Hadestown and Adapting Classics to the Modern Era

The Broadway musical Hadestown, a retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (and to a lesser extent, the myth of Hades and Persephone) set in a nebulously historical 1930s flavored setting, breathes new life into the old story by using it to comment on modern issues such as labor rights, global warming, and poverty. Reimagining the Underworld as a company town located within the mine itself, it elaborates on and emphasizes the god Hades’s spheres of death and wealth by reimagining him as an industry baron, one who owns the souls of his mistreated and overworked employees, who themselves represent the dead. (Mitchell passim) While it is a departure from the original myth and its contents, show creator Anaïs Mitchell does a purposeful and effective job of adapting the source material and combining many familiar premises and characters with new settings to create a powerful thematic message in the form of a contemporary musical.

Anaïs Mitchell’s play focuses on the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and of Hades and Persephone. Ultimately, she makes a number of changes to the plot, setting, and characterization such that, as rendered by Mitchell, they have very little in common with the versions presented in classical texts such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Eurydice is bitten by a snake and killed; her lover Orpheus travels to the land of the dead and negotiates with its king, Hades, in an attempt to bring her back to life. (Ovid 10.1-10.109) Hades is not simply the king of the Underworld in the Broadway show; he’s an industry tycoon who owns the souls of his workers, and Eurydice is not simply a victim of circumstance, but an impoverished girl who signs on to his workforce before realizing it’s a soul crushing, endless hell that she is unable to leave. (Mitchell) As in Ovid’s version of the classic myth, Orpheus travels to Hadestown to attempt to rescue her, although Mitchell makes the addition of Orpheus inciting a worker rebellion among the denizens of Hadestown when Hades initially turns him away. Ultimately, though, Mitchell’s ending is the same as the ancient myth’s; Hades tells Orpheus he can lead Eurydice out of the Underworld, but if he turns back to make sure she is behind him, she will be trapped forever. He looks back. (Ovid; Mitchell)

Hadestown is ultimately less concerned with the literal plot of the myth it is adapting and more with its themes: love, loss, overcoming odds yet still stumbling on the last hurdle, as well as using the characters’ spheres of influence within Greek mythology to comment on contemporary issues like capitalism and environmentalism. Hadestown uses the failing marriage of Hades and Persephone to tell a contemporary story, woven into the plot beats lifted from the myth: this Hades is imagined as an industrial baron (various songs describe his underground company town and the various industries he controls, such as ‘Chant’, where he describes an automobile factory, oil, a power plant/grid, and a furnace run by fossil fuels), while his wife Persepehone represents springtime and nature, albeit somewhat differently than in her mythological role as a deity (in ‘Livin’ It Up On Top’, she brings sun, summer, and abundant fruit and greenery; when she returns to Hadestown, she takes the abundance of the natural world with her, leaving cold and starvation in her wake.) (Mitchell, “Chant”; Mitchell, “Livin’ It Up On Top") Mitchell is less interested in adapting the literal text of the myth as faithfully as possible, and more concerned with the myth as a metaphor for more modern issues: labor rights, global warming, the tension between our industrialized society and preservation of the natural world. Consequently, many culturally Greek aspects of the original mythology, less relevant to the most pressing contemporary political issues,  are excised.

In her review of Hadestown, classicist Miriam Kamil outlines aspects of the original myth that Hadestown leaves out or glosses, such as the abduction of Persephone, Eurydice’s death by snakebite (changed to her willingly descending to Hadestown to escape poverty), and Demeter’s role in the myth of Persephone (Kamil; “Homeric Hymn to Demeter” passim.; Ovid). Kamil focuses primarily in her article about the places where Hadestown fails to accurately adapt its source material. Indeed, Hadestown’s modern (relatively modern at least) setting is completely antithetical to the original; it has left mythical ancient Greece and moved to a setting styled after the Great Depression, complete with a railroad line leading to the Underworld, jazz stylings with an entire song set in a speakeasy, and themes of poverty, unemployment, and mistreatment of the working class by bosses. (Mitchell passim.) But are these adaptational changes a failing of the musical? 

