So just how far would you go for her?

[sovay]

I just heard from my mother that Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Chavkin's Hadestown has just won Best Musical at the Tony Awards, plus Best Director for Chavkin, Best Original Score for Mitchell, several technical awards, and Best Featured Actor for André de Shields as Hermes.

I have not seen the Broadway production. But I loved the show when I saw it off-Broadway in 2016 and I loved it in 2010 when it was a CD of a folk opera that I did not yet realize was a concept album, although I hoped even then to see it onstage. "In true epic fashion," I wrote, "I'd love to see it reperformed." And it was, and I heard about it, and I got to see one version, and now there's another, and it will keep going, hand to hand, mouth to ear, because that's how the folk tradition—the epic tradition—works.

(I can even feel a little as though I helped, because I know for a fact that some of the friends who wrote about seeing the Broadway version were the friends who learned about the album from me nine years ago. Ultimate credit goes to my mother, who heard Mitchell talking about her Orpheus and Eurydike retelling on one of the folk radio stations and correctly discerned I would love it. Grassroots, people! And the dark earth under all.)

It makes me happy.

Comments

[asakiyume]

YOU DID, YOU DID HELP.

You are the start of all the people we know knowing about Hadestown. WE KNEW IT WHEN--and we watched it rise. SO HAPPY FOR THIS SHOW AND FOR ANAIS!

[julian]

My brother was I think in a co-op with her in college? Or she was in North Carolina at the same time as him? (The latter is more likely, since she went to Middlebury and he went to Princeton.) I'm unclear on the details, obviously. Or the broader sweep, for that matter. But the *point* is, he turned me onto her in 2007, and now I'm just beaming on her behalf.

[landingtree]

Oh, excellent! I love the album version of Hadestown. (And it must have been your 2016 post which put me on to it, back when I barely used Dreamwidth -- I took the recommendation without keeping track of where it had come from. So thank you!)

[csecooney.com]

I love this post!

[starlady]

The Broadway version is very good, but I still like the 2016 version best. Patrick Page got robbed at the Tonys imo--Andre De Shields is fine, but some of his performance devolved into shtick and I think he got the award for nostalgia value rather than his actual performance in this version. Hermes and the costuming were definitely better downtown.

All that being said, this version is extremely worth seeing, and these Tonys are definitely less fired than the last time a Rachel Chavkin directed musical was up for a bushel of awards. And I'm particularly glad that Anais Mitchell won a Tony, since so few women write musicals, let alone win Tonys for them.