Hello faithful readers who, along with the reading of classic plays, I have abandoned for the past eight months. What have I been up to, you ask? Here's a quick highlights reel:
But God, I'm a dramaturg. And a dramaturg... enjoys writing and talking and thinking about plays. And even if no one ever reads this blog, the whole point of it is to keep my writing and talking and thinking about plays skills sharp. And even if I haven't done a great job of tackling the long list of classic titles that are nagging at the back of my brain saying, "Stephanie!! You STILL haven't read Waiting for Godot??? Or Angels in America??? When the BFA police find out they are going to rescind your degree!" I still love theatre and I still see it and think about it critically. So I'm throwing rules to the wind! And I'm writing about whatever I want now! Well, that's not entirely accurate. It's still a theatre blog. I think I might talk about other arts and culture topics but I'm not gonna do a crazy 180 and talk about, I don't know, sports or something. Because everyone knows theatre people ALL HATE SPORTS. The first topic of my new, laissez-faire blogging style is the winner of the 2019 Tony Award for Best Musical, Hadestown, because I know you all care so much about my opinion of a musical that has already achieved critical and commercial success without my two cents. This is not a review. I'm not a critic. I don't feel comfortable calling this a review. Let's call it... a reflection. I think I was destined to like Hadestown because when they won the Tony for Best Musical whoever was accepting the award (I'm trying desperately to find a video and I can't!) gave a shoutout to their dramaturg, Ken Cerniglia, which is literally one of my ultimate career goals. So although I had a feeling I would like it, what I didn't realize was how much I would like it. The show opens rather abruptly, with the house lights dimming and the entire cast rushing to take their spots on the stage. The band is onstage with them, and the space they occupy looks like it once was a beautiful cafe but has become decrepit with time. For whatever reason, it still serves as the space for these people to gather and tell the story of Orpheus (Reeve Carney) and Eurydice (Tony Nominee Eva Noblezada) night after night. Hermes (normally played by Tony Winner André De Shields, I saw swing T. Oliver Reid, who was fantastic) begins the show by taking his place at the old-fashioned standing mic downstage right and introducing all the characters. I was, more or less, hooked. As one would hope for a musical, I was immediately captured by the music. Let me make one thing clear, I love musicals. I love them so much. They are one of my all time favorite ways to tell a story. That being said, I don't sit around in my apartment an listen to cast albums. They usually aren't really my jam. In middle school and high school I did but then I went to drama school and had to be pretentious so I stopped. Okay, that's a little unfair. I didn't have to be pretentious, but going to drama school is why I stopped listening to cast albums. It felt too much like doing homework in my spare time. I also decided to stop listening to cast albums of shows I hadn't seen yet so I would experience the full dramatic impact of the music the way it is most optimally experienced. And let me tell you my friends, this was a great decision. I managed to avoid the Hamilton cast album for six months after it dropped so I could hear it for the first time in the Richard Rodgers Theater. Also, wow, I am so privileged. One of the reasons I listened to cast albums so much as a kid was because I lived in California and cast albums do so much to make theatre actually accessible to so many people. So I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to them. This is what works for me. Also if you're a musical theatre history nerd like me read this great article about how Oklahoma! revolutionized the cast album. ANYWAY, so when I heard the first song from my seat in the Walter Kerr I was so happy because I actually loved the music. I'm literally listening to the cast album right now. Anaïs Mitchell did something really difficult in that she wrote songs that, in my opinion, are really beautiful and enjoyable outside of the context of the story but also move the plot forward. This is something that Rodgers and Hammerstein really excelled at, and they wrote musicals for decades. This is Mitchell's first musical in her career primarily as a folk singer-songwriter. Folk songs generally lean more towards having a narrative structure then say, pop songs, but it still is mind-blowingly difficult to write a musical and I want to honor that. Also, I wish I new more about music to speak about this with more nuance, but instead, I'm going to introduce you to a concept created be my roommate Hanna and myself that we use to categorize musical theatre songs. I apologize to the BFA police in advance. When it comes to listening to musical theatre songs outside of the context of their cast album, I am generally looking for the song to fall into one of two categories. Is it a banger or a baby maker? Allow me to explain. A banger is a song that you can move to. In the theatre you can't help but tap your toe or move your body in some unnecessarily constrained way that the social contract of the high brow arts world asks of us. It's a song that you can't help but belt in your car or sing in your shower. It's a song that will be covered by amateur theatre troupes in cabarets with subpar tap routines for years to come. And, most importantly, it's a song that you can dab to. There is a rule though- not every musical has a banger (for example, although I love Mr. Stephen Sondheim, that man does not write bangers) and there can only be ONE banger in each musical. Some have secondary or even tertiary bangers, but there can only be one true banger per show. Thems the rules. Examples of bangers include "On the Right Track" from Pippin, "Take Me or Leave Me" from Rent, and "Totally Fucked" from Spring Awakening. Here's a link to the playlist, although it needs a bit of cleanup and an update. Hadestown has at least a primary banger ("Livin' it Up on Top") and a secondary banger ("Way Down Hadestown"). Feel free to argue with me in the comments. I'm also feeling "Chant" as potentially a tertiary banger but that seems