Hadestown hot take I’ve been sitting on for a while now: the old lyrics were better. I’m saying that from an artistic standpoint, not just because I’m an old woman who hates when things I like change
this is a two-plus hour play, with twenty minutes worth of material in it, from a five minute myth, and it relies mostly on artful repetition to stretch it long enough to warrant having an intermission, often taking three songs to hit the same plot beat that one song accomplished in the concept album
and in the process of stretching these moments, a lot of metaphor and imagery was lost, to the detriment of the songs. this places a greater burden on the visuals and cast to emotionally carry those moments, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing! theatre is a largely visual medium and it’s okay for it to be different from an audio medium. but the flatter and more general the lyrics become, the harder the cast has to work to sell the emotion, and within a given cast, not every actor succeeds at selling it, tbh
so it’s a real loss to go from “Epic, Pt. 2” (concept album) and “Epic III” (2017 live):
Heavy and hard is the heart of the king
King of iron, king of steel
The heart of the king loves everything
Like the hammer loves the nail
But even that hardest of hearts unhardened
Suddenly, when he saw her there
Persephone in her mother’s garden
Sun on her shoulders, wind in her hair
The smell of the flowers she held in her hand
And the pollen that fell from her fingertips
And suddenly Hades was only a man
With a taste of nectar upon his lips, singing:
La la la la la la la…
King of shadows
King of shades
Hades was king of the Underworld
But he fell in love with a beautiful lady
Who walked up above
In her mother's green field
He fell in love with Persephone
Who was gathering flowers in the light of the sun
And I know how it was because
He was like me
A man in love with a woman
Singing la-la-la-la-la-la-la
the former has metaphor, concrete image, and sense memory that puts Hades, and us, back in the moment when he first met Persephone. the latter is narration
Where is the treasure inside your chest?
Where is your pleasure? Where is your youth?
Where is the man with his hat in his hands?
Who stands in the garden with nothing to lose, singing:
La la la la la la la…
Where is the treasure inside of your chest?
Where is your pleasure? Where is your youth?
Where is the man with his arms outstretched?
To the woman he loves
With nothing to lose
Singing la-la-la-la-la-la-la
the former gives us a very specific and lovely image of Hades while the latter becomes more general and, frankly, bland
we lose even more from "Chant II" as it was in 2017:
When I was a young girl like you
Sister, I was hungry too
Hungry for the underworld
When I was a young girl
Now you know how it tastes
The fruit of Mr. Hades’ ways
Sister, it’s a bitter wine--
Spit it out while you still have time
Take it from a woman of my age
Love is not a gilded cage
All the wealth within these walls
Will never buy the thing called love
Love was when he came to me
Begging on his bended knees
To please have pity on his heart
And let him lay me in the dirt...
I felt his arms around me then
We didn’t need a wedding bed
Dark seeds scattered on the ground
The wild birds were flying around
That’s when I became his wife
But that was in another life
That was in another world
When I was a young girl!
to the Broadway version, in which Persephone doesn't sing at all. which is an especially bonkers choice because that makes the song shorter, and they were already struggling to end up with a full length play
losing this verse also shifts the focus more onto Hades's conflict with Orpheus. in fact, without this verse, the last time Persephone expresses an opinion is in "How Long?", and the last time she sings about anything at all that's not Orpheus is in "Our Lady of the Underground". the lost verse in "Chant II" not only offers vivid imagery (kind of an understatement, god damn), but it was also the longest moment of interiority for Persephone in the entire second act
and for a retelling that was groundbreaking because it gave agency to its female lead, it's depressing as hell to see both female characters sidelined so thoroughly for the latter half of the play. that could have been mitigated somewhat if they kept the part where they, you know, talk to each other
I don't know which Broadway producer told Anaïs Mitchell she couldn't keep a verse about backyard sex, but I'd like to find out so I can push them down the elevator in the middle of the stage. what we know of Hades and Persephone's relationship in the current version of the play is sanitized and, once they reconcile, sweet. in the 2017 version, Hades and Persephone fucked
I saw a fan-made documentary a few years ago about how Anaïs Mitchell was originally developing this for Broadway with the writing partner who made the original community theatre production with her, and at some point in that process she was told by a stakeholder that she could keep her writing partner's weird ideas and end up with a play that would close after one season, or she could ditch them and have a play that would run for fifty years. I don't know how apocryphal that story is, but I'm willing to believe it based on the way the play has evolved in the past ten years. unfortunately, making lyrics more general, palatable, and marketable is not the same as making good art
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