Hadestown

Hadestown is a musical by Anaïs Mitchell, who wrote its music, its lyrics and its book. It weaves together two stories from Greek mythology: the young lovers Orpheus and Eurydice, and the strained marriage of Hades, king of the underworld, and Persephone. Mitchell turns the underworld into a walled factory town and sets the lovers in a world above where the weather has turned against everyone and food is scarce. Through those two couples, the show asks what love can survive when people are poor and hungry.

Getting to Broadway took more than a decade. The show began in 2006 as a stage piece in Vermont, became a concept album, was rebuilt with director Rachel Chavkin, and played off-Broadway, in Canada and in London before opening at the Walter Kerr Theatre on April 17, 2019.

No show collected more Tony nominations in 2019: it had 14 and took home eight, Best Musical and Best Original Score among them. In July 2026 it became the 31st-longest-running show in Broadway history.

Hermes, a god who serves as narrator and host, opens the show by introducing the company, the band and the tale ahead. One of its heroes is his own ward, Orpheus.

Life above ground is hard. The seasons have gone wrong and there is never enough to eat. Orpheus is a penniless young songwriter at work on a song he is sure can bring spring back. Eurydice is a hungry drifter who has learned to expect the worst. He proposes almost the moment they meet, and she has her doubts, since they are both broke.

Orpheus also tells the old story of the underworld's royal couple. Each year Persephone comes up from below and brings summer with her, but Hades has begun calling her home early, and the seasons have fallen out of step. Meanwhile three Fates watch, comment and steer Eurydice toward Hadestown, which they pitch as a place of safety and regular work.

When winter returns and Orpheus is lost in his song, Hades finds Eurydice out in a storm and offers to take her below. She goes. The first act closes with Orpheus setting out on foot to find her, Hades celebrating the wall around his kingdom, and Eurydice signing a contract to work in Hadestown.

Underground, in the second act, Persephone runs a speakeasy behind her husband's back, while Eurydice learns there is no way out of her contract and starts to forget the world she left. Orpheus arrives to bring her home. Hades holds that the deal is binding and the Fates urge Orpheus to give up, but he rouses the workers and wins over Persephone, who begs her husband to let Eurydice go.

Hades makes Orpheus sing his finished song, and it brings back the king's own love for Persephone. Keeping the lovers would turn them into martyrs; letting them simply leave would cost him control of his restless workers. So he sets one condition: Orpheus must lead the way out and never look back to make sure Eurydice is still behind him.

Under the myth sit present-day concerns. Chavkin has said climate change was always part of this world, which swings between freezing and scorching, and the production also teamed up with the Natural Resources Defense Council on a climate awareness campaign. Mitchell has said Les Misérables made her want to write a musical about romance and politics at once.

Mitchell's score draws on folk and jazz, and the New Orleans atmosphere of the production grows out of the music. There are 33 numbers across the two acts. The earliest staged version was sung through, with no spoken dialogue; Mitchell added dialogue, plus 15 new songs, when she reworked the show for 2016. A few numbers to know:

• "Road to Hell" is the first number and returns as a reprise near the end.
• "Hey, Little Songbird" is where Hades finds Eurydice in the storm and tempts her below.
• "Wait for Me" sends Orpheus on his journey to Hadestown. The company sang it, along with "Road to Hell," on the 2019 Tony Awards broadcast.
• "Why We Build the Wall," led by Hades, ends the first act. Mitchell wrote it about a decade before the 2016 US presidential campaign.
• "Our Lady of the Underground" belongs to Persephone and opens the second act.
• "How Long?" is a duet for Persephone and Hades that grew out of a song on Mitchell's 2007 album The Brightness.

Hauck's set is a semicircle built on three levels and deliberately asymmetrical; she has likened it to a cross between a Greek amphitheater and a New Orleans music hall. The musicians play on stage at the left and right, with the drummer tucked beneath an upper balcony, so the band is part of the picture from the first number on.

At the center of the stage is a turntable of concentric rings, mounted on an elevator. Most of the first act stays above ground. When the story heads down to Hadestown at the end of the act, the set splits and pulls back about seven feet to reveal walls of rusted industrial pipe, and rows of glaring blinder lights come into view.

Light carries the story too: the Fates hold lanterns, lamps swing overhead during "Wait for Me," and the miners of Hadestown work by headlamp. Krass's costumes borrow from many eras instead of settling on one period.

The first staging opened in 2006 in Barre and Vergennes, Vermont, directed and designed by Ben T. Matchstick, with Mitchell as Eurydice. Righteous Babe Records released the concept album on March 9, 2010, with Justin Vernon as Orpheus and Ani DiFranco as Persephone among its singers.

After a 2012 reading at Barnard College, still directed by Matchstick, Chavkin led a work-in-progress staging at Dartmouth College in 2014. New York Theatre Workshop then gave the show an in-the-round production that ran from May to July 2016. Patrick Page and Amber Gray, later the first Broadway Hades and Persephone, were already in that cast, and Parlophone Records issued a live album of the production on October 6, 2017. A pre-Broadway tryout followed at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, Alberta, in late 2017, then a run at the National Theatre in London from November 2018 to January 2019.

Broadway previews started on March 22, 2019, and opening night followed on April 17. Page and Gray were joined by Reeve Carney as Orpheus, Eva Noblezada as Eurydice and André De Shields as Hermes, with Jewelle Blackman, Yvette González-Nacer and Kay Trinidad as the Fates. Their cast album came out digitally on Sing It Again Records that July and was certified Gold in 2026.

The COVID-19 pandemic halted performances on March 12, 2020; they resumed on September 2, 2021. By early July 2026 the run had reached 2,380 performances, overtaking both the original Annie and the 1998 Cabaret revival, which stopped at 2,377 apiece. As of July 2026, no production had stayed at the Walter Kerr Theatre for longer. Later leads have included Jordan Fisher as Orpheus and DiFranco, back as Persephone years after the concept album.

An all-new principal company began performances on September 1, 2026. As of October 2026, Kayko plays Orpheus, Jasmin Savoy Brown plays Eurydice, Ben Davis plays Hades, Amber Iman plays Persephone and Norbert Leo Butz plays Hermes, with Kelly Belarmino, KC Dela Cruz and Khori Michelle Petinaud as the Fates.

The first North American tour set out from the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., on October 15, 2021, and wrapped up in Toronto on May 26, 2024, having visited 85 cities. A second tour, with a non-Equity company, started in Waterbury, Connecticut, on October 3, 2024. In London's West End, the show opened at the Lyric Theatre on February 21, 2024.

On February 28 and March 1, 2025, cameras recorded the show at the Lyric Theatre with De Shields, Carney, Gray, Noblezada and Page from the original Broadway cast, joined by members of the London company. Chavkin staged it and Brett Sullivan directed for the screen. Hadestown: The Musical premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2026 and opened in a limited North American cinema release on July 24, 2026.