Albany Times Union

‘Hadestown’ gorgeous at Proctors

Tony-winning production retells Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice

- By Steve Barnes

SCHENECTAD­Y — As gorgeous to the eye as to the ear, “Hadestown” is a gift that lovers of music, theater and musical theater owe themselves if they don’t already have tickets before the touring production ends its run at Proctors on Sunday after opening on Tuesday night.

Though the story is not quite a tale as old as time, it goes back millennia, to Greek myths, and that may be how long the developmen­t process occasional­ly seemed to folk singer Anais Mitchell. She wrote the music, book and lyrics for the show, which began life in a Barre, Vt., theater in 2006, before she recorded it as a concept album in 2010. Mitchell started working a few years later with the stage director Rachel Chavkin for a 2016 off-broadway production, and they significan­tly revamped it for Broadway, where it opened in 2019 and is still running.

If quality art takes time, so be it. In the case of “Hadestown,” the yearslong investment returns richness in story and song, performed by an onstage ensemble that totals 20: eight principal roles, five chorus members and seven onstage instrument­alists, including a stellar trombonist who also plays glockenspi­el and is the assistant conductor (Emily Fredrickso­n). There’s enough talent in the road company that a last-minute performer substituti­on, causing a 20minute starting delay Tuesday, was undetectab­le from the audience. (A Proctors representa­tive said the replacemen­t was cellist Natalie Spehar, stepping in for the ailing Kely Pinheiro.)

Mitchell adapted the story of a young couple popular in many mythical stories, Orpheus and Eurydice; the former is the ward of the god Hermes, who functions as the show’s narrator, and the latter is the impoverish­ed young woman he falls in love with. Their romance seems doomed when Eurydice is convinced by Hades and a trio of meddlesome Fates to trade her freedom for the promise of safety and security in the underworld, where Hades rules with his wife, Persephone.

Believing he can free his beloved with

 ?? T. Charles Erickson / Hadestown ?? Nathan Lee Graham plays Hermes, the narrator of “Hadestown,” a musical running at Proctors in Schenectad­y through Sunday.
T. Charles Erickson / Hadestown Nathan Lee Graham plays Hermes, the narrator of “Hadestown,” a musical running at Proctors in Schenectad­y through Sunday.

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