to be this way.
The off-Broadway and Edmonton versions of “Epic II” were exact
replicas of the studio album’s “Epic I,” and went like this:
Orpheus: King of diamonds, king of spades / Hades was king of
the kingdom of dirt / Miners of mines, diggers of graves / They
bowed down to Hades who gave them work / And they bowed
down to Hades who made them sweat / Who paid them their wages
and set them about / Digging and dredging and dragging the depths
/ Of the earth to turn its insides out, singing / La la la la la la la . . .
King of mortar, king of bricks / The River Styx was a river of
stones / And Hades laid them high and thick / With a million hands
that were not his own / And a million feet that fell in line / And
stepped in time with Hades’ step / And a million minds that were
just one mind / Like stones in a row / And stone by stone / And row
by row / the river rose up, singing / La la la la la la la . . .
This was always my favorite for poetry. The stone by stone / row by
row lines were hard-won. I was stuck on that verse for weeks at home
in Vermont. I walked outside in despair, into the neighbor’s woods,
and the lines came while I walked. Ultimately, though, they didn’t
survive in the theater show, because once I reframed the la la melody
as the forgotten love song of the gods, it felt essential that their
meaning remain consistent. In the version above, the la las seem to
become the sound of the mindless workers, the song of Hades’s
compulsion—not the song that’s going to bring the world back into
tune.
London & Broadway
In an effort to give a consistent meaning to the choruses, I rewrote the
verses for London. There, they were similar to Broadway, with one
major distinction—they were written in the past tense. Ken, with his
dramaturgical focus on change and arc, had been craving more clarity
around “the way the world was” versus “the way the world is now.”
Bringing Orpheus’s present-day observations into the present tense, he
thought, would help with that. I resisted for a time because any tense
change messed with the rhymes, especially the internal ones. But I
saw Ken’s point, and for Broadway I made the switch.
I also tried for a long time to bring home an alternate version of the
first verse. If you saw the show on Broadway in early previews, you’d
have heard this on a few nights:
Orpheus: But for half of the year, with Persephone gone / In the
dark of the mine he is trying to fill / The hole that his lover has left
in his arms / With the silver and gold / He can have and hold / Not
half, but whole / All to himself
To me, it expressed an ineffable truth about Hades, compulsive
capitalism, the unslakable thirst for more. Hades’s separation from
Persephone—the woman he loves but can never fully possess—leaves
a hole in his heart. He tries to fill the hole with material wealth and
industry, but this is impossible. He is filling a hole that will never be
filled was a line I attempted in “Epic III,” and in fact this whole image
was meant to tie into a revised version of “Epic III” that I couldn’t
finish in time for opening night. I always found the “Epics”
exceedingly hard to write, because of the long lyric lines, the internal
rhymes, the metaphors, and above all, the pressure I felt for Orpheus
to be “the world’s greatest poet.” There were years of struggle with
these songs, and the beginning of every dramaturgical meeting went
like this: “Anaïs, what’s your priority?” Me: “Rewrite the ‘Epics.’”
Team Dramaturgy: “You know, the ‘Epics’ are fine, but you really
should look at (such and such) . . .”
CHANT
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head low (kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head low (kkh!)
If you wanna keep your head (huh! kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head low
Keep your head, keep your head low (kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head low (kkh!)
If you wanna keep your head (huh! kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head
Persephone
In the coldest time of year
Why is it so hot down here?
Hotter than a crucible
It ain’t right and it ain’t natural
Hades
Lover, you were gone so long
Lover, I was lonesome
So I built a foundry
In the ground beneath your feet
Here I fashioned things of steel
Oil drums and automobiles
And then I kept that furnace fed
With the fossils of the dead
Lover, when you feel that fire
Think of it as my desire
Think of it as my desire for you
Orpheus
La la, la la, la la la la la
La la, la la, la la la la la
Laaaaaaa, la la la la la
Laaaaaaa, la la la la la
La, la, la la la la la la
La la la la la la
La la la la la la
La la la la la la la . . .
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head low . . .
Eurydice (to Hermes)
Is it finished?
Hermes
Not yet
Eurydice
Is he always like this?
Looking high and looking low
For the food and firewood I know
We need to find and I am
Keeping one eye on the sky and
Trying to trust
That the song he’s working on is gonna
Shelter us
From the wind, the wind, the wind
Workers & Fates
Aooh! Kkh!
Aooh! Huh! Kkh!
Persephone
In the darkest time of year
Why is it so bright down here?
Brighter than a carnival
It ain’t right and it ain’t natural
Hades
Lover, you were gone so long
Lover, I was lonesome
So I laid a power grid
In the ground on which you stood
And wasn’t it electrifying?
When I made the neon shine
Silver screen, cathode ray
Brighter than the light of day
Lover, when you see that glare
Think of it as my despair
Think of it as my despair for you
Orpheus
They can’t find the tune
Hermes
Orpheus . . .
Orpheus
They can’t feel the rhythm
Hermes
Orpheus!
Orpheus
King Hades is deafened
By a river of stone
Hermes
Poor boy working on a song
Orpheus
And Lady Persephone’s blinded
By a river of wine
Living in an oblivion
Hermes
He did not see the storm coming on
Fates
Ooooh . . .
Orpheus
His black gold flows
In the world down below
And her dark clouds roll
In the one up above
Hermes
Look up!
Workers
Keep your head low . . .
Orpheus
And that is the reason we’re on this road
And the seasons are wrong
And the wind is so strong
That’s why times are so hard
It’s because of the gods
The gods have forgotten the song of their love!
Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head low . . .
Eurydice
Looking low and looking high
Fates
There is no food left to find
It’s hard enough to feed yourself
Let alone somebody else
Eurydice
I’m trying to believe
That the song he’s working on is gonna
Harbor me
From the wind, the wind, the wind
Fates
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh
Ooooh . . .
Hermes
Eurydice was a hungry young girl
Eurydice (to Fates)
Give that back!
Hermes
She was no stranger to the wind
Eurydice
It’s everything we have!
Hermes
But she had not seen nothing
Eurydice
Orpheus!
Hermes
Like the mighty storm she got caught in
Eurydice
Orpheus!!!
Shelter us!
Hermes
Only took a minute
Eurydice
Harbor me!
Hermes
But the wrath of the gods was in it
Persephone
Every year it’s getting worse
Hadestown, hell on earth!
Did you think I’d be impressed
With this neon necropolis?
Lover, what have you become?
Coal cars and oil drums
Warehouse walls and factory floors
I don’t know you anymore
And in the meantime up above
The harvest dies and people starve
Oceans rise and overflow
It ain’t right and it ain’t natural
Hades
Lover, everything I do
I do it for the love of you
If you don’t even want my love
I’ll give it to someone who does
Someone grateful for her fate
Someone who appreciates
The comforts of a gilded cage
And doesn’t try to fly away
The moment Mother Nature calls
Someone who could love these walls
That hold her close and keep her safe
And think of them as my embrace
Workers & Fates
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Orpheus
Singing la la la la la la la
Eurydice
Shelter us!
Hades
Think of them as my embrace
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Orpheus
La la la la la la
Eurydice
Harbor me!
Hades (to Eurydice)
Think of them as my embrace . . . of you
Notes on “Chant”
Off-Broadway
“Chant” was one of the first “new” songs I wrote for Hadestown after
the studio album era. At first it simply consisted of the chant itself
(Keep your head low) and the Hades and Persephone verses (In the
coldest time of year . . . / Lover, you were gone so long . . .), which
changed very little over the years. Rachel was excited early on by the
potential of both “Chant” and “Chant Reprise” to function as “set
pieces” that allowed us to check in with multiple characters at once
and feel their stories interlock, machinelike. At her urging, I added
interludes featuring Orpheus and Eurydice. It always felt right to me
for Orpheus and Eurydice to appear twice: he working on his song,
she progressively more frustrated as the weather worsens. The
language of those interludes, though, changed in every single
production we did. Off-Broadway, Orpheus spoke very briefly:
Orpheus: I’ll sing a song of a love gone wrong
Hermes: A love gone wrong, alright! Every year they had this
fight!
Orpheus: Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Orpheus: A mighty king, a mighty queen
Hermes: This year their fighting made the mightiest storm you ever
seen!
Orpheus: Singing la la la la la la la . . .
Eurydice’s interludes went like this:
Eurydice: Lover, while you sing your song / Winter is a-comin’ on
/ See, I’m stacking firewood / See, I’m putting by some food /
Orpheus! / All the pretty songs you sing ain’t gonna / Shelter us! /
From the wind, the wind, the wind
Eurydice: While my lover sings his song / Everything I’ve saved is
gone / Nothing left up on the shelf / Fire ain’t gonna light itself /
Now I see / All the pretty songs he sings ain’t gonna / Harbor me /
From the wind, the wind, the wind
Off-Broadway, the “storm” sequence was wordless, but featured the
Fates singing a wind-swept oooh melody and performing what Rachel
and David called, in every incarnation, the “Coat Ballet”—a sequence
in which the Fates embody the elements, stripping Eurydice of her
coat and belongings.
Edmonton
At the Citadel, Orpheus’s interludes remained unchanged, but I took
Eurydice’s back to the drawing board. Team Dramaturgy would often
ask, seder-style: “What makes this day (or season, or year) different
from all others?” In Edmonton, I wanted to make it explicit that what
we were dealing with aboveground was not merely a change of
seasons, but a climate in chaos. So while our off-Broadway Eurydice
sang of preparing for winter, our Edmonton Eurydice described
unnatural weather events:
Eurydice: Lover, do you hear that sound? / Now the wind is all
around
Spinning every weathervane / You said it would never change . . .
Eurydice: Lover, can you hear me now? / Answer if you can
somehow
Orpheus, in all my years / Never seen a storm like this . . .
The storm sequence itself still felt abstract, so I added the detailed
narration by Hermes that culminates in: Only took a minute / But the
wrath of the gods was in it!
London
In London I put Orpheus’s interludes on the table. I was trying to
illustrate—with many stanzas of language—the poet hard at work on
his “Epic.” His first London interlude went like this:
Orpheus: He put trains on the tracks, grease on the skids / Smoke
in the stacks of his factories / But whatever he did, he could never
be rid / Of the doubt and the dread that his lover would leave / In
the back of his mind was an engine that whined / Ringing in the
king’s ears, spinning wheels, grinding gears / Till he fell out of tune
and he fell out of time / With the song he once knew but could no
longer hear / Singing la la la la la la la . . .
His second interlude was twice as long as the one on Broadway,
and began with this stanza:
Orpheus: He fell out of time, out of rhyme, out of rhythm / He kept
the queen with him and the winter dragged on / And sometimes
he’d come aboveground and he’d summon / Her down, before
summer was meant to be done . . .
Eurydice’s interludes were similar to those in Edmonton, but in
London we’d hung a blazing lantern on the phrase working on a song,
so they began this way:
Eurydice: While you’re working on your song / There’s a storm acomin’ on . . .
There was also this very pointed exchange with Orpheus:
Eurydice (to Orpheus): Is it finished?
Orpheus: Not yet
Eurydice: Finish it!
Broadway
The accumulating Orpheus language gave us a real-time glimpse of
the poet at work, but in the “set piece” frenzy that is “Chant,” the
content of the lines was lost. The song felt fatiguing. Also, I began to
truly suspect that no amount of poetic imagery or internal rhyming
prowess was going to make us fall in love with Orpheus. It was the
naive, heart-on-the-sleeve beauty of his singing alone that might move
us. Similarly, it wasn’t wordsmithery that was going to conquer the
heart of Hades, but the wordless gift of the forgotten melody of his
own song. For Broadway I tried to roll back Orpheus’s lyricism, and
allow him instead to explore his simple musical gifts—hence, the
expanded la la melody. Allowing Hermes to approach him, unheard—
Orpheus—Orpheus!—again depicted him as a boy lost in his own
world.
As for Eurydice, Ken mentioned in the lead-up to Broadway that he
wished she would fight a little harder for the relationship, not give up
on Orpheus so quickly. That made sense to me, and I rewrote her
interludes to include language about her “trying to trust” and “trying
to believe” in Orpheus and his song. I reassigned her darkest thoughts
(It’s hard enough to feed yourself / Let alone somebody else) to the
Fates, as the voices in her head. I also gave her some verbal lines
(Give that back! / It’s everything we have . . .) to hurl at the Fates
during the Coat Ballet. Rachel was in support of any language that
might provide access (a favorite word of hers) to Eurydice during her
moment of crisis, and it had the added benefit of painting a less
victim-y portrait.
HEY, LITTLE SONGBIRD
Hades
Hey, little songbird, give me a song
I’m a busy man and I can’t stay long
I’ve got clients to call, I’ve got orders to fill
I’ve got walls to build, I’ve got riots to quell
And they’re giving me hell back in Hades
Hey, little songbird, cat got your tongue?
Always a pity for one so pretty and young
When poverty comes to clip your wings
And knock the wind right out of your lungs
Hey, nobody sings on empty
Eurydice
Strange is the call of this strange man
I wanna fly down and feed at his hand
I want a nice soft place to land
I wanna lie down forever
Hades
Hey, little songbird, you got something fine
You’d shine like a diamond down in the mine
And the choice is yours, if you’re willing to choose
Seeing as you’ve got nothing to lose
And I could use a canary
Eurydice
Suddenly nothing is as it was
Where are you now, Orpheus?
Wasn’t it gonna be the two of us?
Weren’t we birds of a feather?
Hades
Hey, little songbird, let me guess
He’s some kind of poet, and he’s penniless
Give him your hand, he’ll give you his hand-to-mouth
He’ll write you a poem when the power is out
Hey, why not fly south for the winter?
Hey, little songbird, look all around you
See how the vipers and vultures surround you
And they’ll take you down, they’ll pick you clean
If you stick around such a desperate scene
See, people get mean when the chips are down . . .
Notes on “Hey, Little Songbird”
I wrote the first version of “Hey, Little Songbird” on my honeymoon
in the summer of 2006. We were staying in a small farmhouse in rural
Italy, helping (in a lazy, honeymoon way) with a cherry harvest. I must
have brought my guitar along. The first version of the song was a
Hades monologue; Eurydice’s interludes didn’t appear until 2007.
After that it remained untouched, with the exception of one line:
Wasn’t it always the two of us? Eurydice asked, back when we met the
young lovers as an established couple. When I expanded Act I to
encompass the beginning of their relationship, the line became: Wasn’t
it gonna be the two of us?
The meaning of certain Hadestown songs changed over the years in
response to current events. Around 2008, when I’d introduce
“Wedding Song” in my songwriter shows as taking place in a
“postapocalyptic American Depression era,” there was a lot of
laughter and muttering. People were feeling the effects of the
recession, so poverty themes hit close to home. “Why We Build the
Wall” took on new meaning in 2015–16. Our off-Broadway
production coincided with the presidential campaign of Donald
Trump, and “Build that wall!” was a chant often heard at his rallies.
And “Hey, Little Songbird” began landing differently with the advent
of the #MeToo movement in 2017. It was suddenly less funny. There
was a moment in the lead-up to Broadway when Team Dramaturgy
became concerned that the song might be going too far with its sexual
innuendo. We wanted it to be clear that Eurydice wasn’t merely
seduced by Hades—she was cold, she was hungry, there was a
transactional nature to the relationship. Her I wanna lie down forever
line came under scrutiny, but I refused to change it; I loved it too
much. In an attempt to address the note another way, I rewrote the first
Hades verse to include an explicit job offer. We tried this out in
rehearsals:
Hades: Hey, little songbird, give me a song / I’m a busy man and I
can’t stay long / I’ve got clients to call, I’ve got orders to fill / I’ve
got millions of souls on my payroll, but hell / I could fit you as well
if you wanted
We let it fly for a few days and Patrick Page owned it like he owns
every line he’s ever delivered. Ultimately, though, everyone missed
the humor of the original verse, so we went back. In the development
of Hadestown there was a long-running, mostly good-natured battle
between Team Dramaturgy (Rachel, Ken, and Mara) and Team Music
(Michael, Todd, and Liam). Team Dramaturgy pushed to clarify story
and character, and Team Music pushed back whenever it felt like the
changes were compromising the music or poetry to an unsustainable
extent. This is a simplification, since everyone wanted the show to be
satisfying on multiple levels, but in many debates the lines were
drawn this way. I remember Liam once saying he couldn’t believe I’d
“gotten away with” the lyrics of “Hey, Little Songbird.” “It’s, like,
three and a half minutes of bird metaphors,” he said.
WHEN THE CHIPS ARE DOWN
Hermes
Songbird versus rattlesnake . . .
Fates
Mmm . . .
Eurydice
What is it?
Hermes
Eurydice was a hungry young girl . . .
Fates
Mmm . . .
Hades
Your ticket
Hermes
And Hades gave her a choice to make
Fates
Mmm-mmm-mmm
Hermes
A ticket to the underworld
Fates
Life ain’t easy, life ain’t fair
A girl’s gotta fight for a rightful share
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
Help yourself, to hell with the rest
Even the one who loves you best
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
Eurydice
Oh, my aching heart . . .
