Theater Review: Hadestown

                        HADESTOWN

Not many musicals have 32 songs. Not many operas have dialogue.

Here we have “Hadestown,” based on Greek mythology, with both, though in truth many more songs than words.

This weekend you can see it for yourself: Broadway San Diego presents “Hadestown”  at San Diego’s Civic Theatre through June 5.

Hermes (Eddie Noel Rodríguez on opening night), the god of trade, wealth, luck, and several other things like thieves and travel, opens the show, and will be seen throughout, slinking around in a shiny silver suit and narrating the story.

On the “Road to Hell,” we’re told, there’s a railroad line with a coffee shop. This is where Orpheus (Chibueze Ihuoma) waits tables. Eurydice (Morgan Siobhan Green) is a hungry waif just looking for something to eat. They meet and….well, you know the rest of the story. He will soon sing “Come Home With Me,” and a romance will be born.

The show combines the doings of Orpheus and Eurydice with the goings-on of Hades, Hermes and Persephone in the Underworld. They are aided by the Fates and a Workers Chorus.

Persephone (Kimberly Marable) is the Goddess of spring and innocence, but cursed to be both the wife of God of the Underworld Hades (who kidnapped her) and the Goddess of the Underworld.

Kevyn Morrow’s Hades runs the Underworld with an eye toward keeping that post his private property. Hades is not especially nice but Morrow is especially effective in that role.

The fun here (aside from all the terrific acting talent) is in the constant action, the fact that the musicians are on the stage (and identified at one point), the sometimes lovely, sometimes wild costumes (by Michael Krass), the sometimes-otherworldly sound and lighting (by Kevin Steinberg, Todd Sickafoose and Bradley King) and those 32 songs that just keep coming.

But there is a serious side to the show. The playwright also makes a social critique or two about the disastrous effects of poverty and climate change that we in the 21st century are becoming all too familiar with for comfort. You also might get a message about how art can save us from ourselves or how hope might be all we have left.

Kudos to all but especially to the four major characters. Rodríguez plays Hermes, the rich guy who narrates the show, with great panache. 

Morgan Siobhan Green is extremely persuasive as the waif Eurydice, who goes from starving for food to seeking love from Orpheus, and learns what that latter item might cost her.

But my favorite was Chibueze Ihuoma, who played Orpheus on opening night, determined to take Eurydice home and singing his heart out to do it. And boy, can this fella sing. With that glorious high tenor voice, I’d happily go to hear him in concert, all by himself. 

Conductor/pianist Nathan Koci and his six musicians add fine sound to the mix, and even get introduced. Now that’s class.

“Hadestown” is an odd bird, probably because it’s undergone so many incarnations. Starting in 2006, it’s been a play, then a concept album, then an off-Broadway show, finally debuting in 2019 on Broadway. But never mind: the Rachel Chavkin-directed version by Anaïs Mitchell you’ll see here in San Diego is terrific, with jaunty songs and sad, dialogue likewise and a gaggle of really fine actors and musicians (onstage) to take you on their journey.