Sarah Betensky and Chloe Sales, seniors at Riverdale Country School in New York City, have been selected as the first Calder Classics students for our newly launched Classics in the Wild internship. Their mission is to seek out, experience, and review any works of their choice by writers, artists, and artisans inspired by antiquity. Even crossword puzzle clues are included in their mandate! Here is their first post:
'Recently, we had the opportunity to watch the Broadway musical Hadestown. We went in with very high expectations, and we were still blown away by the performance we saw. With a dynamic set design, exciting lighting and smoke effects, and the incredible choreography of the chorus, Hadestown powerfully retells the myths of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone. These are myths that we, as classics students, were well acquainted with. However, the musical adapted these stories, placing a more modern and nuanced twist on them. For example, when Eurydice is starving and feeling neglected by Orpheus, she makes a purposeful decision to go down to the Underworld (Hadestown), in contrast to the traditional narrative in which she tragically, and mistakenly, is killed from a snakebite. The female characters in Hadestown play a much bigger role than in most tellings of these Classical myths, adding new perspectives and story lines that are traditionally missing.
The musical also makes allusions to contemporary society, referring to current political and economic conflicts. Hadestown, hell, is depicted as an industrial factory full of laboring workers who no longer know who they are. The musical seems to be critiquing the dangers of capitalism, as Hades is destroying the environment and represents how evil one’s greed, obsession with power, and self-centeredness can be. We found it very interesting to see the way that an ancient myth could be used as a vehicle to discuss our contemporary world.
In the last song of the musical, the cast sings about the importance of retelling classical myths. This might be a long, sad, love story, but people will continue telling the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone for generations to come, and the lessons of antiquity will live on in this way. Multiple times the cast breaks the fourth wall, further highlighting the connection between the myth and our world today. With its beautiful songs and emotional acting, we highly recommend seeing Hadestown.