Fates
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
Take if you can, give if you must
Ain’t nobody but yourself to trust
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
Aim for the heart, shoot to kill
If you don’t do it then the other one will
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
And the first shall be first
And the last shall be last
Cast your eyes to heaven
You get a knife in the back!
Nobody’s righteous
Nobody’s proud
Nobody’s innocent
Now that the chips are down
Now that the, now that the
Now that the, now that the
Now that the chips are down!
Notes on “When the Chips Are Down”
I wrote “When the Chips Are Down” for the very first Vermont
production in 2006. Back then it included this semi-mystifying verse:
Fates: Cross my palm! Grease my chin! / Can’t you see the kind of
shape you’re in? / What you gonna do . . . ?
The Songbird versus rattlesnake intro I added at NYTW, in an
attempt to clarify the mechanics of How to get to Hadestown. It was
all a bit confusing: there was a train, so could anyone just get on it?
No, you had to have a ticket, unless, like Orpheus, you went around
the back. I remember Ken insisting that every world has to have
“rules,” even a fantastical or metaphorical one. Otherwise the
audience can’t relax into the story—they get stuck on square one,
trying to figure out what the rules are. The intro was a place to
foreground that “ticket” language.
“When the Chips Are Down” is a song that a few people pointed
out was unnecessary to the story, but it was always ferocious as a
musical and choreographic showcase for the Fates. The song’s
polyrhythmic “feel,” with its iconic bass line and metallic-sounding
prepared guitar, came from Michael in the earliest days. During the
recording of the studio album, Todd advocated for a barnstorming
piano solo. Together with the tight sister harmonies (Liam based these
on the Haden Triplets recording from the studio album), the number
was electrifying every time.
GONE, I’M GONE
Eurydice
Orpheus, my heart is yours
Always was, and will be
It’s my gut I can’t ignore
Orpheus, I’m hungry
Oh, my heart it aches to stay
But the flesh will have its way
Oh, the way is dark and long
I’m already gone . . . I’m gone
Fates
Go ahead and lay the blame
Talk of virtue, talk of sin
Wouldn’t you have done the same?
In her shoes, in her skin
You can have your principles
When you’ve got a bellyful
But hunger has a way with you
There’s no telling what you’re gonna do
When the chips are down
Now that the chips are down
What you gonna do when the chips are down?
Now that the chips are down
Notes on “Gone, I’m Gone”
I had recently started touring the folk circuit in the UK, and was
walking from the seaside in Brighton back to my friend’s apartment in
Hove, when the melody of “Gone, I’m Gone” appeared. It was 2007,
and I wrote the piece initially as an intro, rather than an outro, to
“When the Chips Are Down.” It was one of the first things Rachel
called into question when we began working together. “Gone, I’m
Gone” is the moment of decision for Eurydice, so for it to come before
“When the Chips Are Down,” Rachel felt, took the stakes away from
the song; if her choice is made, why are the Fates still trying to
convince her? I resisted moving it at first from a musical standpoint,
because I’d written the songs to go in one order and it felt impossible
to switch them. But we gave it a shot, and I was surprised to find it
still worked structurally, just in a different way. As for the drama, of
course, Rachel was right.
WAIT FOR ME INTRO
Orpheus
Mister Hermes?
Hermes
Hey, the big artiste!
Ain’t you working on your masterpiece?
Orpheus
Where’s Eurydice?
Hermes
Brother, what do you care?
You’ll find another muse somewhere
Orpheus
Where is she?
Hermes
Why you wanna know?
Orpheus
Wherever she is is where I’ll go
Hermes
And what if I said she’s down below?
Orpheus
Down below?
Hermes
Down below
Six feet under the ground below
She called your name before she went
But I guess you weren’t listening
Orpheus
No!
Hermes
So
Just how far would you go for her?
Orpheus
To the end of time
To the end of the earth
Hermes
You got a ticket?
Orpheus
No
Hermes
Yeah, I didn’t think so
’Course, there is another way, but—
Nah, I ain’t supposed to say
Orpheus
Another way?
Hermes
Around the back
But that ain’t easy walkin’, jack
It ain’t for the sensitive of soul
So do ya really wanna go?
Orpheus
With all my heart
Hermes
With all your heart?
Well, that’s a start
Notes on “Wait for Me Intro”
“Wait for Me Intro” was a real how-to lesson in recitative dialogue
writing. It took time to find the rhymes and carve out the scene, but
once it existed it became something of a high-water mark for my
recitative; it was hard to achieve that kind of synthesis of drama and
poetry in any other scene. I wrote it over the course of a couple
workshops leading up to our off-Broadway debut. I remember Ian
Lassiter, who played Hermes in one of those workshops, begging for a
longer pause between the lines Wherever she is is where I’ll go and
And what if I said she’s down below? I’d initially written the lines
nearly on top of each other; because of Ian, I put in a measure of rest.
In a straight dialogue, the actor and director choose the pace of the
language, but metered dialogue puts a lot of that responsibility on the
writer, and that “built-in pause” lesson came in handy in many other
scenes.
The line That ain’t easy walkin’, jack came from Chris Sullivan, our
off-Broadway Hermes. I’d written the line like this: Another way? /
Around the back / But that ain’t a easy road to walk and was mostly
satisfied with it, though the vowel slant wasn’t ideal. Chris was
rehearsing at home and texted me the easy walkin’, jack idea, asking
what I thought. I was unconvinced in writing. Calling him “jack”
seemed random for Hermes, who calls everyone “brother.” But then
Chris sent a voice memo of himself speaking it, and I was sold. When
he left the show (for television glory), I asked if it was okay to keep
using the line. He said, “It’s yours!” and now I can’t fathom it any
other way.
WAIT FOR ME
Hermes
How to get to Hadestown
You’ll have to take the long way down
Through the underground, under cover of night
Laying low, staying out of sight
Ain’t no compass, brother, ain’t no map
Just a telephone wire and a railroad track
Keep on walking and don’t look back
Till you get to the bottomland
Orpheus
Wait for me, I’m coming
Wait, I’m coming with you
Wait for me, I’m coming too
I’m coming too
Hermes
River Styx is high and wide
Cinderbricks and razorwire
Walls of iron and concrete
Hound dogs howlin’ round the gate
Those dogs’ll lay down and play dead
If you got the bones, if you got the bread
But if all you got is your own two legs
Just be glad you got ’em
Orpheus & Company
Wait for me, I’m coming
Wait, I’m coming with you
Wait for me, I’m coming too
I’m coming too
Fates
Who are you?
Where do you think you’re going?
Who are you?
Why are you all alone?
Who do you think you are?
Who are you to think that you could walk a road that no one ever walked
before?
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Company
La la la la la la la
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Orpheus & Company
La la la la la la la . . .
Hermes
You’re on the lam, you’re on the run
Don’t give your name, you don’t have one
And don’t look no one in the eye
That town’ll try to suck you dry
They’ll suck your brain, they’ll suck your breath
They’ll pluck the heart right out your chest
They’ll truss you up in your Sunday best
And stuff your mouth with cotton
Orpheus & Company
Wait for me, I’m coming
Wait, I’m coming with you
Wait for me, I’m coming too
I’m coming
Company
Wait
Orpheus
I’m coming, wait for me
Company
Wait
Orpheus & Company
I hear the walls repeating
Company
Wait
Orpheus & Company
The falling of my feet and
It sounds like drumming
Company
Wait
Orpheus & Company
And we are not alone
Company
Wait
Orpheus & Company
I hear the rocks and stones
Company
Wait
Orpheus & Company
Echoing my song
Orpheus
I’m coming
Company
Coming
Coming . . .
Notes on “Wait for Me”
Vermont
It was the chorus of “Wait for Me” that set me on the road to
Hadestown. I was early in my career as a singer-songwriter and
driving a lot; back then I’d drive a ridiculous distance, alone, for a tip
gig, and that’s what I was doing when that melody came, along with
these words:
Wait for me, I’m coming / In my garters and pearls / With what
melody did you barter me / From the wicked underworld?
The first two lines had to do with my own love life. I met Noah
when I was just nineteen and had the sense early on that I was going to
marry him. I was young, though, and ambitious to become a touring
singer-songwriter, so I was asking him to “wait” while I did some
literal and figurative “running around.” The next two lines were
mysterious, a free association, but they seemed to point to the story of
Orpheus and Eurydice, which had been a favorite myth of mine as a
kid. Interestingly, neither the melody nor the lyrics appeared in the
2006 version of the show.
In 2007 I wrote the version of the chorus that audiences would
recognize today, but it was intercut with these dialogue-style verses
between Hermes and Hades:
Hades: Hermes! / Hermes: Hades! / Hades: Back in town! /
Please, sit down / Please, relax / You’ve been around the world and
back / Haven’t you, Hermes? / Hermes: I have / Hades: How’s the
weather? / Hermes: Worse than ever / How’s your wife? / Hades:
My wife is fine / Hermes: You’ve been spending a lot of time
together / Haven’t you, Hades?
Hades: What have you brought? / Hermes: The latest crop /
Hades: The freshest cut? / Hermes: A cut above / Hades: How
many of them, a lot? / Hermes: A lot / Hades: A few too many,
perhaps / What’s this? / Why have you brought me Orpheus? / I
know I never ordered that / It seems you’ve gone behind my back /
Haven’t you, Hermes?
Hades: What was that? / Hermes: What was what? / Hades: I
heard a voice / Hermes: I heard it not / Hades: Someone singing /
Hermes: I heard nothing / Hades: Some kind of song / Hermes:
You could be wrong / It could have been the wind / Hades: The
wind? / Hermes: It could have been the rain / Hades: The rain? /
Hermes: It could have been the train . . . (the train / the train / the
train / the train . . .)
Off-Broadway & Edmonton
I rewrote the verses of “Wait for Me” entirely for the studio album. I
remember feeling that our 2007 production had skewed too “dark,”
and part of it was that our “coyote” Hermes seemed to have joined the
dark side. I wanted him to be more of a mythological helper, like
Joseph Campbell’s “mentor” figure in the “hero’s journey.” I worked
on the new verses on the first tour I opened for Bon Iver. It was
Europe in 2008, the first time I’d met Justin. I was in search of an
Orpheus; I’d already asked a few people who’d turned it down. This
happened to be for the best, because the moment Justin opened his
mouth on the first night of the tour, my heart exploded. It has to be
Justin! I thought. But I was shy to ask him, having just met him, and
he was already doing me a great favor by having me support the tour.
I’ll wait till the end of the tour, I thought, and then ask. But a couple
nights later we were on a ferry from Scotland to Scandinavia; I’d had
a bit of wine and couldn’t contain myself. “I’m writing a folk opera,” I
blurted out all in a rush. “We’re making a record, Ani DiFranco and
Greg Brown are on it, I need you to sing the role of Orpheus.” He said
simply, “Sure.” It was on another ferryboat during that same tour that I
wrote most of the new verses of “Wait for Me.” The band and crew
had flown somewhere on a day off for a television taping, so it was
just me and the bus driver on the long drive to Dublin for the end of
the tour. Because I was with the driver, I got to enjoy the section of the
ferry devoted to “lorry-men,” including a little sleeper cabin, where I
worked on the new verses. The off-Broadway and Edmonton versions
of “Wait for Me” were the same as the album version.
London & Broadway
At some point before London, we started to become aware that
Orpheus had almost no songs that ended on a “button” that gave the
audience permission to applaud for him. I don’t think it was arbitrary.
There was something in his artistic nature that leaned toward musical
suspensions and away from “zazzy” resolutions. But we started to
worry that by not allowing the audience to applaud for their hero, we
might be undermining their ability to fall in love with him. At the
same time, I remember a book-writer friend, Sarah Gancher, watching
a pre-London workshop performance and saying: “You could use an
eleven o’clock number!” To me, that moment of bring-down-thehouse-style energy capable of revitalizing us for the show’s
denouement had to be “Wait for Me Reprise.” But as it stood, neither
of the “Wait for Me” numbers had a button; both ended on a
suspension. This is where the London and Broadway outros of those
two songs—I’m coming, wait for me / I hear the walls repeating . . .
—came from.
The other note we’d received fairly continuously was that
Orpheus’s journey to the underworld didn’t seem too tough on him.
We didn’t witness what Joseph Campbell called the “road of trials” in
real time, only heard Hermes’s ominous instructions about it. At the
same time, Ken had tasked me with finding a way for Orpheus to “go
a few rounds” with the Fates over the course of the show, so that by
the time we got to “Doubt Comes In” we were witnessing a familiar,
inevitable struggle. It turned out to be the simplest thing in the world
to add a bridge to the song. In it, the Fates confront Orpheus, and
we’re introduced to the “Doubt Comes In” theme for the first time.
This is countered by Orpheus, who sings his “Epic” melody, which is
picked up by the Workers in a choral moment that succeeds in
“cracking” the wall of the underworld. It was almost infuriatingly
simple. The music-theater lesson for me had two parts: One, music is
emotional shorthand. It took only a few bars of “Doubt” followed by
“Epic” to make the point. Two, bridges are a music-theater writer’s
best friend. A musical departure and return signifies travel—real and
psycho-emotional—and travel is what’s required in order to feel we’ve
arrived someplace at the end of a scene.
WHY WE BUILD THE WALL
Hades
Why do we build the wall?
My children, my children
Why do we build the wall?
Company
Why do we build the wall?
We build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Hades
How does the wall keep us free?
My children, my children
How does the wall keep us free?
Company
How does the wall keep us free?
The wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Hades
Who do we call the enemy?
My children, my children?
Who do we call the enemy?
Company
Who do we call the enemy?
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Hades
Because we have and they have not
My children, my children
Because they want what we have got
Company
Because we have and they have not
Because they want what we have got
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Hades
What do we have that they should want?
My children, my children
What do we have that they should want?
Company
What do we have that they should want?
We have a wall to work upon
We have work and they have none
Hades
And our work is never done
My children, my children
And the war is never won
Hades & Company
The enemy is poverty
And the wall keeps out the enemy
And we build the wall to keep us free
That’s why we build the wall
We build the wall to keep us free
Company
We build the wall to keep us free
Hermes
Then Hades told Eurydice:
Hades
There are papers to be signed
Step into my office
Hermes
And he closed the door behind
Now a lot can happen behind closed doors
That’s for sure, brother, that’s a fact
But a lot can happen on the factory floor
When the foreman turns his back
Persephone
Anybody want a drink?
(End of Act I.)
Notes on “Why We Build the Wall”
Vermont
“Why We Build the Wall” is one of the few songs in my life that I
wrote very quickly, almost before I understood what it meant. It was
2006 and I was living in Vermont. The song went into the first staging
of Hadestown and then quickly became, at my songwriter shows, the
one everyone wanted to hear. There’s much I could say about it—and
how its meaning continues to change as the world changes—but I’d
rather leave that conversation to the audience. It is, after all, a series of
questions, and my guess is that the conversation it provokes is worth
more than any statement I could make. Instead, here’s a little anecdote
about the song’s language and where it may have come from. In
college, I studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt. My Arabic Lit professor was
an older woman with dark eyeliner who took it upon herself to
introduce leftist, bohemian values to a generation of distracted young
Egyptians. She barely concealed her disdain for then-president Hosni
Mubarak, and expressed nostalgia for the 1960s and the populist
president Gamal Abdel Nasser in particular. “What did Nasser call the
citizens?” she asked the students, who remained silent, some gazing
into mobile phones. “‘Brothers and sisters’!” she said. “And what does
Mubarak call us? ‘My children’ . . . ”
Off-Broadway & Edmonton
I wrote the outro Behind closed doors . . . in the lead-up to NYTW.
Initially it was longer, and included this stanza:
Hermes: A lot can happen behind closed doors / With the big boss
and his fountain pen / A lot of dirty deals go down / When there
ain’t nobody watching . . .
We cut those particular lines in rehearsal, as the moment seemed to
overstay its welcome, and the metaphors were too vivid (the outro
describes the moment in which Hades summons Eurydice into his
office to—as we learn later—“sign her life away”). Before NYTW, we
were still questioning whether and where to place an intermission in
the show. Rachel loved the idea of putting it just after Behind closed
doors, which she called a “cliff-hanger” moment. Mara was adamant
that in order for it to work we needed an Act I “button,” which is why
I tacked on Persephone’s laugh line: Anybody want a drink? That little
moment of levity worked wonders after so much emotional and
political drama. As it turned out . . . everybody did want a drink.
London & Broadway
In London, we noticed a troubling trend. “Wait for Me,” with its new
bridge, outro, and positively seismic design elements (we were now
witnessing, in real-time, the “crack in the wall”), was getting so
climactic that “Why We Build the Wall” was beginning to pale in
comparison. People fully expected “Wait for Me” to end Act I, and
were surprised to find not only another song but a recitative outro
scene between themselves and the bar. We underwent a massive
experiment in Broadway rehearsals in which we ended Act I with
“Wait for Me” and began Act II with “Why We Build the Wall.”
