sincerely going insane over how deep the anti-capitalist messaging in hadestown goes. when you think about how many times a story has been told, how many times the tale of eurydice and orpheus has been reimagined and rewritten, you have to think about the societal context and what that accentuates in the retelling. in the original story, hades was the god of the underworld and eurydice died. orpheus was trying to defy death. in hadestown, eurydice is effectively “dead to the world” as Hades put it, but has signed away her life and her entire IDENTITY to Hades, to build the wall. in “flowers,” she begins to lose her sense of self and all of her memories. the horror of orpheus turning around and her being sent back to hadestown isn’t limited to JUST eurydice, either— orpheus’ precedent gave hope to the rest of the chorus, a way out of the scarcity and hardship that hadestown manufactures in order to keep them in line. a way to regain their agency and identity vs staying in the soul-stripping industry of hadestown.
that a broadway musical can have this much anti-capitalist messaging is crazy. and i know that the original concept was MUCH more anti-capitalist before the rewrites. but seriously it’s insane and i needed to put my thoughts somewhere before i drove everyone in my life fucking crazy. but seeing it live with the current us tour cast just made me think about it in ways i never have before. in the playbill the chorus is described, correctly, as a “conduit” for the audience, and how they change throughout the play, transitioning from surface people pre-hadestown to being ravaged by the “neon necropolis” hades’ creates out of his need for dominion over persephone, the personification of the natural world and the ecosystem services it supplies. how the horror of eurydice being returned to hadestown is also that she will literally never be the person she was before she was forced to exploit herself and sign her life over to a capitalist enterprise JUST to meet her basic needs due to the scarcity that hades himself CREATED with his industry, and how he returns for persephone earlier and earlier each year. we tell these tales and reframe them again and again because it reflects the current climate of our society and what WE actually fear and hope for.
this is a text post that is really just for me but yeah crazy fucking thoughts i’ve been having. hadestown tour changed my life v genuinely
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
titsay
amandla
