Hell of a show

‘It’s a sad song, but we keep singing even so.”

That’s Hermes (Broadway icon André De Shields) speaking to the audience at the end of Hadestown, the much-adored musical now appearing on Winnipeg movie screens for a limited run.

The music is often beautifully, powerfully sad in this modern American folk opera by Anaïs Mitchell. Reworking the paired Greek myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone, Mitchell isn’t looking for conventional happy-ever-afters. After all, a lot of this doom-laden story takes place in hell.

Instead, Hadestown finds its joy in the power of shared stories.

Mitchell’s opus started as a small travelling stage production, morphed into a 2010 concept album and then in 2019 became a Broadway musical, winning Tony awards and gathering a passionate fan base.

This new film version is a professional capture — or pro-shot — of a live stage performance. It features the five stars from the original cast, who reunited for a four-week stint in London’s West End in the winter of 2025.

In a sepia-toned speakeasy, we meet Orpheus (Reeve Carney), an idealistic and open-hearted young musician with a rapturous falsetto, and Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), a streetwise and cynical girl who is used to looking after herself. The two may be mismatched, but they fall desperately in love.

As winter becomes darker and colder, though, Eurydice struggles to keep body and soul together, and Orpheus is too busy finishing his perfect song to notice.

Another tricky romance involves Hades, played by Patrick Page, whose molasses-dark basso profundo voice and looming physical presence make him very convincing as the lord of the underworld and a ruthless industrial plutocrat. His wife, Persephone (Amber Gray), who must spend half the year in Hades’ shadowy kingdom, is a hard-drinking force of nature. (And we mean that literally — she’s the goddess of spring growth.) Her cosmic discontent is embodied in Gray’s spiky physicality and intensely dramatic vocals.

This central quartet is observed by the god Hermes, our narrator and master of ceremonies, played with silvery elegance by the 80-year-old De Shields. Every inflection, every gesture is precise and absolutely right, as his Hermes balances sardonic commentary with a certain amount of rueful sympathy for these crossed lovers.

A chorus of the Three Fates also hangs around, along with a gang of roustabouts filling out the big singing and dancing numbers. Mitchell is riffing on American roots music, with songs that reference New Orleans jazz, Delta blues and gospel. There are a few fillers that veer toward generic contemporary pop, but there are also some stomping showstoppers, such as Way Down Hadestown, and other songs that rely on delicate, melancholy harmonies, such as Any Way the Wind Blows.

There are a few romantic power ballads, as the fates of the two couples intertwine, with Orpheus making a dangerous journey into the realm of the dead to rescue his beloved.

But there are also political messages. “Times being what they are,” as one character remarks, Hadestown is also about the fraught relations between labour and capital, and the push-pull between the hopeful possibilities of art and the hard necessities of everyday life.

Hadestown is also a sung-through musical, meaning we don’t get any spoken dialogue. When this format works, it feels heightened and passionate. When it falters, the story and characters can seem disjointed and oversimplified.

Theatre director Rachel Chavkin, who has collaborated with Mitchell since the musical’s Broadway debut, relies on a simplified, stylized look. Costumes range from Depression-era duds to post-apocalyptic streetwear.

Page — who ruptured his Achilles tendon during rehearsals — is wearing a medical boot custom-designed by costumer Michael Krass to suggest a kind of cool steampunk vibe.

The seven-piece band is on the stage, which is relatively small and bare. It sometimes feels crowded, but it never feels constrained. There are circles-within-circles on the floor that can rise and fall and rotate, which keeps things dynamic.

This sense of stage movement is paralleled with the roving camera of film director Brett Sullivan, known for doing pro-shoots of big Broadway and West End musicals, with versions of Billy Elliot, Newsies, Miss Saigon and Waitress. He pulls off some interesting angles and shots, but never gets in the way of the material, and has a sensitive feel for when to close in on the actors and when to pull back and give us the whole stage.

Sullivan also chooses, sometimes, to show the audience, which feels right for a production that has such dedicated fans, many coming back again and again. You can feel that emotional connection in the musical’s sad but still hopeful ending, when everyone makes a toast to the potent possibilities of shared stories and songs.

If you can’t see a live performance of Hadestown, seeing it onscreen with a movie-theatre audience will be the next best thing.

Make sure to check the specific theatre listings: This is on an event-cinema schedule, with a limited number of shows spread out, mostly over weekend nights.

alison.gillmor@winnipegfreepress.com