Ultimately, though, it made our already long second act longer, not to
mention Hades-heavy. An alternate idea from lighting designer
Bradley King was to somehow turn Behind closed doors into a bridge,
rather than an outro, and end Act I with the line: We build the wall to
keep us free. It was an interesting idea that I just couldn’t entertain. I
was unwilling to interrupt the structure of what had long felt like the
show’s iconic song, but perhaps more vehemently, I was unwilling to
lose the laugh line Anybody want a drink?, which felt like an
important vestige of our downtown legacy.
ACT II
OUR LADY OF THE UNDERGROUND
Persephone
Step into my office . . . !
I don’t know about you, boys . . .
But if you’re like me, then hanging around
This old manhole is bringing you down
Six feet under getting under your skin
Cabin fever is a-setting in
You’re stir-crazy! Stuck in a rut!
You could use a little pick-me-up
I can give you what it is you crave
A little something from the good old days
Hey, I got the wind right here in a jar
I got the rain on tap at the bar
I got sunshine up on the shelf
Allow me to introduce myself
Brother, what’s my name? My name is
Company
Our Lady of the Underground!
Persephone
Brother, what’s my name?
Company
Our Lady of Ways!
Our Lady of Means!
Persephone
Brother, what’s my name? My name is
Company
Our Lady of the Upside Down!
Persephone
Wanna know my name? I’ll tell you my name:
Persephone!
Come here, brother, let me guess
It’s the little things you miss
Spring flowers, autumn leaves
Ask me, brother, and you shall receive
Or maybe these just ain’t enough
Maybe you’re looking for some stronger stuff
I got a sight for the sorest eye
When was the last time you saw the sky?
Wipe away your tears, brother
Brother, I know how you feel
I can see you’re blinded
By the sadness of it all
Look a little closer and
Everything will be revealed
Look a little closer . . .
There’s a crack in the wall!
Ladies and gentlemen, (Trombonist) on the trombone!
(Cellist) on the cello! (Violinist) on the violin!
(Drummer) on the drums! (Bassist) on the bass!
(Guitarist) on the guitar! And (Pianist) on the keys!
You want stars? I got a skyful
Put a quarter in the slot, you’ll get an eyeful
You want the moon? Yeah, I got her too
She’s right here waiting in my pay-per-view
How long’s it been?
A little moonshine ain’t no sin
Tell my husband to take his time
What the boss don’t know, the boss won’t mind . . .
Notes on “Our Lady of the Underground”
The idea behind “Our Lady of the Underground” was one of the first I
had for the show, a touchstone in the early days. The idea was that
Persephone moonlighted as the proprietress of an underworld
speakeasy, a club she ran behind her husband’s back. In it, she handed
out intoxicating contraband imported from the aboveground world—
bottled essence of wind, rain, and sunshine. It was inspired by a scene
from Soylent Green in which a regular carrot is a contraband delicacy.
The speakeasy’s pièce de résistance was a binocular machine, the kind
you insert a quarter into at the seashore for a glimpse of the ocean.
Persephone had the machine trained on a crack in the wall of the
underworld, and those who looked through it could see the night sky.
In my earliest imaginings, Orpheus had arrived in the underworld
prior to this song and stumbled into Persephone’s club. She was his
protectress, like the giant’s wife in Jack and the Beanstalk, who hides
the hero beneath her skirts. The 2006 version of the song was titled “A
Crack in the Wall” and went like this:
Persephone: Come and see the stars! / They’re fixin’ to fall /
Slidin’ and a-slippin’ / In their gravity shoes / Old Man Mars /
Taking Venus to the ball / Big dipper dippin’ / To the blue-sky blues
Have you forgot / Which way is up? / I think you’ll find / I have
just the thing for you / Put a quarter in the slot / You can fill your
loving cup / With a little bit of moonshine / From the pay-per-view
How selfless! / The silent moon / Holding a mirror / For an
ungrateful sun / Hey, Orpheus! / Are you leaving so soon? / Every
night around here / Is a fateful one
Maybe you got blindsided / Lost your papers! / Lost your mind! /
Maybe you once loved an angel / Just to watch her fall / Look a
little closer and / The water turns to wine / Look a little closer:
there’s a crack in the wall!
So I raise my cup / To the stars in the sky / If you want a show / Go
on, get in line / Step right up, brothers / Don’t be shy / What the
boss don’t know / The boss won’t mind
In 2007 I revised the song to a version very similar to the Broadway
version, and renamed it “Our Lady of the Underground.” In both
Vermont productions, Ben designed an actual binocular machine and
staged the Workers looking through it, as the song describes. Our
Vermont posters, designed by Brian Grunert and Tim Staszak,
depicted the machine (the 2006 poster was double-sided, with die-cut
eye-holes you could look through). When I began working with
Rachel in 2013, though, we let go of the machine. We also moved
away from Orpheus’s participation in the scene. The song now
followed the conspicuous action of Hades going behind closed doors
with Eurydice, so the whole scene was tinged with Persephone’s
retaliatory abandon. It was a big diva moment for Amber Gray as well
as a showcase for the band’s improvisations. Rachel was excited to let
“Our Lady of the Underground” function as an “entr’acte,” more of a
palette cleanser than a story beat. I later learned that according to Jack
Viertel, an Act II opener is often “one for fun”—a feel-good number
that doesn’t appreciably advance plot or require too much of the
theatergoers who are just settling back into their seats, drinks in hand.
That casual, clubby feeling was enhanced by a practice that began in
the concert era and stuck—that of Persephone introducing each of the
band members by name.
WAY DOWN HADESTOWN REPRISE
Fates
The deal is signed?
Eurydice
Yes
Fates
’Bout time
Get on the line
Eurydice
I did what I had to do
Fates
That’s what they did too
Hermes
Now, in Hadestown there was a lotta souls
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Hermes
Working on a wall with all their might
Workers
Huh! Kkh! Oh you gotta keep your head
Hermes
Ya see, they kept their heads down low
Workers
Huh! Kkh! If you wanna keep your head
Hermes
You couldn’t quite see their faces right . . .
But you could hear them singing
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Hermes
Swinging their hammers in the cold hard ground
You could hear the sound of the pick-axe ringing
Workers
Huh! Kkh! If you wanna keep your
Hermes
And they called it
Hermes & Workers
“Freedom”
Eurydice
(to Workers) I’m Eurydice
(to Fates) Doesn’t anybody hear me?
Fates
They can hear
But they don’t care
No one has a name down here
Mister Hades set you free
To work yourself into the ground
Free to spend eternity
In the factory
And the warehouse
Where the whistles scream
And the foremen shout
And you’re punchin’ in
And punchin’ in
And punchin’ in
And you can’t punch out
And you’re way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Low, oh, you gotta keep your head
Low, if you wanna keep your head
Oh, keep your head low
Eurydice
Why won’t anybody look at me?
Fates
They can look
But they don’t see
You see?
It’s easier that way
Your eyes will look like that someday
Down in the river of oblivion
You kissed your little life goodbye
And Hades laid his hands on ya
And gave ya everlasting life
And everlasting overtime
In the mine
In the mill
In the machinery
Your place on the assembly line
Replaces all your memories
Way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Low, oh, you gotta keep your head
Low, if you wanna keep your head
Oh, keep your head low
Eurydice
What do you mean, I’ll look like that?
Fates
That’s what it looks like to forget
Eurydice
Forget what?
Fates
Who you are
And everything that came before
Eurydice
I have to go
Fates
Go where?
Eurydice
Go back
Fates
Oh—and where is that?
So—what was your name again?
You’ve already forgotten . . .
Hermes
Ya see, it’s like I said before
A lot can happen behind closed doors
Eurydice was a hungry young girl
But she wasn’t hungry anymore
What she was instead, was dead
Dead to the world anyway
Ya see, she went behind those doors
And signed her life away
Fates
Saw that wheel up in the sky
Heard the big bell tolling
A lot of souls have gotta die
To keep the rust belt rolling
A lot of spirits gotta break
To make the underworld go round
Way down Hadestown
Fates, Workers, Hermes
Way down under the ground
Notes on “Way Down Hadestown Reprise”
Workshops
The first workshop I did with Rachel was the “tough love” table-read
in 2013. Mara was there, but we hadn’t yet linked up with NYTW. I
was living in Vermont and had a tiny infant, so the whole family
traveled to Manhattan and posted up at a Midtown hotel while we
worked. We’d begun to identify missing plot points, and one of them
was this: We needed to contextualize Eurydice’s rueful soliloquy
“Flowers” by preceding it with an underworld “reality check” that
revealed Hadestown for what it was. At first, I envisioned this dark
news being delivered to Orpheus by the Fates in a loose reprise of
“When the Chips Are Down” and “Gone, I’m Gone.” I shared this at
the table-read; it was called “No One Now”:
Fates: Used to be a blushing bride / That was on the other side /
Better to forget her face / Now she’s like the rest of us / One more
number in a crowd / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no
one now
Used to be a loving wife / That was in another life / Carve it on a
marble stone / Now she’s like the rest of us / One more body in the
ground / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now
Brother, don’t you think we all / Used to have a name to call? / A
tale to tell as well as her? / Now she’s like the rest of us . . .
Maybe when she first arrived / So alive, so naive / All the bright
lights in her eyes / All her insides fluttering (alt. Heart aflutter on
her sleeve) / Maybe she was someone then / Back when Hades
drew her in / Like a moth into his flame / Borne aloft on burning
wings / Well, she ain’t the first and she ain’t the last / Hades’ fire is
hot and fast / Just ask all the other girls / Sweeping up the ashes in
the underworld / See even when the flame is new / She doesn’t hold
a candle to / The woman Hades truly loves / So maybe she was
someone once / But now she’s like the rest of us / All used up, all
burned out / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now
The song was discarded—it was more “poetic portraiture,” which
posed dramatic challenges, and musically it didn’t “swing”—but a lot
of the language was recycled a year later when I wrote the first version
of the “Way Down Hadestown Reprise.” I wrote it in preparation for a
very different workshop: NYTW’s summer residency at Dartmouth
College in New Hampshire. This was an immersive two-week creative
love affair in which a whole group of very game New Yorkers
rehearsed all day and hung out all night, passing around guitars and
whiskey and often continuing to rehearse for fun.
I was still trying to achieve a pre-“Flowers” reality check. I knew I
wanted the music to be dark, but not slow; “Flowers” is a dreamy
number, and to precede it with any kind of sluggishness made it fall
flat. What I couldn’t figure out was who should deliver the song, and
to whom! At first it was Hermes’s song, directed at Orpheus. Later it
was the Workers’ song, describing their own circumstances. Finally it
became the Fates’ song, directed at Eurydice, with the Workers
chanting in descant beneath the choruses. At Dartmouth I was
exploring an early version of Hermes’s verbal narration. The Hermes
part was played by the brilliant Taylor Mac, and this was his advice to
Orpheus:
Hermes: If you wanna get around down here in the tank / Down
here in the clink / Down here in the hole / You got to think the way
they think / Which is to say, your mind is blank / Which is to say,
don’t think at all / Come / I’ll show you how it’s done:
Mister Hades set us free . . . / To work ourselves into the ground . . .
Later, he introduced the Workers:
Hermes: Welcome to the skeleton crew! / Welcome to the chain
gang, kid / Lemme introduce you to / The members of the working
dead / Old Jack Hammer! Mister Miner / Wandering forever in the
catacombs / Working on a hole to China / Diggin’ up them dino
bones / Way down . . .
Sweatshop Sally! Missus Miller! / Workin’ in the cellar where the
sun don’t shine / Sad-eyed little Cinderella / Sweeping up the ashes
of the summertime / Used to be one a the boss’s pets / Now she’s
just another stiff / One night in the boss’s bed / And a lifetime on
the graveyard shift / Way down . . .
Off-Broadway, Edmonton, & London
For NYTW, I cut many of those verses and gave the remaining ones to
the Fates, who made them deliciously vicious. I also inserted a series
of recitative exchanges between the Fates and Eurydice. This was
something both Rachel and Ken had pushed for: an explicit, beat-bybeat realization on the part of Eurydice that she has made a terrible
mistake. Ken described it in cartoon terms like this: “All right! /
What? / No! / Oh, shit . . .” My first version of those exchanges leaned
toward the abstract:
Eurydice: I’m free / We’re free / Mr. Hades set us free
Fates: Mister Hades set you free . . .
Eurydice: But I don’t understand / You said this was the promised
land
Fates: You sell your soul, you get your due / That is all we
promised you
Eurydice: But don’t you see? / It’s different with me
Fates: Different than who? / They thought they were different too!
Eurydice: There must be some mistake!
Fates: Oh, it was a mistake, alright / And now you got to pay / And
pay / And pay for it / For the rest of your life
The following verse appeared only at NYTW. The song was
overstaying its welcome, so I cut it:
Fates: Heard that mighty trumpet sound / Crossed the river to the
other side / Thought you’d lay your burdens down / And rest in
peace in paradise / But there ain’t no rest for your weary soul /
Hades keeps you toiling / Shoveling coal in a big black hole / To
keep his boiler boiling
Broadway
With the exception of the verse cut, this song didn’t change in
Edmonton or London. During Broadway rehearsals, though, Rachel
began flagging it again as a dramaturgical weak point. It was a place
she felt we should be tackling head-on a question we’d heard many
times over the years: “What is so bad about Hadestown?” In earlier
versions of the show, Eurydice had come to the underworld under
false pretenses—believing it was the lap of luxury, or that as Hades’s
mistress she’d be under his protection. We’d now framed her as a
tough, smart character making a clear-eyed choice. She’d come for a
job, and she’d gotten that job. She’d willingly sold her body and / or
soul in exchange for the security she craved, and now it was hers. For
our tough heroine to be appalled by “hard work” was a disservice to
her character. Returning to the mythology, I found that what had
always frightened me most about the underworld was the idea of
“forgetting.” The dead are made to drink of the waters of the River
Lethe, which causes them to forget their former lives. This was the
river of oblivion in “Way Down Hadestown Reprise.” Numbing and
forgetting play a big part in “Flowers.” There was also an early cutting
room floor version of “Wait for Me” in which the Fates “brainwashed”
Eurydice! The first stanza went:
Fates: One (one, one) / You forget the sun
Eurydice: I forget the sun
Fates: You forget where you come from / You forget the sun
Eurydice: I forget the sun
Fates: Two (two, two) . . .
With that in mind, I took a baby step toward addressing the note,
making one change in the Fates’ language. The line that once went:
Running his old assembly line from Pluto to the Pleiades became:
Your place on the assembly line replaces all your memories. It wasn’t
enough for Rachel, who wished the whole scene felt more like “a
horror film.” So I went further, adding the series of exchanges that
culminates in the Fates’ So, what was your name again? / You’ve
already forgotten . . . The rewriting of those interludes was the last
thing I finished before we locked the show for Broadway.
FLOWERS
Eurydice
What I wanted was to fall asleep
Close my eyes and disappear
Like a petal on a stream
A feather on the air
Lily white and poppy red
I trembled when he laid me out
You won’t feel a thing, he said
When you go down
Nothing gonna wake you now
Dreams are sweet until they’re not
Men are kind until they aren’t
Flowers bloom until they rot
And fall apart
Is anybody listening?
I open my mouth and nothing comes out
Nothing
Nothing gonna wake me now
Flowers, I remember fields
Of flowers, soft beneath my heels
Walking in the sun
I remember someone
Someone by my side
Turned his face to mine
And then I turned away
Into the shade
You, the one I left behind
If you ever walk this way
Come and find me
Lying in the bed I made
Notes on “Flowers”
“Flowers” didn’t exist in the early Vermont productions, but there was
a brief reprise of the long-lost “Everything Written” song that
expressed Eurydice’s regret:
Eurydice: If it’s me—if it’s me you’re looking for / Orpheus, I
can’t be with you anymore
Fates: She signed in blood / She signed for good
Eurydice: I signed before I understood / And I’d unsign it if I could
/ But it’s too late / They say that everything is written / Everything
written in those stars / Even these lives we’re living / Even this love
Fates: Seven Sisters . . .
Eurydice never had a solo feature in Vermont, and I was determined
to write one for the studio album. I’d started working, but was
exceptionally stuck. At the same time, I’d commissioned my dear
friend and brilliant artist Peter Nevins to create linoleum-cut portraits
of the main characters as album art. Each character was portrayed with
an object—Persephone had a raised cup, Hades held a bird—and
usually we’d brainstorm the objects together. We hadn’t spoken at all
about Eurydice when Peter showed me his portrait of her, eyes closed,
holding a flower. “Why’d you give her a flower?” I asked. “I don’t
know,” he said, “it felt right.” It was that image that sparked the lyrics
of “Flowers,” and it was that image that ended up on the cover of the
studio album, as well as tattooed on my right forearm. It was that
image that became a visual touchstone for London and Broadway,
both in the storytelling and in the marketing of the show. The flower
kept revealing itself, as if by magic, and it was just as Peter said: “It
felt right.”