Obviously by definition an adaptation is going to be different from its source; the changes are the purpose of adapting material in the first place. Especially in the case of a myth so far removed from our current cultural context and understanding, dressing an old story up for a modern audience can be a necessary and positive thing. Kamil takes especial issue with the rewriting of Hades and Persephone’s relationship to be consensual, when the original myth is an abduction (“Homeric Hymn to Demeter” 17-20); “There is something unsettling,” she states, “and paradoxical about presenting a rape as a love story and erasing a sexual assault for the sake of a feminist narrative” (Kamil). But should this be how we judge modern interpretations of Greek myths, by holding them to the flaws of their origins?  Perhaps Kamil has a point insofar as rape and non-consent remain a stubborn reality even in the twenty-first century. But including this plot element needs to drive the themes that are animating Mitchell’s adaptation, and in the case of Hades and Persephone it doesn’t contribute to the themes that are important to her narrative. In fact, its inclusion might detract from that.

Hadestown’s story is not concerned with Hades and Persephone as a feminist character-driven narrative, like some other contemporary retellings of their story; rather, the myth of Hades and Persephone as depicted in Hadestown is about the environment, with Persephone and Hades serving as stewards of the natural world and industrialization respectively. The conflict between Hades and Persephone need not stem from an abduction and rape, and indeed including this aspect of the myth might confuse Mitchell’s themes by bringing an unnecessarily loaded and disturbing element into the story. Instead, they are presented as two opposing, powerful forces, whose reconciliation is essential to the well-being of the show’s world. In the climax of their story, the two gods are reminded of their love and dance together, an emotional revival of their relationship which enables Persephone to restore the natural order of the seasons in the finale. (Mitchell, “Epic III”; Mitchell, “Road to Hell (Reprise)”) This reconciliation between these two forces is essential to the musical’s narrative, and would not have worked so well had the original power imbalance been adapted faithfully.

By contrast, Eurydice’s story is centered on a different kind of exploitation, one which can come across in the musical as a tonal echo of the assault of Persephone left out of the musical; that of a worker by her employer and employment contract. Eurydice’s death (a change Kamil approved of, stating “I enjoyed this more complex and less passive take on Eurydice” (Kamil)) changes from a snakebite (Ovid 10.8-10.10) to her choosing to descend to the Underworld to escape her poverty (Mitchell, “Gone I’m Gone”). This a purposeful change to aid the play’s added themes of poverty and the mistreatment of the working class. Eurydice is forced to choose between starving in the cold and being eternally worked to death in Hades’s oppressive industrial Underworld. (Mitchell, “Way Down Hadestown (Reprise)”) While not made explicit in the musical, Hades approaching Eurydice and pressuring her to come to the Underworld has some sexual undertones, most notably in “Hey Little Songbird”, (a direct follow-up to the end of the previous song, “Chant” where he announces to Persephone that he will find someone who will want his love and appreciate a “gilded cage”) and could be read as a replacement for the assault present in the original myth of Hades and Persephone. This addition to the story enhances the thematic focus on the exploitation of workers by their bosses. No change in Hadestown is gratuitous, cowardly, or without purpose; the show has a clear creative vision and focused themes, which the changes made to the source service.

Anaïs Mitchell’s musical Hadestown offers an interesting, unique, and modern interpretation of the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone. The play takes these myths from their original setting and uses their plots as a parable about the mistreatment of the working class and the tension between the natural world and industrialization. While this vision necessitates certain changes and omissions from the classical version of these myths, the play achieves its thematic goals because of these changes. Rather than being bogged down by culturally specific aspects of the original that we in the modern day may find objectionable, the play’s themes are developed by rebuilding the myths’ setting and sensibilities in the image of the modern (or at least, far closer to modern than the classical era) world. The Depression-era setting, and the changes made in its service, create a thematically cogent and engaging narrative, musical styling, and aesthetic. Hadestown’s adaptational choices breathe new life into old stories and create an interpretation of a classic with its own distinct and powerful creative identity. 

Works Cited

“Homeric Hymn To Demeter.” Harvard Center for Hellenic Studies, translated by Gregory Nagy, 12 Dec. 2018, https://chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/homeric-hymn-to-demeter-sb/.

Kamil, Miriam. “A Classicist Reviews Hadestown.” Eidolon, 17 Feb 2020, https://eidolon.pub/a-classicist-reviews-hadestown-d8a1d97d26aa.

Mitchell, Anaïs. Hadestown. Directed by Rachel Chavkin. 

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2010.