Anaïs Mitchell

‘Hadestown” last toured California in late 2010. Anaïs Mitchell’s bluesfolk concept album, released earlier that year, was gaining steam, so she and a troupe of musicians drove up the coast to put on one-night-only performances in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and San Francisco.

“We had 14 people and a dog in a 15-passenger van,” she recalls during a concert in April at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. “We played at Mccabe’s Guitar Shop, and we could barely fit on that stage. And who’s in the audience but Dale Franzen, who became the first lead producer of ‘Hadestown.’ ”

“We’ve had a very long road. It was like a train that kept rolling — and here we are, back in L.A.,” Mitchell said of “Hadestown,” the stage adaptation of Mitchell’s album that won eight Tony Awards in 2019. The national touring production of “Hadestown” has played a monthlong L.A. engagement at the Ahmanson Theatre that wraps up today. It opens a six-day run Tuesday at the San Diego Civic Theatre.

Mitchell spoke about the musical and its L.A. roots in an April interview.

“Hadestown” reimagines the Orpheus and Eurydice myth in a world where resources and hope are equally scarce. The sensible Eurydice has fallen in love with the idealistic Orpheus but longs for the financial stability guaranteed in the titular underworld — a factory town overseen by Hades and resented by his wife, Persephone.

The retelling of this Greek tragedy, developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin, features lyrics loaded with metaphors and aphorisms about love and hope, delivered with a nearly fiveoctave vocal sprawl and a howling seven-piece band. (And its whispered observations about climate change, labor unionizing and the intrinsic value of work have only become more relevant since it last played in L.A. all those years ago.)

The musical opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on Broadway on April 17, 2019, where it played until the pandemic arrived in March 2020. The Broadway production finally resumed performances on Sept. 2, 2021. That production earned eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Original Score (Mitchell), Best Direction of a Musical (Chavkin), Best Featured Actor in a Musical (André De Shields), and trophies for its orchestrations and scenic, lighting and sound design.

The North American touring production of “Hadestown” stars Nicholas Barasch as Orpheus, Morgan Siobhan Green as Eurydice, Tony Award winner Levi Kreis as Hermes, Kimberly Marable as Persephone and Kevyn Morrow as Hades. The Fates are played by Belén Moyano, Bex Odorisio and Shea Renne.

Mitchell — who wrote the music, lyrics and book of “Hadestown” over 15 years — remains notably modest about its widespread critical and commercial success. Before her April 26 concert in L.A., she expressed delight at the sight of a “Hadestown” bench billboard outside the venue, and the sound of the booming trombone solo that kicks off the show.

“It’s pretty amazing to be opening this show here,” Mitchell says. “It’s hard to believe it’s the same show from when we were on that tiny stage; it didn’t feel like Mccabe’s was the place where you’re going to get discovered by a Broadway producer.”

“But it was a big part of the story, so this is such a full-circle moment,” she says. “I just feel this extraordinary sense of awe and

humility that this thing is rolling around the country and I kind of have nothing to do with it now.”

At 41 years old, Mitchell is in the midst of her own full-circle moment. Since opening the show on Broadway, she relocated to her parents’ farm in Vermont, where she gave birth to her second daughter — and a new album.

“When the show went up, I couldn’t figure out what my voice was,” she says. “But when I went home and got all that space and time, I picked up the guitar and started to write my own songs again, which I’ve wanted to do for years.

“It was so exciting to just write songs and know they could go anywhere; it doesn’t have to develop characters or move the plot in any direction, it just has to feel right,” she says. “It’s weird — all the songs are stories from my life, which I’ve often shied away from. But I guess that’s what wanted to come out after working on telling this other story for so long.”

Mitchell says that she has “started casting around a little net in my mind” for her next musical, whether on her own again or with a collaborator.

In the meantime, she’s back on her concert tour.

“I hope everyone in this touring production gets all the joy and camaraderie of performing on the road that I get on tour,” she says.

“The way it feels to perform the same songs in different cities and see audiences respond to things in their own ways — it’s really special.”

“It’s pretty amazing to be opening this show here. It’s hard to believe it’s the same show from when we were on that tiny stage; it didn’t feel like Mccabe’s was the place where you’re going to get discovered by a Broadway producer.” Anaïs Mitchell