COME HOME WITH ME REPRISE
Orpheus
Come home with me!
Eurydice
It’s you!
Orpheus
It’s me
Eurydice
Orpheus . . .
Orpheus
Eurydice
Eurydice
I called your name before—
Orpheus
I know
Eurydice
You heard?
Orpheus
No—Mister Hermes told me so
Whatever happened, I’m to blame
Eurydice
No—
Orpheus
You called my name
Eurydice
You came
But how’d you get here? On the train?
Orpheus
No, I walked! A long way . . .
Eurydice
And how’d you get beyond the wall?
Orpheus
I sang a song so beautiful
The stones wept and they let me in
And I can sing us home again
Eurydice
No, you can’t
Orpheus
Yes, I can
Eurydice
No—you don’t understand
Notes on “Come Home with Me Reprise”
Off-Broadway
“Come Home with Me Reprise” was, for me, always part and parcel
of the “Come Home with Me” idea. I loved that Orpheus’s old comeon line could be repurposed in the underworld, this time as a lifeline
for Eurydice. Even the most awkward version of this scene made me
want to laugh and cry at once. The NYTW reprise included a lot of
repeat language from that era of “Come Home with Me,” like:
Eurydice: Are you always this confident?
Orpheus: When I look at you, I am
Eurydice: When you look at me, what do you see?
Orpheus: I see someone stronger than me / I see somebody who
survives / I see my wife
I hated I see someone stronger than me / I see somebody who
survives in the reprise as much as I did in the original. But those last
four words: I see my wife were unbearably emotional to me. The scene
continued with this very literal second marriage proposal, which
hearkened back to the young man down on bended knee:
Eurydice: Why are you getting on your knees?
Orpheus: I’m asking you to marry me / Marry me / Say “I do” / I
came all this way to ask you to
Eurydice: Orpheus
Orpheus: Eurydice
Eurydice: The two of us / That is how it would have been / If the
world was different / But have you seen the world? / It isn’t
beautiful! / It doesn’t change for me and you / No matter how much
we want it to . . .
This was followed by an exchange with the Fates that resembled
“Gone, I’m Gone,” “Everything Written Reprise,” and “No One
Now”:
Fates: Can’t you see she made a deal? / Gave her word? / Took a
vow? / See, it’s all been signed and sealed / She belongs to Hades
now / She belongs to him
Orpheus: It isn’t true
Fates: She belongs to him
Orpheus: It isn’t true
Fates: She belongs to him
Orpheus (to Eurydice): Say it isn’t true
Fates: She belongs to him
Eurydice: I do
In my mind, there was tragic irony in Eurydice’s final “I do,”
because of the marriage proposal, but I don’t think the audience
actually clocked it. I later decided it would be more powerful to have
this informational blow to Orpheus come all at once, in “Papers Intro,”
from the mouth of Hades himself.
Edmonton, London, & Broadway
The elements of “Come Home with Me Reprise” that survived in all
four productions were the cosmic “naming” at the beginning and the
How’d you get here? On the train? section, culminating in Orpheus’s
vow to sing them home, and Eurydice’s You don’t understand. What
happened between the naming and the train changed every time, and
the reason was this: it was the lovers’ first encounter after a rift that
could be seen as a result of Orpheus’s neglect of Eurydice, Eurydice’s
abandonment of Orpheus, or both. Did we need to hear an explicit
apology, on the part of one or both of them? I tried various times to
work in a literal I’m sorry but it always felt awkwardly on the nose.
Was there a more subtle way for them to address what had happened?
The Citadel version of this moment was very brief:
Eurydice: Orpheus!
Orpheus: Eurydice / Did you think I would just let you go?
Eurydice: I couldn’t stay
Orpheus: I know
Eurydice: But how’d you get here? On the train . . . ?
It was beautifully open-ended, but ultimately didn’t say enough. At
the National, there was an equally brief exchange:
Eurydice: Orpheus!
Orpheus: Eurydice / It’s you and me—it’s alright now
Eurydice: Alright . . . how? / How’d you get here? On the
train . . . ?
The line It’s alright now felt sentimental, and again, the exchange
seemed to gloss over the depth of the conflict. I tried again for
Broadway, and this time, Orpheus’s Whatever happened, I’m to blame
and Eurydice’s No—seemed to tick the subtle apology box. What I
didn’t expect was that Orpheus’s admission that he hadn’t even heard
Eurydice call his name (Eurydice: You heard? Orpheus: No—Mister
Hermes told me so) would be funny. I was surprised, in Broadway
previews, to hear a hearty laugh every time.
PAPERS INTRO & PAPERS
Hades
Young man!
I don’t think we’ve met before
You’re not from around here, son
I don’t know who the hell you are
But I can tell you don’t belong
These are working people, son
Law-abiding citizens
Go back to where you came from
You’re on the wrong side of the fence
Persephone
Hades, I know this boy
Hades
One of the unemployed
Persephone
His name is Orpheus
Hades
You stay out of this
Hermes
Orpheus was a poor boy . . .
Hades
Did ya hear me, son?
Hermes
You might say he was naive
Hades
You better run!
Hermes
But this poor boy raised up his voice
With his heart out on his sleeve
Eurydice
No!
Orpheus, you should go
Orpheus (to Hades)
I’m not going back alone
I came to take her home
Hades
Who the hell you think you are?
Who the hell you think you’re talking to?
She couldn’t go anywhere
Even if she wanted to
You’re not from around here, son
If you were, then you would know
That everything and everyone
In Hadestown, I own!
But I
Only buy
What others choose to sell
Oh
You didn’t know?
She signed the deal herself
And now she—
Orpheus
It isn’t true
Hades
Belongs to me
Orpheus
It isn’t true
What he said
Eurydice—
Eurydice
—I did
I do
Hades
As for you . . .
Everybody gather round!
Everybody look and see!
What becomes of trespassers
With no respect for property!
Notes on “Papers Intro” & “Papers”
The instrumental fight scene “Papers” has existed since the earliest
days in Vermont. The music was composed by Michael Chorney with
a nod to “His Kiss, the Riot.” We called it “Papers” because it
accompanied something like an immigration raid; if anyone had
spoken, they might have demanded Papers! and Orpheus, as a living
soul in the land of the dead, had none. In advance of NYTW I began
working on an intro for the scene. At one point I even wrote these
lines:
Hades: Let me see your papers, son / Let me see your documents /
Or could it be that you have none? / You’re on the wrong side of the
fence . . .
Team Dramaturgy found that concept confusing; we’d gone to all
the trouble of making the “ticket” explicit, and this seemed to be
another “rule” regarding How to get to Hadestown. The concern was
that it would raise unnecessary questions for the audience. But the old
title “Papers” remained.
“Papers Intro” evolved in Edmonton and London as I tasked Hades
with delivering the bad news—She signed the deal herself . . . —to
Orpheus point-blank. For Broadway, Rachel begged me to add some
verbal interjections for Persephone and Eurydice. She felt strongly
that we should hear from both women, that they not be relegated to
mute-bystander status. This was also a chance to depict, again, New
Orpheus’s innocence and naivety. In all previous versions of the scene,
Hermes’s narration section looked like this:
Hermes: Now, Orpheus was a poor boy
Hades: Did ya hear me, son?
Hermes: And Hades was a mighty king
Hades: You better run!
Hermes: But this poor boy raised up his voice / Even though it was
trembling
That painted a picture of a brave young man, but now we were
dealing with a boy who didn’t know any better. It felt right that both
Persephone and Eurydice would try to protect him, each in her own
way, so I tried to invoke that protectiveness in their text.
NOTHING CHANGES
Fates
Why the struggle, why the strain?
Why make trouble, why make scenes?
Why go against the grain?
Why swim upstream?
It ain’t, it ain’t, it ain’t no use
You’re bound, you’re bound, you’re bound to lose
What’s done, what’s done, what’s done is done
That’s the way the river runs
So why get wet? Why break a sweat?
Why waste your precious breath?
Why beat your handsome brow?
Nothing changes
Nothing changes
Nothing changes anyhow
Notes on “Nothing Changes”
I wrote “Nothing Changes” for the studio album, for two reasons.
First, I wanted to give the Fates another song of their own (at the time,
their only number was “When the Chips Are Down”). Second, I
wanted to give Orpheus an explicit statement to push back against in
“If It’s True.” During many long years of development, “Nothing
Changes” never changed.
IF IT’S TRUE
Orpheus
If it’s true what they say
If there’s nothing to be done
If it’s true that it’s too late
And the girl I love is gone
If it’s true what they say
Is this how the world is?
To be beaten and betrayed
And then be told that nothing changes
It’ll always be like this
If it’s true what they say
I’ll be on my way
Workers
Huh!
Hermes
And the boy turned to go
Workers
Huh!
Hermes
Cos he thought no one could hear
Workers
Huh!
Hermes
But everybody knows
That walls have ears
Workers
Huh!
Hermes
And the workers heard him
Workers
Kkh!
If it’s true what they say
Huh!
Hermes
With their hammers swingin’
Workers
Kkh!
What’s the purpose of a man?
Huh!
Hermes
And they quit their workin’
Workers
Kkh!
Just to turn his eyes away?
Huh!
Hermes
When they heard him singin’
Workers
Kkh!
Just to throw up both his hands?
Hermes
No hammers swingin’
Workers
What’s the use of his backbone?
Hermes
No pick-axe ring
Workers
If he never stands upright
Hermes
And they stood and listened
Workers
If he turns his back on everyone
Hermes
To the poor boy sing
Workers
That he could have stood beside
Orpheus
If it’s true what they say
I’ll be on my way
But who are they to say
What the truth is anyway?
Cos the ones who tell the lies
Are the solemnest to swear
And the ones who load the dice
Always say the toss is fair
And the ones who deal the cards
Are the ones who take the tricks
With their hands over their hearts
While we play the game they fix
And the ones who speak the word
Always say it is the last
And no answer will be heard
To the question no one asks
So I’m asking if it’s true
I’m asking me and you, and you, and you
I believe our answer matters
More than anything they say
Workers
We stand and listen, listen
Orpheus
I believe if there is still a will then there is still a way
Workers
We’re standin’ with him
Orpheus
I believe there is a way
I believe in us together
More than anyone alone
Workers
We’re standin’ near him, near him
Orpheus
I believe that with each other we are stronger than we know
Workers
We hear him
Orpheus
I believe we’re stronger than they know
I believe that we are many
I believe that they are few
Workers
We’re standin’, standin’, standin’
Orpheus
And it isn’t for the few to tell the many what is true
Workers
We understand him
Orpheus
So I ask you
If it’s true what they say
I’ll be on my way
Tell me what to do
Is it true?
Is it true what they say?
Notes on “If It’s True”
Vermont
“If It’s True” dates back to the Vermont days, when it was an Orpheus
solo. It begins as a lamentation for Eurydice and the world, and the
fact that it straddles both heartbreak and politics made rewriting it
something of a balancing act. It ends with righteous railing against the
powers that be, and those verses (But the ones who tell the lies . . . )
have remained intact for many years.
The earliest version of the song began like this:
Orpheus: If it’s true what they say / If there’s nothing to be done /
If there’s no part left to play / If there’s no song to be sung / If it’s
true what they say / If there’s no stone left to turn / If there’s no
prayer left to pray / If there’s no bridge left to burn / If it’s true what
they say / I’ll be on my way / If it’s true what they say / Then I have
lived a lie / They can take the sky away / Take the stars out of my
eyes / And my face will be a mask / And my heart will be a stone /
And I’ll throw away the past / And I’ll go away alone . . .
Off-Broadway
The imagery in those early lines felt generic to me, and not romantic
enough for the lover Orpheus. For the studio record, I wanted more
intimacy, and I remember scrambling to finish this more intimate
version en route to the studio:
Orpheus: If it’s true what they say / If my love is gone for good /
They can take this heart away / They can take this flesh and blood /
Take my mouth that kissed her mouth / Take my tongue that sung
her praise / Take my arms that used to reach out / In the dark where
she lay / If it’s true what they say / I’ll be on my way / If it’s true
what they say / If there’s nothing to be done / If there’s no part to be
played / If there’s no song to be sung / Take this voice, take these
hands / I can’t use them anyway / Take this music and the memory
of / The muse from which it came
Off-Broadway, the song was identical to the studio recording, with
the addition of this Hermes narration meant to illustrate the song’s
effect on Persephone:
Hermes: Persephone heard the poor boy sing / And it broke her
heart in two / So she went to go find that mighty king / To see what
she could do
And the boy . . . / The boy kept singing loud and clear / And
everybody knows / That walls have ears
Edmonton & London
Like “Wedding Song,” “If It’s True” always landed in concert, but was
problematic in the theater. It was a major culprit in what we identified
as a long, slow slog through the second act. Act II had more than its
share of minor keys, mid-tempos, and monologues, and “If It’s True”
was all of those things. Ken described it as “a pity party.” For
Edmonton and London, I added sung counterlines for Hermes and the
Workers Chorus, to take it out of the realm of monologue and disrupt
the static quality of the verses. I also added the forward-leaning I
believe outro that went beyond righteous anger and toward a more
positively articulated worldview. It was important that Orpheus not
only struggle against the way the world is, but also struggle toward the
way it could be.
Broadway
In Edmonton and London, the early “lamentation” centered around
Orpheus’s betrayal by Eurydice:
Orpheus: If it’s true what they say / If there’s nothing to be done /
If it’s true that it’s too late / And the girl I love is gone / And they
say I would do well / To go back the way I came / Everybody for
himself, they say / I guess you felt the same
For Broadway I rewrote it once more, this time to express a loss of
innocence for our New Orpheus: Is this how the world is? The
cumulative overhaul of “If It’s True” was significant, and it worked on
a few levels. It was no longer a monologue or a “pity party,” and it
now told the broader story of the Workers’ awakening and Orpheus’s
emergence as an unwitting political leader. But there’s a way in which
“If It’s True” never quite delivered the catharsis I was after. What
made it elusive, I think, is that the song ends on a question—Is it true
what they say? I couldn’t figure out a way to end on a statement, and I
wasn’t willing to pair a lyrical question with a musical resolution, so it
ends instead on a long, suspended note. We did everything in our
power to give it a “button” under the circumstances, but it’s not easy
to “button” a suspension. If I had it to do over, I’d search again for a
decisive final statement that allows the audience to applaud Orpheus’s
political mic-drop. Perhaps I will still rewrite it! I believe if there is
still a will, then there is still a way.
HOW LONG?
Persephone
What are you afraid of?
Hades
What?
Persephone
He’s just a boy in love
Hades
Have a drink, why don’t you?
Persephone
No
I’ve had enough
He loves that girl, Hades
Hades
Well, that’s too bad
Persephone
He has the kind of love for her
That you and I once had
Hades
The girl means nothing to me
Persephone
I know
But she means everything to him
Hades
So?
Persephone
Let her go
Hades, my husband, Hades, my light
Hades, my darkness
If you had heard how he sang tonight
You’d pity poor Orpheus
All of his sorrow won’t fit in his chest
It just burns like a fire in the pit of his chest
And his heart is a bird on a spit in his chest
How long, how long, how long?
Hades
How long? Just as long as Hades is king
Nothing comes of wishing on stars
And nothing comes of the songs people sing
However sorry they are
Give them a piece and they’ll take it all
Show them the crack and they’ll tear down the wall
Lend them an ear and the kingdom will fall
The kingdom will fall for a song
Persephone
What does he care for the logic of kings?
The laws of your underworld?
It is only for love that he sings!
He sings for the love of a girl
Hades
You and your pity don’t fit in my bed
You just burn like a fire in the pit of my bed
And I turn like a bird on a spit in my bed
How long, how long, how long?
Persephone
How long? Just as long as I am your wife
It’s true the earth must die
But then the earth comes back to life
And the sun must go on rising
Hades & Persephone
And how does the sun even fit in the sky?
It just burns like a fire in the pit of the sky
And the earth is a bird on a spit in the sky
How long, how long, how long?
Notes on “How Long?”
After I finished college and spent some time driving around trying to
start a singer-songwriter career, I had an opportunity to return to Cairo
for a few months, where I’d studied abroad. It was a place that
inspired me, and I could live very cheaply there and write songs. I
shared a flat in the Zamalek neighborhood with a Canadian grad
student working on her dissertation. I had a little bedroom with a
private balcony I could smoke off of, which was romantic to me at the
time (I never was a “real” smoker, and only briefly a “romantic” one).
I wrote several songs for my early record The Brightness in that room.
One of them was “How Long?” which was for Hadestown, but I
included a solo version of it on the album as well. The mysterious
“fit/spit/pit” choruses came, fully formed, in a dream.
