CRITIC'S PICK “The sumptuous, hypnotic and somewhat hyperactive musical...Chavkin and her creative team have saved ‘Hadestown’ on its way uptown by turning it into something very much warmer...The story is clearer...’Hadestown,' even with the heat turned up, is still a somewhat abstract experience...Mitchell develops her larger themes mostly through metaphor. This can get tiring; even though so much of what happens happens beautifully."
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“Mitchell’s fizzy, moody, thrilling new musical....Although the narrative has gained some bulk since 'Hadestown’s' Off Broadway run, it is still wight-thin...Yet somehow that hardly matters: ‘Hadestown’ sweeps you up in its atmospherics and in the intensity of its eco-Marxist vision of solidarity and the liberating potential of art...Most important, it has Mitchell’s score: a joyful combination of folk, pop, Dixieland and blues that will make you want to rehear it as soon as the lights come up.”
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“’Hadestown’ has arrived...And its current manifestation feels lush, vigorous, and formally exciting, not to mention witchily prescient...As an intricate and gorgeous feat of songwriting, as a vehicle for dynamite performances, as a visionary long-term collaboration and a courageous experiment with form, ‘Hadestown’ is cause for celebration...Mitchell’s lyrics are image-rich and clever, her tunes exhilarating...Page and Gray are the twin sensations of the show.”
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“Hadestown” isn’t perfect, but it’s so fresh that you’ll gladly look past its forgivable flaws and savor the kaleidoscopic stylistic variety of Ms. Mitchell’s score...Mitchell’s down-home score is the incontestable star of the show...Mitchell’s songs are beautiful but undramatic...Chavkin’s endlessly varied direction and Neumann’s dances help to keep things on the move...Would that ‘Hadestown’ were a bit shorter, too, but there’s no point in fussing over a show as rich as this one.”
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“The most thrilling new original musical of the season...Carney’s is perhaps the riskiest interpretation...The choice might strike some as mannered, but it worked for me...With an ending as moving as anything on Broadway – and for hades’ sake, don’t leave before the cast finishes its curtain call – ‘Hadestown’ stands alongside Fish’s ‘Oklahoma!’ and Sher’s ‘Mockinbird’ as this Broadway season’s visionary triumvirate, looking to the past and feeling undeniably, stirringly now.”
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“The thrillingly alarmist new Broadway musical with the score that feels like it comes from somewhere deep in the American gut...An eye-popping, mythological blend of steampunk...’Hadestown’ feels like the most relevant and resistant musical in town, but it never comes off as shrill or moving in some kind of dull lockstep with all the other self-aware plays and musicals lamenting Trump’s America by playing tritely to the choir, critics and all.”
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"With its earthly delights more or less intact, this perfectly heavenly musical should stick around for a while....Although the production has lost some of the electricity that goes with playing in the round, Chavkin...has done a super job of adapting this pretty thing for a proscenium stage...The world on top looks a bit like New Orleans...But the real action happens in hell, depicted here by the entire company in a rousing number, 'Way Down Hadestown,' that could make the dead dance.”
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“A seamless theatrical experience, this beguiling, virtually sung-through musical is notable for the expressive beauty of its score, the dark imagination of its stage pictures and the clarity of its storytelling. Performed by a first-rate cast and played with spirited feeling by seven onstage musicians, it arrives on Broadway with a furnace-like blast of creativity...Though it ends on a note of desolate loss, this spellbinding musical sends you out on a high."
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