controversial. A baby maker, on the other hand, is simply a song that would make you want to make a baby with someone. Here's a playlist with some examples, including Aaron Tveit singing "If I Loved You" from Carousel, "Something Good" from The Sound of Music, and "Ten Minnutes Ago" from Cinderella. What can I say, Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote some stellar baby makers. The real question, though, is whether or not "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music is a banger. Think about it. I will add the disclaimer that Hanna and I are both women who are attracted to men, so that definitely skews our taste in baby makers. That being said, different strokes for different folks. So while I think "Wedding Song" or mabye "Epic III" is the baby maker of Hadestown, I think there are definitely arguments to be made for "Hey Little Songbird," if you're into that sort of thing. Hades (played by Tony Nominee Patrick Page) does have, and I cannot emphasize this enough, a deep voice. In addition to the music, I am obsessed with Tony Nominee David Neumann's choreography. I think it's really telling that he, like Anaïs Mitchell, doesn't work predominantly in theatre. What I loved so much about his work on Hadestown was that the choreography was so consistently motivated by the intensity of the characters' emotions and was so integrated into the storytelling, alongside the music, lyrics, and design elements. It was another piece woven into the intricate story being told, and not a layer on top of everything else that serves primarily to be impressive, à la Casey Nicholaw's NOT Tony nominated #dancerfirst choreography in The Prom. Don't get me wrong, I love some kick yourself in the face while you belt your tits off ridiculous musical theatre choreography as much as the next nerd, but it doesn't always serve a story telling function beyond just being really cool. Just take a look at the difference between the two show's Tony performances: It might not be super clear from the four and a half minute video, but imagine watching that for upwards of two hours. I was exhausted just watching that ensemble! Now let's compare that to Hadestown: s sAdmittedly, this performance is more about lamp-ography then choreography, but I think it's still representative of the movement vocabulary employed in the show and the integration of the choreography with the other story telling elements (in this case, obviously lighting and scenic design).
This segues naturally into some of the things I loved about the design elements of the show. The team created a really cohesive steampunk-esque world for the characters to play in. Also, I don't really know what steampunk is, but the use of diegetic lighting (like in "Wait for Me") reminded me of the National Theatre production of Frankenstein with Benedict Cumberbatch, and everyone called that steampunk, so I'm running with it. Wikipedia calls the setting of Hadestown "Great Depression-era inspired post-apocalyptic," and that works, too! It definitely was evocative of a more DIY style of theatre then is present on a lot of Broadway stages, with the actors using simple tables and chairs to represent different locations and operating handheld lanterns through out the show. The three wonderful actresses who portrayed The Fates also played instruments, and I LOVE when actors play instruments. Give me a quadruple threat any day of the week! Michael Krass' Tony-nominated costume designs looked handmade and thrifted, but by someone who is REALLY good at thrifting, and Rachel Hauck's Tony-winning scenic design held the entire thing together. I will say her design was definitely the least DIY because it featured literally a TRIPLE revolve turn table and the middle revolve was an elevator trap door so, it doesn't really get less DIY then that. But I digress. It was great. Before I sign off on this ridiculous rant about musical theatre/love letter to Hadestown, I just want to add my favorite moment of the night. I was in the fourth row (thanks Mom!) so I had an excellent up close view of everything happening on stage, including Persephone's (Tony Nominee Amber Gray) zipper breaking early on in act one (shoutout to whichever dresser fixed that in the like two minutes she was offstage). But no, that was not my favorite moment of the night. My favorite moment was early on in act two, after Orpheus battles his way down to Hell to bring Eurydice home, Reeve Carney got a nosebleed. At first I thought it was part of the show, because he did have some scars and such from his journey to the underworld. But after some aggressive googling and comparing notes with friends who saw the show, I concluded it definitely was a real nosebleed. I watched Reeve Carney wipe his forearm across his nose, see that it was covered in blood, and just keep on doing his job up there. A second shoutout to whoever cleaned all that blood up in the two seconds he's offstage during that act. God, I LOVE live theatre. Okay I feel like it's not fair to say that was my favorite moment because it was so outside of the control of any of the artists involved. My actual favorite thing about Hadestown wasn't that I'm obsessed with the cast album or the choreography or how integrated the whole production was. My favorite thing about Hadestown was that even though the story is so well known, and most people who know a thing or two about Greek mythology would know that Orpheus and Eurydice do not have a happy ending, I was on the edge of my seat until the last moment. It felt like I'd never heard this story before and that it was actually possible for these two people to change their fate. To quote Hermes, as he brings the story to a close, the beauty of music and of Orpheus' song is that it can "make you see how the world could be/in spite of the way that it is." The cast rejoins him onstage, in the same costumes and settings as the top of the show, and they prepare to tell the story again, because maybe this time, it could have a happy ending. Now go see some live theatre. For more Hadestown content, please enjoy this article about their seven-foot-tall chorus member.
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Stephanie KaneI like reading plays, drinking lots of coffee, and holding other people's Tony Awards. Archives
August 2018
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