The body of the song remains nearly untouched after all these
years, but the intro scene changed many times as I tried to
contextualize what was happening in this dense, poetic argument with
a rather ambiguous outcome. In an early workshop, I tried this sung
Persephone solo, an appeal to Hermes:
Persephone: Brother Hermes, god of speed / Put your feathers on
his feet / Hasten his delivery / Keep him hale and whole / Brother,
I’m a jaded woman / But there’s something in his singing / And it
feels like spring a-comin’ / To the winter of my soul
Brother Hermes, god of speed / Put your feathers on his feet /
Hasten his delivery / Keep him safe and sound / He reminds me of
the lover / That I was when I was younger / Back before my heart
went under / Undercover / Underground
It expressed the awakening that leads Persephone into confrontation
with Hades, but it didn’t bring any clarity to the argument itself. For
NYTW and the Citadel, I rewrote it as a recitative scene:
Persephone: How long have we been married?
Hades: Since the world began
Persephone: I don’t mind if you look at other girls now and then
Hades: The girl means nothing to me
Persephone: I know / But she means everything to him
Hades: So?
Persephone: Let her go
Persephone’s final Let her go worked wonders for “How Long?”
because it gave Hades a specific demand to push back against. I loved
the economy of this early version, as well as the humor and the sense
that, for these immortally wedlocked gods, a little infidelity wasn’t a
big deal. But it began to seem, especially to Rachel, that the
casualness of the scene wasn’t serving Persephone’s arc. We needed
her to come at her husband with more heat. For the National, I rewrote
it this way:
Persephone: Well? Are you happy?
Hades: Why?
Persephone: You proved your might
Hades: Is this about the boy?
Persephone: He sang a song tonight / You should have heard him,
Hades / So beautiful—so sad / He has the kind of love for her that
you and I once had
Hades: The girl means nothing to me
Persephone: I know / But she means everything to him
Hades: So?
Persephone: Let her go
I didn’t love the first few lines, but He has the kind of love for her
that you and I once had was revelatory. It summed up so much about
the way in which our young couple holds a mirror for our older one.
For Broadway, I kept that line, and paired it with an idea we’d been
moving toward for a long time: that Persephone herself bears some
responsibility for the deterioration of her marriage and the world.
Hades’s compulsion is the engine of the problem, but Persephone’s
not a blameless victim. She’s in denial, drowning her cares from one
scene to the next in her beloved “fruit of the vine.” For some, Hades’s
Have a drink, why don’t you? was jarringly realistic, like something
out of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (For reasons
connected to Edward Albee that I don’t entirely understand, we all
called this the “New Canaan” version of the scene.) But Persephone’s
response, No—I’ve had enough, seemed to set up the confrontation
with Hades as a moment of newfound sobriety for her. She’s fully
awake.
CHANT REPRISE
Hermes
Now everybody knows that walls have ears
Orpheus
Is it true?
Workers
Is it true?
Hermes
And the walls had heard what the boy was sayin’
Orpheus
Is it true?
Workers
Is it true?
Hermes
A million tons of stone and steel
Orpheus
Is it true?
Workers
Is it true?
Hermes
Echoed his refrain . . .
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head low (Kkh!)
Oh, you gotta keep your head low (Kkh!)
If you wanna keep your head (Huh! Kkh!)
Oh, you gotta (keep your head)
Why do we turn away when our brother is bleeding?
Oh, keep your head
Why do we build a wall and then call it freedom?
Oh, keep your head
If we’re free, tell me why
I can’t look in my brother’s eye
Keep your head!
Hades (to Orpheus)
Young man! Got to hand it to ya
Guess you don’t scare easy, do ya?
Are you brave, or stupid, son?
Doesn’t matter which one
Cos it seems your song made quite
A strong impression on my wife
But it takes more than singin’ songs
To keep a woman in your arms
Take it from a man no longer young
If you want to hold a woman, son
Hang a chain around her throat
Made of many-karat gold
Shackle her from wrist to wrist
With sterling silver bracelets
Fill her pockets full of stones
Precious ones, diamonds
Bind her with a golden band
Take it from an old man
Orpheus
If I raised my voice
Workers
If I raised, if I raised, if I raised my—
Keep your head low
Eurydice
If I raised my head
Workers
If I raised, if I raised, if I raised my—
Keep your head low
Eurydice
Could I change my fate?
Workers
Could I change? Could I change? Could I change my—
Keep your head low
Orpheus
If I raised my voice, could I
Workers
Keep your head low
Orpheus & Eurydice
Could I change the way it is?
Workers
Why do we turn away ’stead of standin’ with him?
Oh, keep your head
Why are we digging our own graves for a livin’?
Oh, keep your head
If we’re free, tell me why
We can’t even stand upright
If we’re free, tell me when
We can stand with our fellow man
Keep your head!
Hades
Young man! I was young once too
Sang a song of love like you
Son, I too was left behind
Turned on one too many times
Now I sing a different song
One I can depend upon
A simple tune, a steady beat
The music of machinery
You hear that heavy metal sound?
The symphony of Hadestown
And in this symphony of mine
Are power chords and power lines
Young man! You can strum your lyre
I have strung the world in wire!
Young man! You can sing your ditty
I conduct the electric city!
I’ll tell you what, young man
Since my wife is such a fan
And since I’m gonna count to three
And put you out of your misery
Hades & Company
One!
Hades
Give me one more song
One more song before I send you
Hades & Company
Two!
Hades
To the great beyond
Where nobody can hear you singing
Hades & Company
Three!
Hades
Sing a song for me
Make me laugh, make me weep
Make the king feel young again . . .
Sing! For an old man
Notes on “Chant Reprise”
I began “Chant Reprise” in the early days of working with Rachel.
Like “Chant,” it was meant to function as a “set piece” capable of
tracking multiple characters and stories at once. On the one hand, it
chronicles the rising rebellion of the Workers (and the newfound hope
that affords Orpheus and Eurydice). On the other, it’s the public
continuation of the private “How Long?” confrontation between
Hades and Persephone. Here’s how both aspects of the song evolved:
The Workers
Off-Broadway, the Company-as-Workers-Chorus sang:
Company: Oh, keep your head, keep your head low / Oh, you gotta
keep your head low / If you wanna keep your head / Oh, he said
he’d shelter us / He said he’d harbor me / He said we’d build them
up / And then the walls would set us free / I’m gonna count to three
/ And then I’ll raise my head, singing / One! Two! Is it true? / Is it
true what he said?
The second time around, they sang:
Company: He said he’d shelter us / He said he’d harbor me / He
said we’d soldier on / And then the war would bring us peace /
We’re gonna count to three . . .
In my imagination Hades was counting down to the moment he’d
“put Orpheus out of his misery,” while the Workers were counting
down to the moment they’d “raise their heads” to confront the boss. In
reality, I’m not sure anyone clocked the significance of the counting,
but it was satisfying to hear all those voices shouting One . . . two . . .
three! in unison . . . so that stayed.
At the Citadel, where we suddenly had flesh-and-blood Workers, I
briefly tried out an alternate intro to the song that came directly from
them, rather than by way of Hermes’s metaphorical A million tons of
stone and steel narration. It went like this:
Workers: What’s he gon’, what’s he gon’ / What’s he gonna do to
the poor boy now? / It ain’t none, it ain’t none / It ain’t none of our
business anyhow / What’s he want, what’s he want? / What does he
wanna hurt him for? / Here he comes, here he comes / You better
keep your head down / Loooow . . .
It moved me, but the phrasing was rhythmically laid-back in a way
that didn’t launch the song with enough “oomph.” And the old
Hermes narration, together with Orpheus and the Workers singing Is it
true? call-and-response style, drew a cognitively important line
between “If It’s True” and “Chant Reprise,” so we went back.
Hades & Persephone
As for Hades and Persephone, their verses underwent many
metamorphoses over the years. Here’s the old first Hades verse:
Hades (to Orpheus): When I was a young man like you / Son, I
held a woman too / Held her in my naked hands / When I was a
young man
Now you know how it feels / Women are as slick as eels / Woman!
Quicker than the asp / Always slipping from your grasp / Take it
from a man no longer young . . .
Right up until Broadway previews, Persephone had a whole
response section of her own. At NYTW and the Citadel she sang:
Persephone (to Eurydice): When I was a young girl like you /
Sister, I was hungry too / Hungry for the underworld / When I was
a young girl / Now you know how it tastes / The fruit of Mister
Hades’ ways / Sister, it’s a bitter wine / Spit it out while you still
have time
Take it from a woman of my age / Love is not a gilded cage / All
the wealth within these walls / Will never buy the thing called love /
Love was when he came to me / Begging on his bended knees / To
please have pity on his heart / And let him lay me in the dirt
I felt his arms around me then / We didn’t need a wedding bed /
Dark seed scattered on the ground / And wild birds were flying
around
That’s when I became his wife / But that was in another life / That
was in another world / When I was a young girl
The I felt his arms around me then section was a dreamy musical
bridge that I called the “garden flashback.” I felt it deeply, but
someone made the valid point that all that poetic imagery might be
stealing thunder from the extended garden flashback that is “Epic III.”
More importantly, we were plagued by a sense that “Chant Reprise”
was meandering at a moment when the storytelling demanded
acceleration. For the Citadel I shortened the “flashback”:
Persephone: Love was when he came to me / Sister, we were wild
and free / In the garden where we met / Nothing was between us
yet . . .
That rewrite turned out to be the tip of the iceberg, because the
entire Persephone section came under dramaturgical scrutiny as the
arc of the characters evolved post-Edmonton. The problem was this:
By the time “Chant Reprise” rolled around, we were all well aware
that Eurydice had made a mistake. She’d expressed her regret in no
uncertain terms, so for Persephone to try to make her see the error of
her ways was redundant. If anything, we wanted Persephone to see the
error of her own ways. I was unhappy letting go of the poetry and the
symmetry of Now you know how it feels, but I had to admit the
problem was real, so in London I unhappily set about rewriting it like
this:
Persephone (to Eurydice): When I was a young girl like you / The
underworld was younger too / Everything was possible / When I
was a young girl / Now I been down so long / In this town of steel
and stone / I forgot what feeling was / And then I heard your
Orpheus
Something in the way he sings / I believe that he could bring / The
mightiest of kings to tears / Even after all these years / Sister, even
at my age / I believe the world can change / Sister, this is how it
starts: / A change of heart
This solved the redundancy problem, but it lacked the poetic
specificity I’d loved in the previous version. For Broadway I rewrote
it this way:
Persephone (to Eurydice): When I was a young girl like you / This
old world was younger too / We set it spinning hand in hand / Me
and a young man / Now you see what he’s become / Hades, with his
heart of stone / I forgot was true love was / And then I heard your
Orpheus
Take it from a woman of my age / There is nothing love can’t
change / Even where the bricks are stacked / Love is blooming
through the cracks / Even when the light is gone / Love is reaching
for the sun / It was love that spun the world / When I was a young
girl
That finally seemed to approach the bull’s-eye, thematically and
poetically, but in the midst of Broadway previews there was a real
crisis about the length of our second act. It happened like this: There
was one particular preview that was, necessarily, identical to the one
that came before it. Since there was no new material for me to check
out, I took a rare night off. Ken, too, was out of town and missed that
preview. At the production meeting afterward, the absence of writer
and dramaturg made room for other members of the creative team to
express their own views. Rachel later said she’s found this to be a
common event in the life of a production: a moment in previews when
folks like scenic, lighting, and sound designers—who often take a
deferential backseat during dramaturgical discussions—can no longer
contain their opinions about what the show wants and needs. The
headline from our team was: “Act II is too long,” and one obvious
culprit was “Chant Reprise.” What, if anything, could be removed
from the song without changing its dramatic essence? The Persephone
section.
Losing Persephone meant that the Broadway version of “Chant
Reprise” became a Hades tirade, rather than a continuation of the
“How Long?” confrontation. But Hades’s text was also much
shortened over the years. The longest-ever version of his final Electric
City! rant was delivered at our Dartmouth workshop in 2014:
Hades: And in this symphony of mine / Are power chords and
power lines / Which I arrange and orchestrate / And every day I
dedicate / The magnum opus of my life / To my unkind, ungrateful
wife / Persephone, and she shall see / Her name in lights on my
marquee / And every night, another show / My symphony will
never close! / And she shall have a front-row seat / Which she shall
never, ever leave! / Young man, you can strum your lyre . . .
Off-Broadway, it began like this:
Hades: Young man! I was young once too / I once sang the young
man’s blues / Women come and women go / Get you high and get
you low / One day she’s hot, the next she’s cold / Women are so . . .
seasonal! / Women leave again and again / Take it from an old man
/ Now I sing a different song . . .
It began to feel odd, as the story of the Workers came to the fore,
that Hades would respond to this existential threat to his authority by
doling out advice about women. I wanted to tie a thread between
romantic togetherness and communal solidarity, so in London I tried
this:
Hades: Young man! I was young once too / Sang a song of love
like you / Brotherhood, togetherness / Let me tell you how it is /
Lovers leave, brothers betray / Turn like weather on a windy day /
Pledge allegiance, then defect / The second that you turn your
back . . .
The word defect got the point across, but felt to me more academic
than poetic. The Broadway version of that section (Son, I too was left
behind) is half as long—four lines, rather than eight.
EPIC III
Orpheus
King of shadows, king of shades
Hades was king of the underworld
Hades
Oh, it’s about me . . .
Hermes
Go on . . .
Orpheus
But he fell in love with a beautiful lady
Who walked up above in her mother’s green field
He fell in love with Persephone
Who was gathering flowers in the light of the sun
And I know how it was because he was like me
A man in love with a woman
Singing la la la la la la la
La la la la la la la
Hades
Where’d you get that melody?
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Persephone
Let him finish, Hades
Orpheus
La la la la la la
You didn’t know how, and you didn’t know why
But you knew that you wanted to take her home
You saw her alone there against the sky
It was like she was someone you’d always known
It was like you were holding the world when you held her
Like yours were the arms that the whole world was in
And there were no words for the way that you felt
So you opened your mouth and you started to sing
La la la la la la la . . .
Company
La la la la la la la
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Orpheus & Company
La la la la la la . . .
Orpheus
And what has become of the heart of that man?
Now that the man is king
What has become of the heart of that man?
Now that he has everything
The more he has, the more he holds
The greater the weight of the world on his shoulders
See how he labors beneath that load
Afraid to look up, afraid to let go
So he keeps his head low, he keeps his back bending
He’s grown so afraid that he’ll lose what he owns
But what he doesn’t know is that what he’s defending
Is already gone
Where is the treasure inside of your chest?
Where is your pleasure? Where is your youth?
Where is the man with his arms outstretched
To the woman he loves with nothing to lose?
Singing la la la la la la la
Hades
La la la la la la la
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
Hades & Persephone
La la la la la la . . .
Notes on “Epic III”
As we approached the lock date for Broadway, I was staying with
Mara in her friend’s apartment uptown so I could focus on writing
without commuting back and forth to Brooklyn. I was barely sleeping.
I tried taking sleep aids, but my anxiety was stronger than the pills,
and then there I was: groggy, but still awake, and still trying to work.
At two a.m. one night, I knocked on Mara’s bedroom door and
climbed into bed with her like a child. I said: “I’m panicking.” The
problem was “Epic III.”
Vermont
“Epic III” is the moment of truth—and truth-telling—between
Orpheus and Hades in the underworld. It dates back to the second
Vermont production, where it went like this:
Orpheus: The strong will take what they want to take / And the
weak can only tell the tale / And the heart of the king loves
everything / Like the hammer loves the nail
The heart of the king is iron and steel / The heart of the king is the
color of rust / The heart of the king is soldered and sealed / The
heart of the king is a tinderbox / That he has to keep under lock and
key / That it not catch fire inside of his chest / Cos a lover’s desire
is a mutiny / A lover’s desire is a wilderness
But even that hardest of hearts unhardened / Suddenly, when he saw
her there / Persephone in her mother’s garden / Sun on her
shoulders, wind in her hair / The smell of the flowers she held in
her hand / And the pollen that fell from her fingertips / And
suddenly Hades was only a man / With a taste of nectar upon his
lips, singing / La la la la la la la . . .
Off-Broadway & Edmonton
The imagery in that first version felt unfocused to me; for the studio
album, I started honing in on the contrast between king and man,
heavy and light, hard and soft:
Orpheus: Heavy and hard is the heart of the king / King of iron,
king of steel / The heart of the king loves everything / Like the
hammer loves the nail
But the heart of a man is a simple one / Small and soft, flesh and
blood / And all that he loves is a woman / A woman is all that he
loves
And Hades is king of the scythe and the sword / He covers the
world in the color of rust / He scrapes the sky and scars the earth /
And he comes down heavy and hard on us / But even that hardest
of hearts unhardened . . .
