"Raise a cup to the world we dream about, and the one we live in now," Orpheus toasts in a lyrical scene of "Hadestown," Anaïs Mitchell's retelling of two intertwined Greek myths.
And so we shall because the message in Mitchell's soulfully poetic musical, whose national tour landed Tuesday at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, is sorely needed. It is about the ability to create a better, freer world through creativity and imagination even as people are blindly subjugated by encrusted patterns.
In this milieu, a melody can bring spring to a wanting landscape and a song can soften a calcified heart.
Mitchell's show, which won eight Tony awards in 2019, offers a trip to the underworld that runs, musically, through New Orleans. It starts with the brassy opening number, "Road to Hell," and includes a churchy, clap-along "Way Down Hadestown," a hypnotic "Hey, Little Songbird" and the risible "Our Lady of the Underground."
Twinned to Rachel Chavkin's butter-smooth direction and David Neumann's supple choreography, these numbers take us ever so deeply into the story of Orpheus, who is literally prepared to go to hell for his lover, Eurydice. We also see Hades and Persephone as their older parallels.
It is true that this Broadway tour doesn't have the stars who stamped their signatures on some of the parts in New York, including Andre de Shields, the stylish theater legend who played narrator Hermes, or Patrick Page as thunder-voice Hades himself.
But this cast is quite affecting. Levi Kreis owns the stage as Hermes, stepping into the grace and command that de Shields created and making it his playful own.
Kimberly Marable, who depicted multiple roles in the show at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway, sparkles as the neglected wife of the devil. Using expressive gestures and subtle vocal intonations, Marable was a whirl of wit and empathy.
