Hadestown at the Morrison Center

Or: Come Home With Me

There’s nothing quite like Hadestown. The extravagant, elegant musical born from Anais Mitchell’s bare-boards folk opera, a retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice steeped in worry and grit and the love of poetry, is the first and last word in theater that snatches its audience and will not let go. It’s deceptively humble jazz club, tucked into the cavernous Morrison center stage, set hides expanses of light and sound, its eclectic band (as much a part of the action as the singers and danvers) entice with beautiful, infectious melodies, and its cast of gods and mortals harbor such depths. It was a joy to have it wing across the country, to come home to us here in Boise, even if only for a little while.

The one blotch on an otherwise shining escutcheon was that while the dance, and scenery, and the play of light across the stage could be enjoyed by every seat, either by training, exhaustion, or something small as an ill prepped sound system rendered much of the diction for the show’s first quarter tumbling into mumbledom. It was a galling loss in a show where so much of the beauty and story rests in its lyrics. Fortunately by the time hades (Matthew Patrick Quinn) surged in, his basso profondo was sonorous as the tolling bell and dragged the rest of the show into clarity behind it.

A particular highlight of this touring production are the three fates (Maria Louissaint, Lizzie Marks, and Hannah Schreer) whose devilish delight glittered on stage. In a glittering treasure of choreography, their thrusts and turns stood out as almost liquid, superhuman, keeping time with the orchestra to fit the story to their purpose. And their work harmonies, added by darkness and dying lanterns, became chilling in the penultimate number “Doubt Comes In,” a thing of terrible beauty, twining around Orpheus’s (J. Antonio Rodriguez) cherubim-like tenor, which he has used so beautifully throughout the show, and twist it till it breaks.

If Orpheus is a heavily choir, Eurydice (Amaya Braganza) can only be described as an electric guitar, soaring up and sliding down the scale, playful and proposing. Braganza’s heroine is a sensual, rather than a tough-souled, girl, hiking her skirt and kicking her heels, charmed and spurned by Rodriguez’s bright himbosity. Yet she can lay down the chords of Flowers (always my favorite, a true heartbreaker) with the simplicity and depth that left sniffles throughout the auditorium.

They were not the last, as the plays final moments illicit cries of despair and disbelief, even though we all knew right from the start where we were heading. But the tragedy was blanked by the joys from Persephone (Lana Gordon’s) dancing prowess in “Our Lady of the Underground,” or Hermes (Will Mann), sinuous movements and slight touches, or the pure magic of “Wait for Me” or “Chant” swept us away with tides of elation and tumbled us head over collective heels. It meant so much to see that the magic Mitchell conjured so many years ago can not only survive and thrive as it crosses the nation, bringing lessons of hope and unity, and the exultation of trying again.