That version became our jumping-off point in the lead-up to
NYTW. It was also one of the first storytelling moments Rachel
questioned when I began working with her. She didn’t see how this
text was enough to move the heart of Hades. “He knows what
happened in the garden,” she said. In response to that note, offBroadway, I added the What has become of the heart of that man?
section that appeared in all subsequent productions.
London
“He knows what happened in the garden . . .” During years of
rewriting Hadestown, I had an intermittent love affair with the idea
and image of “the garden” and how it might fit into the “Epics” and
the story as a whole. In London alone, all three “Epics” began with
what I called “garden stanzas.” The initial text was:
Orpheus: There used to be a garden / There used to be a woman
and a man / I don’t know how their story ends / But that’s how it
began
“Epic II” had the alternate lines I don’t know how the world will end
/ But that’s how it began. Some were confused by the Judeo-Christian
resonance of the garden stanzas. I found it fascinating that the story of
Eve so closely resembles that of Persephone—a woman eats forbidden
fruit, and the world becomes more complicated—but I was also
uncertain whether the resonance was helping or harming us. I
eventually replaced the line There used to be a garden with Back in
the beginning but the garden language survived elsewhere in “Epic
III”: Lady Persephone, walking the garden and Where is the man with
his hat in his hand / Who stands in the garden with nothing to lose?
The London version of “Epic I” also included this verse:
Orpheus: King of diamonds, king of spades / Hades was king of
the kingdom of dirt / Miners of mines, diggers of graves / They
bowed down to Hades who gave them work / And he bowed down
to no one, below or above / Till the arrow of Eros struck him in the
heart and / The king of the underworld fell in love / With a woman
who walked . . . in a garden
What made the garden so appealing to me is that it was a kind of
archetypal shorthand for the state of grace from which the world has
fallen and to which it might be restored. But it was an imperfect
metaphor. In the story of Adam and Eve, the state of grace involves
both lovers together in the garden. In the story of Hades and
Persephone, the state of grace involves Persephone in the garden,
Hades in the underworld, and their seasonal separation and reunion.
What we witness in Hadestown is a world out of balance, and what
we’re trying to restore is balance; we’re not after a return to the garden
in the sense of a time before seasons. There may have been a way to
make the metaphor work, but I felt trapped by it. Ultimately, I ended
up excising the word garden everywhere it appeared in the show. I’m
obsessed (to a fault) with symmetry, the repetition of words, lines, and
images. I couldn’t bear to drop a deep psycho-spiritual image like “the
garden” in one or two spots and not go all the way with it.
In classic versions of the Orpheus story, it’s common for Orpheus to
invoke Hades’s love for Persephone in his appeal on behalf of
Eurydice. It’s a beautiful, empathic gesture: a mortal man putting
himself in the shoes of a god and asking the god to do the same for
him. In London I began to discover that for Orpheus to use the
language of his own experience to describe the experience of Hades
felt mythically spot-on. I remember Patrick Page dropping some
mythological wisdom in a workshop once. Hadestown, he said, was a
“dragon story.” The boy who sets out on the journey to slay the dragon
could never have slayed the dragon. The journey itself makes a man of
the boy, and the man then slays the dragon. I loved the idea that
Orpheus had to have loved and lost to be able, in this moment, to
speak truth to the king. In London I was working on the expansion of
“All I’ve Ever Known” and was thrilled to find I could repurpose
some of that language in “Epic III”:
Orpheus: He didn’t know how and he didn’t know why / But he
knew that he wanted to take her home / He saw her alone there
against the sky / It was like she was someone he’d always known
I also added this stanza:
Orpheus: And the sun rose and fell in his chest when he held her /
He felt the earth moving without and within / And there were no
words for the way that he felt / So he opened his mouth and he
started to sing
I later changed that first line to It was like you were holding the
world when you held her, another line recycled from “All I’ve Ever
Known.” These were small changes, but I felt them deeply. I was
especially devastated by the line And there were no words for the way
that he felt because in London I began to suspect that, for all my
efforts, no amount of rewriting the “Epic” verses was going to
magically tie the room together. It didn’t matter if the verses were
clever, metaphorically rich, complexly rhymed. What mattered most
was the purity of heart in that la la chorus. In London I expanded the
wordless choral section of “Epic III,” adding a climactic melody for
Orpheus. There was one “money note” which I hit upon in the
stairwell of the National Theatre. The interval reminded me of ecstatic
spiritual music I’d heard in two different settings: a Pentecostal church
in Brooklyn, and a gathering of devotional Indian bhajan singers. I
said, “Reeve, can you sing this note?” and I’m lucky that he could.
Broadway
Still, when we got back to New York, I was unhappy with “Epic III.”
Now with the long wordless musical climax, the song seemed to
overstay its welcome at both ends. I wanted it streamlined. It seemed
to me that the entirety of New Orpheus’s “gift” was encapsulated in
the wordless choral singing, this moment of psychedelic auditory
flashback for Hades. I thought of it like the moment in the animated
Pixar film Ratatouille when the critic Anton Ego tastes Remy’s dish
and has the sudden recollection of his childhood, of simpler times.
Another animation example I often returned to (remember, I had a
five-year-old during Broadway rehearsals) was the truth-telling
moment between Moana and Te Ka in Disney’s Moana. It’s so simple
—a matter of six lines, culminating in: This is not who you are / You
know who you are. These “simple gifts” felt powerfully cathartic to
me, but there I was with “Epic III”: stanza upon stanza of language
before the gift arrived, and then many stanzas of post-gift
denouement. For Broadway I shortened the beginning of “Epic III” so
that it closely resembled “Epic I”—Orpheus’s naive, almost rote
telling of the original myth—followed by a moment of identification
with the king: I know how it is because he was like me / A man in love
with a woman. The language was almost childish, but it made the
point simply, which was what I wanted. The Hades line Oh, it’s about
me, eh? was an ad-lib from Patrick. It might have been a joke the first
time he said it—but its effect on our preview audiences was hilarious.
I’d intended for Hades to laugh in Orpheus’s face, prompting
Hermes’s Go on . . . Now there was no need, because the audience did
the laughing for him.
I’d shortened the beginning of “Epic III,” but I remained obsessed
with the idea of shortening the ending as well. I became fixated on
switching to a three-versus-four-stanza version of the final acoustic
section. This is what I came up with:
Orpheus: I know how it is because he is like me / I know how it is
to be left all alone / There’s a hole in his arms where the world used
to be / When Persephone’s gone
Hades is king of silver and gold / But inside he’s as lonely as
anyone else / He has all of the riches his walls can hold / And in
spite of it all, he’s a poor boy himself
(Where is the treasure inside of your chest . . . ?)
I loved it, with the exception of the second line Inside he’s as lonely
as anyone else. I loved that it was a continuation of Orpheus taking his
own experience of love and loss and making of it an empathic
connection. I put the entire section in near the end of previews and I
honestly couldn’t figure out if it was an improvement. In my heart I
loved the brevity and simplicity of it, but many others (including
Rachel, some producers, and what probably spoke loudest to me in
that particular moment, Team Music) found it much less moving than
the old section. In particular, the line He’s a poor boy himself didn’t
quite make emotional sense to others. I countered that the line But
what he doesn’t know is that what he’s defending / Is already gone had
never quite made emotional sense to me!
At this point we were fast approaching the lock date for Broadway.
I’ll just say that I changed my mind many, many times, and kept
hunting furiously for the one line that could “bring home” the new
version. Here were some alternatives for the elusive second line:
~ With his back bent low from the weight of his wealth
~ He is filling a hole that can never be filled
~ And the river of stones and the road to hell / He has set us upon
with his wealth and his walls . . .
I was still hunting for the line when I climbed into Mara’s bed in
the middle of the night. She woke up, and I went back to work while
she, bless her, went to fetch melatonin (a natural sleep aid) for me
from a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. It didn’t work. When the sky got
light and I was still awake, I fled to Brooklyn and told Noah the whole
situation. We decided that if for nothing else than the sake of my
health, I should let it go. It wasn’t just the three-versus-four-stanza
ending of “Epic III” that had to be let go. It was the show itself, and
the work that had come to define a third of my life. I cried for hours,
and then I fell asleep.
EPIC III INSTRUMENTAL
Hermes
Orpheus was a poor boy
But he had a gift to give
This poor boy brought the world
Back into tune, is what he did
And Hades and Persephone
They took each other’s hands
And, brother, you know what they did?
They danced . . .
Notes on “Epic III Instrumental”
From the earliest days in Vermont, there was an instrumental interlude
during the joyful climax of the show called “Lover’s Desire.” It was a
traditional Afghan folk tune that Michael Chorney discovered and
arranged—a positively uplifting, run-on sentence of a melody, over a
single drone chord. Our Vermont productions coincided with the early
years of the American war in Afghanistan, which made this jubilant,
human, musical expression from that country especially poignant.
“Lover’s Desire” appeared on the studio record and in every preBroadway production. It was the reason for the old “Epic III” lines A
lover’s desire is a mutiny / A lover’s desire is a wilderness. At one
point I even attempted to set the melody to words; this was an early
idea for an intro to “Wedding Song”:
Orpheus: Lover, can you hear me? / I’m asking for your hand /
Your hand for better or worse / Forever / Whether you’re sick or
well / For rich or poorer, to have and to hold for as / Long as we
both shall live
Eurydice: Lover, can you hear me? / I’m asking for a hand / A hand
that’s steady and strong / To lean on / To catch me if I fall / That’s
the hand that I’ll have and I’ll hold for as / Long as we both shall
live . . .
Those lyrics never saw a production, but the “Lover’s Desire”
instrumental remained. For NYTW I wrote a text intro for it, after
which it was practically ordained that Hades and Persephone would
dance:
Hermes: And one song became two songs / And two songs became
three / It ain’t so much that the kingdom fell / It just got swept off
its feet / And Hades and Persephone / They took each other’s hands
/ And brother, you know what they did? They danced . . .
That line And one song became two songs was meant to explain the
fact that we were now segueing from the familiarity of “Epic III” into
the never-before-heard melody of “Lover’s Desire.” We had Orpheus
play the drone chord on his “lyre” (fun facts: in Vermont, Orpheus
played a banjo; pre-Broadway, a tenor guitar; and on Broadway, a
little arch-top electric). It was essential to me that we understand
Orpheus to be directly responsible for the music, the dance, the
reconciliation of the gods. But it never quite felt that way; Orpheus
seemed to fade from the scene. I began to feel especially troubled by
this in London, since I’d gone to great lengths to set up Orpheus’s
“gift” as the return of the forgotten music of the gods. I couldn’t help
but feel that the gods should be dancing to some version of “their”
song. On top of that, our Act II–length woes made me wonder if the
introduction of an entirely new musical theme in this moment was
further adding to the perception of length. I wanted the dance to exist
as an outro to “Epic III”—the final movement of one big number,
rather than the beginning of a new one. Some mourned the loss of
“Lover’s Desire,” which had undeniable magic. But the trade-off, for
me, was the sense that Orpheus had really done what he set out to do.
As Hermes puts it: This poor boy brought the world back into tune, is
what he did.
PROMISES
Eurydice
Orpheus . . .
Orpheus
Yes?
Eurydice
You finished it . . .
Orpheus
Yes
Now what do I do?
Eurydice
You take me home with you
Let’s go
Let’s go right now
Orpheus
Okay, let’s go—how?
Eurydice
We’ll walk—you know the way
We’ll just go back the way you came
Orpheus
It’s a long road—it’s a long walk
Back into the cold and dark
Are you sure you want to go?
Eurydice
Take me home
Orpheus
I have no ring for your finger
I have no banquet table to lay
I have no bed of feathers
Whatever promises I made
I can’t promise you fair sky above
Can’t promise you kind road below
But I’ll walk beside you, love
Any way the wind blows
Eurydice
I don’t need gold, don’t need silver
Just bread when I’m hungry, fire when I’m cold
I don’t need a ring for my finger
Just need a steady hand to hold
Don’t promise me fair sky above
Don’t promise me kind road below
Just walk beside me, love
Any way the wind blows
Orpheus (indicating Hades)
What about him?
Eurydice
He’ll let us go
Look at him—he can’t say no
Orpheus (indicating Workers)
What about them?
Eurydice
We’ll show the way
If we can do it, so can they
Eurydice & Orpheus
I don’t know where this road will end
But I’ll walk it with you hand in hand
I can’t promise you fair sky above
Can’t promise you kind road below
But I’ll walk beside you, love
Any way the wind blows
Orpheus
And do you let me walk with you?
Eurydice
I do
Orpheus
I do
Orpheus & Eurydice
I do
Eurydice
And keep on walking come what will?
Orpheus
I will
Eurydice
I will
Orpheus, Eurydice, Workers
We will
Notes on “Promises”
Off-Broadway
When I began working with Rachel, one of the missing story beats we
identified was a moment of reckoning and reconciliation for the young
lovers in the underworld. This was before I’d written “Come Home
with Me Reprise,” so there was essentially no moment of togetherness
or communication between them until they were preparing for their
final walk. I sat down to imagine what the lovers might say to each
other, and came out with this early intro to the song called
“Promises”—an intro that only appeared off-Broadway:
Eurydice: Promises you made to me / You said the rivers and the
trees / Would fill our pockets and our plates / Promises you made
You said the birds would blanket us / You said the world was
generous / And wouldn’t turn its back on us
The river froze, the trees were bare / And all the birds, they
disappeared / And so, me too—I flew away / From promises you
made
To which Orpheus replied:
Orpheus: Promises you made to me / You said that you would stay
with me / Whatever weather came our way / Promises you made
And we would walk side by side / Through all the seasons of our
lives / ’Neath any sky / Down any road / Any way the wind
blows . . .
Then we launched into the body of the song, which always felt to
me like a romantic Irish ballad. The verses have remained unchanged
for years, with two tiny exceptions. The initial lines I wrote for
Eurydice were: I don’t need gold, don’t need silver / Just keep me
warm in your arms when I’m cold but others flagged this as
schmaltzily dismissive of the real physical needs that Orpheus had
failed to meet aboveground. Similarly, her outro line And keep on
walking come what will was originally And try and catch me if I fall,
which brought tears to my eyes but painted her again as a bit of a
weakling, not what we wanted for our tough heroine.
I’d always intended for “Promises” to come after Epic “III,” as it
does in the Broadway version. But there came a moment at NYTW
when the tide turned against the song in that spot. There was a sense
of frustration with Eurydice, because Orpheus had just done this
impossible thing, and here she was complaining about promises he
hadn’t kept. In NYTW previews, we moved the song to the spot after
“His Kiss, the Riot,” which meant that Hades had already set the terms
of their release and the lovers were reckoning and reconciling in
anticipation of the walk ahead. Since they now understood that they
wouldn’t be walking side by side, I changed the chorus from But I’ll
walk beside you, love to But I’ll walk with you, my love. To make the
transition work, I wrote this last-minute “intro to the intro” of
“Promises”:
Hermes: Here’s what Mister Hades said: He said he’d let you go
Orpheus: He did?
Eurydice: He did?
Hermes: He did . . . There’s one thing, though / You have to walk
Orpheus: We can walk / We can walk, I know the way
Eurydice: You do?
Orpheus: That’s how I got here / We’ll go back the way I came
Hermes: Alright, alright, but here’s the thing / It ain’t easy walking,
jack / He said you have to walk in front / And she has to walk in
back / And if you turn to look at her, to make sure she’s coming too
/ Then she goes back to Hadestown, and ain’t nothing you can do /
You’ll have to trust each other / You’ll have to have no doubt / So if
y’all got something to say to each other / Say it now . . .
Orpheus: Eurydice . . .
Eurydice: Orpheus . . .
Orpheus: I know the way / I promise
(Eurydice: Promises you made to me . . .)
The situation was similar to the “Any Way the Wind Blows” crisis
off-Broadway. I didn’t feel right about moving the song, which I’d
intended for another spot, but it was either that or cut the song in its
entirety, which would have left a gaping hole in the story of our young
lovers. It was another rethink I didn’t have time for until Edmonton.
Edmonton
As soon as we started planning for the Citadel production, I put the
song back in the old spot, and tried to figure out a way for it to earn its
keep. The Promises you made to me intro that had sparked the whole
number had to go, as much as I loved the parallel imagery with
“Wedding Song.” We needed Eurydice fully on board with Orpheus—
in fact, I became enthusiastic about the idea of Eurydice, rather than
Orpheus, instigating their escape. I’m embarrassed by the Edmonton
version of the intro scene, but here it is:
Eurydice: Take me home
Orpheus: Are you sure? / It’s in the middle of nowhere
Eurydice: Spring is coming
Orpheus: Who says?
Eurydice: You / Everything you said was true
Orpheus: Not everything . . . / I said the wind would never change /
But I can’t promise that it won’t
Eurydice: Then don’t / Just take me home
(Orpheus: I have no ring for your finger . . .)
In the Edmonton interlude, the roles were reversed:
Orpheus: Let’s go—let’s go right now
Eurydice: Okay, let’s go—How?
Orpheus: We’ll walk—I know the way / We’ll just go back the way
I came
Eurydice: What about him?
Orpheus: He’ll let us go / Look at him / He can’t say no
Eurydice: And if he does?
Orpheus: He won’t / I’m not going back alone
London & Broadway
For London, I made Eurydice the instigator of both intro and interlude,
and added that gesture toward the Workers: What about them? This
was something Rachel had always craved: some way to tie this
moment of romantic commitment to a broader societal commitment.
For Broadway, I went full circle and brought the It isn’t finished yet
motif to a close with Eurydice’s You finished it! I had no idea that
Orpheus’s Now what do I do? would be funny. That’s how it is with
me and humor—often a joke I think will land never does, and a line
written in seriousness turns out to be hilarious.
WORD TO THE WISE
Hermes
And so the poor boy asked the king
Orpheus
Can we go?
Hermes
And this is how he answered him
Hades
I don’t know
Fates
Gotta think quick
Gotta save face
Caught ’tween a rock and a hard place
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do now?
If you tell ’em no, oh, you’re a heartless man
And you’re gonna have a martyr on your hands
If you let ’em go, oh, you’re a spineless king
And you’re never gonna get ’em in line again
Damned if you don’t
Damned if you do
Whole damn-nation’s watching you
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do?
What you gonna do now?
Here’s a little tip
Word to the wise
Here’s a little snippet of advice
Men are fools
Men are frail
Give them the rope and they’ll hang themselves
Notes on “Word to the Wise”
I wrote “Word to the Wise” for a workshop in advance of NYTW in
hopes of inserting some up-tempo levity into Act II. It was a satisfying
turning-of-the-tables for the Fates to plague Hades the same way
they’d plagued Eurydice throughout the show. And it gave Hades a lot
to chew on in “His Kiss, the Riot.” Early workshop versions had this
extra verse:
Fates: Hey / Hey / Hey / It’s judgment day! / Are you gonna let
’em just walk away? / What you gonna do . . . ?
There was something about that Are you gonna let ’em just walk
away? that reminded me of the Spice Girls’ I’ll tell you what I want,
what I really, really want and I remember asking our workshop Fates
to go full-Spice with it. The result was hilarious and terrible; I
recanted right away. Ultimately, I cut the verse to keep Act II moving.
One more change worth noting is that in early productions, the intro
went like this:
Hermes: It echoed in the rocks and stones / When the poor boy
asked the king
Orpheus: Can we go?
Hades: I don’t know
Hermes: And the walls were listening
I began to feel that I was abusing the rocks and stones metaphor,
and I found another unwittingly funny moment. When Hermes says,
And this is how he answered him the audience anticipates a No from
Hades, because of the rhyme with go. I don’t know, especially in
London, was a laugh line.
HIS KISS, THE RIOT
Hades (to himself)
The devil take this Orpheus
And his belladonna kiss
Beautiful and poisonous
Lovely! Deadly!
Dangerous, this jack of hearts
With his kiss, the riot starts
All my children came here poor
Clamoring for bed and board
Now what do they clamor for?
Freedom! Freedom
Have I made myself their lord
Just to fall upon the sword
Of some pauper’s minor chord
Who will lead them?
Who lays all the best-laid plans?
Who makes work for idle hands?
(to Hermes) Only one thing to be done
Let them go, but let there be some
Term to be agreed upon
Some . . . condition
Orpheus, the undersigned
Shall not turn to look behind
She’s out of sight!
And he’s out of his mind
Every coward seems courageous
In the safety of the crowd
Bravery can be contagious
When the band is playing loud
Nothing makes a man so bold
As a woman’s smile and a hand to hold
But all alone his blood runs thin
And doubt comes
Doubt comes in
Notes on “His Kiss, the Riot”
This one has remained mostly unchanged since the Vermont days, but
there was one stanza that got cut at the last minute, in the crunch to
shorten Act II for Broadway. It went like this:
Hades: Now it thickens on my tongue / Now it quickens in my lung
/ Now I’m stricken! Now I’m stung! / It’s done already . . .
I loved it, but the song lived happily without it. I made one other
change in London. The song used to go:
Hades: Only one thing to be done / Let them think that they have
won / Let them leave together under / One condition
This began to strike me as too dastardly for the complex character
Hades was becoming. I didn’t want Hades’s final ultimatum to be a
trick, but a test. I changed it to Let them go, but let there be some /
Term to be agreed upon, which had the added benefit of feeling
unpremeditated, a plot being hatched in real time.
WAIT FOR ME REPRISE INTRO
Orpheus (to Hermes)
What is it?
Hermes
Well, the good news is
He said that you can go
Eurydice
He did?
Orpheus & Workers
He did?
Hermes
He did . . .
There’s bad news, though
Eurydice
What is it?
Hermes
You can walk . . .
But it won’t be like you planned
Orpheus
What do you mean?
Eurydice
Why not?
Hermes
Well, you won’t be hand in hand
You won’t be arm-in-arm
Side by side, and all of that
(to Orpheus) He said you have to walk in front
And she has to walk in back
Orpheus
Why?
Hermes
And if you turn around
To make sure she’s coming too
Then she goes back to Hadestown
And ain’t nothing you can do
Eurydice
But why?
Hermes
Why build walls?
Make folks walk single file?
Divide and conquer’s what it’s called
Orpheus
It’s a trap?
Hermes
It’s a trial
Do you trust each other?
Do you trust yourselves?
Orpheus & Eurydice
We do
Hermes
Well, listen, brother
If you wanna walk outta hell
You’re gonna have to prove it
Before gods and men
Can you do that?
Orpheus & Eurydice
We can
Hermes
Alright . . . time to go
Orpheus
Mister Hermes!
Hermes
Yes?
Orpheus
It’s not a trick?
Hermes
No—
It’s a test
Notes on “Wait for Me Intro Reprise”
My favorite discovery in the writing of this scene was the
trap/trial/trick/test language—it felt very Joseph Campbell—the
mentor “testing” the hero. The “Wait for Me Intro Reprise” evolved,
for Edmonton, out of the NYTW intro to “Promises,” the one that
began with Hermes’s Here’s what Mister Hades said: He said he’d let
you go.
There was another fragment of Hermes’s narration that I wrote for
this spot, but never found a way to use:
Hermes: A poor boy and a hungry young girl / Walking single file /
While the music played / Brother, they looked for all the world /
Like they was walking down the aisle / On their wedding day
That image of a wedding procession haunts me still. It seems to
contain the entire tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice within it, from
wedding-day snakebite to ill-fated ascent. It’s possible that the line
Make folks walk single file? is a vestige of that fragment.
WAIT FOR ME REPRISE
Hermes
The meanest dog you’ll ever meet
He ain’t the hound dog in the street
He bares some teeth and tears some skin
But brother, that’s the worst of him
The dog you really got to dread
Is the one that howls inside your head
It’s him whose howling drives men mad
And a mind to its undoing
Eurydice & Orpheus
Wait for me, I’m coming
Wait, I’m coming with you
Wait for me, I’m coming too
I’m coming too
Workers
Show the way so we can see
Show the way the world could be
If you can do it so can she
If she can do it so can we
Show the way the world could be
Show the way so we believe
We will follow where you lead
We will follow if you
Show the way
Persephone
You think they’ll make it?
Hades
I don’t know
Workers
Show the way
Persephone
Hades, you let them go
Workers
Show the way
Hades
I let them try
Persephone
And how ’bout you and I?
Workers
Show the way
Persephone
Are we gonna try again?
Workers
Show the way
Hades
It’s time for spring
We’ll try again next fall
Persephone
Wait for me
Hades
I will
Eurydice, Persephone, Fates, Workers
Wait for me, I’m coming
Wait, I’m coming with you
Wait for me, I’m coming too
I’m coming too
Fates
Who are you?
Who do you think you are?
Who are you?
Who are you to lead her?
Who are you to lead them?
Who are you to think that you can
Hold your head up higher than your fellow man?
Hermes
You got a lonesome road to walk
And it ain’t along the railroad track
And it ain’t along the blacktop tar
You’ve walked a hunnert times before
I’ll tell you where the real road lies
Between your ears, behind your eyes
That is the path to paradise
Likewise the road to ruin
Company
Wait for me, I’m coming
Wait, I’m coming with you
Wait for me, I’m coming too
Company (except Orpheus)
Wait for me, I’m coming
Wait, I’m coming with you
Wait for me, I’m coming too, I’m coming
Workers, Hermes, Persephone
Show the way
Eurydice
I’m coming, wait for me
Workers, Hermes, Persephone
Show the way
Eurydice
I hear the walls repeating
Workers, Hermes, Persephone
Show the way
Eurydice
The falling of my feet and
It sounds like drumming
Workers, Hermes, Persephone
Show the way
Eurydice
And we are not alone
Workers, Hermes, Persephone
Show the way
Eurydice
I hear the rocks and stones
Workers, Hermes, Persephone
Show the way
Eurydice
Echoing our song
I’m coming
Workers
Coming, coming . . .
Notes on “Wait for Me Reprise”
Vermont
The idea that the chorus of “Wait for Me” could be reprised and
repurposed by Eurydice during the lovers’ ascent dates back to the
second Vermont production. I remember it well, because I sang it
myself! Back then, there was no intro scene, so the information about
the terms of the release went into the body of the song:
Hades: Hermes!
Hermes: Hades!
Hades: Time to go / Time to bring this to a close / Time to lay this
thing to rest
Hermes: Orpheus?
Hades: Orpheus / It’s all agreed / We’ve struck a deal / He’s free
Hermes: He’s free?
Hades: He’s free to walk
Hermes: And she?
Hades: To follow at his heel / And she, to follow at his back
Eurydice: Wait for me, I’m coming . . .
Hades: And she shall follow at his back / And she shall follow in
his wake
Hermes: And what’s the catch?
Hades: The catch is this: / He shall not turn to see her face / And if
he turns, the game is up / The deal is off, his race is run / And that’s
the end of Orpheus / You’ll see it done?
Eurydice: Wait for me, I’m coming . . .
Off-Broadway & Edmonton
That early stab at the reprise didn’t feel strong enough to make it onto
the studio record, so I started from scratch in the workshops leading
up to NYTW when I wrote Hermes’s “advisory” verses (The meanest
dog you’ll ever meet . . .) and the recitative exchange between Hades
and Persephone (You think they’ll make it?).
London & Broadway
For London, the song got a major overhaul. The first thing I added
was the Show the way verse and refrain for the Workers. It was an
attempt to address a long-standing note from Rachel about tracking
the significance of the walk, not just for our young lovers, but for the
world at large. It had the side effect of really putting the pressure on
poor Orpheus. I also added the outro for Eurydice, which parallels the
first “Wait for Me” outro, and became a showcase for Eva
Noblezada’s earth-shattering belt.
Finally, in my quest to respond to Ken’s note about having Orpheus
“go a few rounds” with the Fates before the final battle of “Doubt
Comes In,” I added the Fates’ Who are you? interlude to this song. It’s
worth noting that I initially tried to put the interlude in a whole
different song—“Chant Reprise”—but it didn’t work, either musically
or dramatically, and this structure paralleled the first “Wait for Me.”
Symmetry!
Hades’s line used to go: It’s almost spring / We’ll try again next fall.
I preferred that line poetically, and still do. But it didn’t land forcefully
enough the idea that Hades was now at least somewhat willing to
restore balance in the world. It’s time for spring was more resolute.
There’s a double chorus near the end of “Wait for Me Reprise”: the
first chorus is accompanied by the band, and the second is a cappella.
In my efforts to shorten Act II, I tried multiple times to cut one or the
other of these choruses. I remember a production meeting in London
at which Todd Sickafoose declared he was “going down with” the
double chorus; it felt absolutely essential to him as a slingshot into the
outro. We conducted an experiment in London previews where we
tried first the single and then the double chorus. The audience let us
know loud and clear that there was something alchemically right about
the double—their applause that night overrode the transition into
“Doubt Comes In”—so we kept it.
DOUBT COMES IN
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la . . .
Fates
Doubt comes in
The wind is changing
Doubt comes in
How cold it’s blowing
Doubt comes in
And meets a stranger
Walking on a road alone
Where is she?
Where is she now?
Doubt comes in
Orpheus
Who am I?
Where do I think I’m going?
Fates
Doubt comes in
Orpheus
Who am I?
Why am I all alone?
Fates
Doubt comes in
Orpheus
Who do I think I am?
Who am I to think that she would follow me
Into the cold and dark again?
Fates
Where is she?
Where is she now?
Eurydice
Orpheus
Are you listening?
Workers
Are you listening?
Eurydice
I am right here
Workers
We are all right here
Eurydice
And I will be till the end
Workers
Will be till the end
Eurydice
And the coldest night
Workers
Coldest night
Eurydice
Of the coldest year
Workers
Coldest year
Eurydice & Workers
Comes right before the spring
Orpheus
La la la la la la la
La la la la la la . . .
Who am I?
Who am I against him?
Who am I?
Why would he let me win?
Why would he let her go?
Who am I to think that he wouldn’t deceive me
Just to make me leave alone?
Fates
Doubt comes in
The wind is changing
Orpheus
Is this a trap that’s being laid for me?
Fates
Doubt comes in
How dark it’s grown
Orpheus
Is this a trick that’s being played on me?
Fates
Doubt comes in and meets a stranger
Orpheus
I used to see the way the world could be
Fates
Walking on a road alone
Orpheus
But now the way it is is all I see, and
Orpheus & Fates
Where is she?
Where is she now?
Eurydice
Orpheus
You are not alone
Workers
You are not alone
Eurydice
I am right behind you
Workers
We are all behind you
Eurydice
And I have been all along
Workers
Have been all along
Eurydice
And the darkest hour
Workers
Darkest hour
Eurydice
Of the darkest night
Workers
Darkest night
Eurydice
Comes right before the—
(Orpheus turns)
Orpheus
It’s you
Eurydice
It’s me
Orpheus
Orpheus
Eurydice
Notes on “Doubt Comes In”
Vermont & Off-Broadway
“Doubt Comes In” began as some scribbles in a notebook from before
I was married. There was someone I was thinking a lot about, even
making some plans around, and it seemed to be going well until one
late-night phone call. It was the tiniest thing: something in his voice
had changed. It opened a tiny crack in my confidence about the
relationship, and the crack became a chasm. It reminded me of other
circumstances in which “doubt comes in.” I wrestled (let’s be real, still
wrestle) with self-doubt onstage, especially as a solo performer. One
tiny negative thought leads to the next, and then the next . . . That’s
what I was thinking about when I wrote the first stanza of “Doubt
Comes In.” Like “Way Down Hadestown,” it was an unrelated
fragment until I expanded it for the first draft of Hadestown.
The Vermont, studio album, and off-Broadway versions of this song
are almost identical. The one thing I added, for NYTW, was the act of
Orpheus singing his la las intermittently. They were meant to illustrate
his aloneness; he sings, and no one sings back. Here is that early
version:
Orpheus: La la la la la la la / La la la la la la la
Fates: Doubt comes in and strips the paint / Doubt comes in and
turns the wine / Doubt comes in and leaves a trace / Of vinegar and
turpentine
Fates & Orpheus: Where are you? / Where are you now?
Fates: Doubt comes in and kills the lights / Doubt comes in and
chills the air / Doubt comes in and all falls silent
Orpheus & Fates: It’s as though you aren’t there / Where are you?
/ Where are you now?
Eurydice: Orpheus, you’re shivering / Is it cold or fear? / Just keep
singing / The coldest night of the coldest year / Comes right before
the spring
Orpheus & Fates: Doubt comes in with tricky fingers / Doubt
comes in with fickle tongues
Orpheus: Doubt comes in and my heart falters and forgets the
songs it sung
Orpheus & Fates: Where are you? Where are you now?
Eurydice: Orpheus, hold on / Hold on tight / It won’t be long / The
darkest hour of the darkest night / Comes right before the dawn
(Orpheus turns)
Eurydice: You’re early
Orpheus: I missed you
Those last two lines were a repeat of the Hades and Persephone
exchange in “Way Down Hadestown.” I threw them into a draft on a
whim, uncertain if they would make sense to anyone. Some loved
them and some didn’t; the creative team was divided right down the
middle. I liked the symmetry and the idea that the young couple had,
at some level, “become” the older one. But the lines seemed to require
the engagement of the mind at a tragic moment when it felt better to
simply engage the heart. In subsequent productions I instead had the
lovers cosmically “name” each other . . . one last time.
Edmonton
“Doubt Comes In” came under fire from all sides after NYTW. It was,
to be fair, poetic portraiture of an abstract emotion at the show’s
climactic moment. As many pointed out, the audience had no “access”
to Orpheus’s thought process during the scene of his undoing. Without
access, there wasn’t a lot of arc; it was as if Orpheus’s turn was a
foregone conclusion from the beginning. How to add real suspense to
the scene? At the Citadel I took a deep dive in the direction of an idea
from Ken—that perhaps it would be more engaging if Orpheus
remained hopeful to the end. The Canadian version looked like this:
Fates: Doubt comes in / The wind is changing / Doubt comes in /
Here comes the storm / Doubt comes in / Ain’t that the same wind /
That took her from you before? / Where is she? / Where is she
now?
Orpheus: Eurydice / I can see us now / You and me / In a field of
flowers / And we’re in each other’s arms
Fates: Ain’t that just the way it sounded / On the day you turned
around and she was gone? / Doubt comes in
Orpheus: Eurydice / I can hear the birds
Fates: Doubt comes in
Orpheus: In the trees / And the rivers
Fates: Doubt comes in
Orpheus: I can hear them on the wind
Fates: It’s the wind that made her leave you / Are you sure she
wouldn’t leave that way again? / Where is she?
Orpheus: She wouldn’t
Fates: Where is she now?
Orpheus: She wouldn’t!
Eurydice: Orpheus / Lover, brother, friend / I’m right here / And
we’re walking in the wind / And the coldest night . . .
Orpheus: Eurydice! / I can feel the sun / Shine on me / And on
everyone / And it’s springtime in the world
Fates: Well, she said she wouldn’t leave ya / Are you sure that you
believe her? / Are you sure?
Orpheus: I’m sure / I’m sure
Fates: Doubt comes in / The wind is changing
Orpheus: She wouldn’t leave that way again, would she?
Fates: Doubt comes in / Here comes the storm
Orpheus: It’s just the wind that’s playing tricks on me
Fates: Doubt comes in / Ain’t that the same wind
Orpheus: I used to see the way the world could be
Fates: That took her from you before?
Orpheus: But now the way it is is all I see, and
Fates, Orpheus, Workers: Where is she? Where is she now?
Eurydice: Orpheus / You’re not alone . . .
I’d written an initial line for Orpheus’s second verse that was highly
controversial. It went: Eurydice / I can hear the birds / In the trees /
And the laughter / Of our children on the wind. The line came the
morning after a night of fitful Edmonton sleep and I wept over it; it
felt to me the most tragic thing to invoke these children, and this
future, that would never come. I triumphantly unveiled the line and
again the response was split down the middle, with some moved to
tears like me, and others, more stoic, saying, “Children have never
been mentioned in this show before . . . you can’t really start now, in
the penultimate song . . .” I changed the line.
London & Broadway
I’ve lost count of the number of ways I attempted to rewrite “Doubt
Comes In” between productions, but I will say that the entire
enterprise was connected to the larger question of why Orpheus turns.
Because of the fact that in this telling of the myth, Eurydice actively
abandons Orpheus, there was something about his doubt in her loyalty
that felt worth mining. The Fates’ lines in Edmonton—which I’d
initially written for Orpheus and then reassigned to them—were all to
do with his prior abandonment by Eurydice, and the fear that it might
happen again. But there was something not quite right about that
angle, either. As André De Shields put it in a workshop, it had to be
“Doubt with a capital D.” It had to be deeper than jealous love. It had
to be existential and inevitable.
The Who am I? idea was one of many rewriting angles I’d
attempted and abandoned pre-Edmonton. What I’d initially written
was this:
Orpheus: Where am I? / Where am I anyway / What if I / What if I
can’t find the way? / Why would she? / Why would she follow me /
When my steps are so unsteady / And she left me once already /
Didn’t she?
I’d also stumbled upon this:
Orpheus: Who am I to think that I can hold my head up higher than
my fellow man?
None of those lines made it into the Edmonton show, but I turned to
them again for London. I was hunting for more existential language
and Who am I? seemed to fit that bill. I also found a way to introduce
that motif twice, from the mouths of the Fates (Who are you?), before
Orpheus utters the line himself in “Doubt Comes In.” That gave it the
sense of inevitability we were after—“Doubt with a capital D.”
ROAD TO HELL REPRISE
Hermes
Alright . . .
It’s an old song
It’s an old tale from way back when
It’s an old song
And that is how it ends
That’s how it goes
Don’t ask why, brother, don’t ask how
He could have come so close
The song was written long ago
And that is how it goes
It’s a sad song
It’s a sad tale; it’s a tragedy
It’s a sad song
But we sing it anyway
Cos here’s the thing
To know how it ends
And still begin
To sing it again
As if it might turn out this time
I learned that from a friend of mine
Company
Mmm . . .
Hermes
See, Orpheus was a poor boy
Eurydice
Anybody got a match?
Hermes
But he had a gift to give
Eurydice
Give me that
Hermes
He could make you see how the world could be
In spite of the way that it is
Can you see it?
Company
Mmm . . .
Hermes
Can you hear it?
Company
Mmm . . .
Hermes
Can you feel it like a train?
Is it comin’?
Is it comin’ this way?
On a sunny day there was a railroad car
Company
Mmm . . .
Hermes
And a lady stepping off a train
Company
Mmm . . .
Hermes
Everybody looked and everybody saw
Company
Mmm . . .
Hermes
That spring had come again
With a love song
Persephone
With a love song
Workers & Fates
With a love song
Hermes
With a tale of a love from long ago.
It’s a sad song
Eurydice
It’s a sad song
Persephone
It’s a sad song
Hermes
But we keep singing even so
It’s an old song
Persephone & Eurydice
It’s an old song
Company
It’s an old song
Hermes
It’s an old tale from way back when
And we’re gonna sing it again and again
We’re gonna sing
We’re gonna sing
Company
It’s a love song
Eurydice
It’s a love song
Hermes
It’s a love song
Persephone
It’s a love song
Company
It’s a tale of love from long ago
It’s a sad song
Eurydice
It’s a sad song
Hermes & Persephone
It’s a sad song
Hermes
But we keep singing even so
It’s an old song
Eurydice & Persephone
It’s an old song
Hermes
It’s an old, old, old tale from way back when
And we’re gonna sing it
Company
Again and again
Hermes
We’re gonna sing it again
Notes on “Road to Hell Reprise”
Off-Broadway
The first “Road to Hell Reprise” was written, terrifyingly, over the
course of off-Broadway previews. We went into our first preview with
a proto-version of the song that was entirely emotionally wrong. I was
under a lot of pressure to rewrite it quickly, and every change I made
had to be metabolized during afternoon rehearsals (mostly by Chris
Sullivan, our off-Broadway Hermes) and delivered that night in front
of an audience. What was required was a delicate emotional transition
between Orpheus’s turn and what I hoped would be an uplifting
ending in spite of it all. It was important to dwell in the tragedy
without wallowing in it; to move on, but not too quickly. A major
middle-of-the-night breakthrough was the Hermes stanza: Cos here’s
the thing / To know how it ends / And still begin / To sing it again / As
if it might turn out this time / I learned that from a friend of mine. That
stanza, miraculously, seemed to write itself.
I also wrote the stanza that begins That’s how it goes, which we
ended up cutting off-Broadway, but reinstating in Edmonton. The
problem was the line Don’t ask why, brother, don’t ask how. I loved its
resonance with Don’t ask where, brother, don’t ask when, but it caused
consternation off-Broadway because after a decidedly abstract version
of “Doubt Comes In,” the audience was in fact left asking “Why?” and
“How?” and the line compounded their frustration. This was Rachel
and Ken’s firm opinion one late night during previews at a bar next
door to NYTW called KGB. I agreed to cut the whole stanza, but the
lines haunted me, and in Edmonton I earned them back—by rewriting
“Doubt Comes In.”
Just as “Road to Hell” wasn’t our opening number at NYTW,
“Road to Hell Reprise” wasn’t our closer. The song ended with this
language, which paralleled the original “Road to Hell”:
Hermes: Everybody looked and everybody saw / That spring had
come again / With a love song / With a tale of a love that never dies
/ With a love song / For anyone who tries . . .
And that last line segued directly into “I Raise My Cup,” which was
followed by the curtain call.
Edmonton, London, Broadway
Off-Broadway, more than one person reported being troubled by the
fact that we seemed to lose track of Eurydice after Orpheus’s turn. I
tried to address this in Edmonton by reprising her Act I interjections
Anybody got a match? and Give me that in “Road to Hell Reprise.” I
liked the lines for their toughness and resilience, but more significant
was the way they invoked a Groundhog Day–style return to the
beginning of the story. In Edmonton I also let go of the Anyone who
tries language in favor of We’re gonna sing it again. I wanted “Road
to Hell Reprise” to be the last song in the show proper, with full stop
and applause. We’re gonna sing it again felt more final, both
musically and thematically, and it also had the effect of signaling a
return to the top of the show. In London, I doubled the final chorus,
Liam arranged a choral climax, and Rachel went full Groundhog Day
with the staging, which required more than one lightning-quick
costume change.
It was breathtakingly right. There was a joyful defiance in the act of
“beginning again” that seemed to sum up the spirit of our story.
WE RAISE OUR CUPS
Persephone
Pour the wine and raise a cup
Drink up, brothers, you know how
And spill a drop for Orpheus
Wherever he is now
Persephone & Eurydice
Some birds sing when the sun shines bright
Our praise is not for them
Persephone
But the ones who sing in the dead of night
We raise our cups to them
Persephone & Eurydice
Wherever he is wandering
Alone upon the earth
Let all our singing follow him
Persephone
And bring him comfort
Company
Some flowers bloom
Persephone & Eurydice
Where the green grass grows
Company
Our praise is not for them
Persephone & Eurydice
But the ones who bloom in the bitter snow
Company
We raise our cups to them
We raise our cups and drink them up
Persephone
We raise them high and drink them dry
Company
To Orpheus, and all of us
Persephone
Good night, brothers, good night
Notes on “We Raise Our Cups”
I tried to cut “We Raise Our Cups” from Hadestown in every single
production we did post-NYTW. In fact, we went through the onenight-only experiment of performing the show without it during
previews at the Citadel, the National, and even the Walter Kerr. In
Edmonton, where “Road to Hell Reprise” became the show’s final
song, “We Raise Our Cups” became an encore. I went back and forth
about whether an encore was a lovely musical gesture or an
unwelcome act of lily-gilding. I wasn’t the only one; various creative
and producing team members wondered if we’d be better off without
it at different times. Rachel alone was always firmly on Team Cup.
She felt that the audience needed a final moment together, with the
Company, to fully process the end of the show. And especially on
Broadway, our preview experiment seemed to bear that out. It’s
possible that the crowd that night was full of folks familiar with the
song from previous iterations, but in any case, there was palpable
disappointment when it never came. I even got an e-mail from Jim
Nicola (of NYTW) the next day—he’d heard a rumor that I’d cut the
song, and made an impassioned plea for it to stay. “It’s already back,”
I assured him.
The song speaks of something not unrelated to this book. We raise
our cups to Orpheus not because he succeeds, but because he tries. We
understand implicitly that there’s value in his trying and even in his
failure. The act of writing, for me, has most often been a process of
failing repeatedly. It’s the only way I know how to write! And in the
moment of “failure,” at the desk, banging one’s “head against a wall,”
it’s nearly impossible to see or feel the value in it.
But when I step back, I see a different picture. I know that
Hadestown is—and this goes for any creative endeavor, I reckon—so
much more than what meets the eye or the ear. What is seen and heard
onstage is the blooming flower, but most of the plant is underground.
Every line, verse, or chorus—every idea any of us who worked on it
ever had, even the ones that never saw the light of day—they’re down
there. They’re the roots of the plant, and the flower wouldn’t exist
without them. The ones who bloom in the bitter snow bloom because
they are supported from below by a thousand tries and failures. Here’s
one last example of that.
I wrote the text for “We Raise Our Cups” for the studio album in
2010. It changed only slightly over the years, from first person
singular to plural. The music, though, dates much further back; our
very first Vermont production of Hadestown ended with a song called
“Cloud Machine,” which had similar music but entirely different
lyrics:
Orpheus: What have I done? Mother, what have I done? /
Squandered the gift that you gave me / Gambled with Hades and
Hades won / And there’s no song now can save me
Mother, I failed! Oh, Mother, I tried / And I fell like a fool would
fall / And I left my love / On the other side / On the other side of
the wall
(alt. There’s a crack in the wall / It’s a little bit wider / It’s a little
bit wider, that’s all)
Persephone: Come, my son, don’t take it so hard / Everything is
forgiven / You have done naught / But to play out the part / That the
Fates in their wisdom have written
Orpheus: Raise up the curtain! The crowd goes wild! / The Fates
are drunken clowns / All of us dreamers are walking the wire /
While they juggle our dreams around
Apollo, come down in your cloud machine / Apollo, come
swallowing fire / With your thunder and lightning and kerosene /
For the Fates and their funeral pyre
Persephone: Come, my son, we try and we fail / Every tale has an
end
But the pale dawn breaks / And the snake eats its tail / And the tale
begins again . . .
I’m a little embarrassed by those lyrics, and confused as to why
Persephone appears to be standing in for Orpheus’s mom.
But I’m utterly fascinated by that last line—a line that appeared in
2006, disappeared for ten years, and was reborn in 2016 in “Road to
Hell” as a central theme of the show. The seed lay underground for a
decade, and when the conditions were right . . . it bloomed again.
Keep trying.
Vermont cast of Hadestown, 2007. Clockwise from left: Miriam Bernardo (Persephone);
Sarah-Dawn Albani, Nessa Rabin, Lisa Raatikainan (Fates); Sara Grace (Cerberus); Cavan
Meese, Noah Book, Noah Hahn, Erik Weil, Aliza LaPaglia (Workers); Ben t. Matchstick
(Hermes); Ben Campbell (Orpheus); Anaïs Mitchell (Eurydice); David Symons (Hades).
Photo: Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
Hadestown poster, Vermont, 2006.
Art/Design: Brian Grunert and Tim Staszak for White Bicycle
“Eurydice” linocut from the Hadestown studio album, 2010.
Art: Peter Nevins
Early attempts at “Epic” verses, circa 2007.
“America Sings Hadestown” poster, 2011. This was a final “roundup” of American concert
versions of Hadestown featuring special guests from around the country.
Art/Design: Peter Nevins
New York Theatre Workshop, 2016. Left to right: Shaina Taub, Lulu Fall, Jessie Shelton
(Fates); Nabiyah Be (Eurydice); Chris Sullivan (Hermes).
Photo: Joan Marcus
The Citadel, Edmonton, 2018. Left to right: Evangelia Kambites, Kira Guloien, Jewelle
Blackman (Fates).
Photo: David Cooper
With Rachel Chavkin in a Midtown public park.
Photo: Tess Mayer for The Interval
“Our Lady of the Underground” at the National Theatre, London, 2018. Front: Amber Gray
(Persephone). Back, left to right: Sharif Afifi, Shaq Taylor, Jordan Shaw, Aiesha Pease, Seyi
Omooba, Joseph Prouse, [not pictured: Beth Hinton-Lever] (Workers).
Photo: Helen Maybanks
Walter Kerr Theatre, Broadway, 2019. Left to right: Eva Noblezada (Eurydice), André De
Shields (Hermes), Reeve Carney (Orpheus). Balcony: Patrick Page (Hades), Amber Gray
(Persephone).
Photo: Matthew Murphy for MurphyMade
Text exchange with Noah, 2019.
Official Broadway Cast Recording session, DiMenna Center, 2019. Front row, left to right:
Ken Cerniglia, Michael Chorney, Anaïs Mitchell, Dale Franzen, Todd Sickafoose, Rachel
Chavkin, Amber Gray, Afra Hines, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, Kay Trinidad, Khaila Wilcoxon.
Second row, left to right: David Lai, Beverly Jenkins, Dana Lyn, Marika Hughes, Ben
Perowsky, Brian Drye, Cody Owen Stine, Patrick Page, Eva Noblezada, André De Shields,
Ahmad Simmons, John Krause, T. Oliver Reid, Jessie Shelton, Mara Isaacs. Third row, left
to right: Isaiah Abolin, Robinson Morse, Reeve Carney, Timothy Hughes, Malcolm
Armwood, Kimberly Marable, Jewelle Blackman, Liam Robinson.
Photo: Courtesy of Hadestown Broadway LLC
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Huge thanks to Rachel Chavkin, Ken Cerniglia, Mara Isaacs, John Parsley,
Liz Riches, and Don Mitchell for helping me navigate this rabbit hole of
memories! And for making the time and space for me to go down it, forever
love to Noah, Ramona, and Rosetta. xoa
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anaïs Mitchell is a singer-songwriter who comes from the world of
narrative folksong, poetry, and balladry. Among her recorded works are six
full-length albums including the original studio album of Hadestown (2010,
featuring Justin Vernon and Ani DiFranco); Young Man in America (2012);
and Bonny Light Horseman (2020, with folk band Bonny Light Horseman).
Mitchell has headlined concerts around the world. Awards include a Tony
Award for Best Score for Hadestown. Her albums have been featured in
year-end best lists including NPR, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, and
Sunday Times. Hadestown is Mitchell’s first musical.
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