I was really impressed by all of the acting, though I thought Persephone and Eurydice particularly stood out.
I have to say that I was really impressed by Hades. I imprinted so strongly on Greg Brown in childhood that any actor who replaced him would have had to be a knockout, and Patrick Page was. That basso gravelissimo voice, like Tom Waits doing Don Giovanni's Commendatore or some hellish riff on Johnny Cash, the Man in Really Black. He sounded like the veins of the earth; he sounded like the weight of deep time. And a sense of humor, which only made it worse.
I don't know if you're familiar with it (though at this point I assume everyone on Earth is at least vaguely aware of the concept), but I was lucky enough to finally get tickets back in June
I live in many ways under a pop-cultural rock, so while I have read about Hamilton and most of my friends are heavily into the show both as itself and as a fandom, I don't actually know most of the music.
But even if/when one exists, I don't feel like it could do a very complete job of conveying the entire show. There's so much that's not in the audio component.
That's true of most musicals, though, sometimes even deliberately—I remember that the original cast recording of The Drowsy Chaperone left out most of the linking narration by the Man in the Chair, I believe partly because they thought it wouldn't convey the same effect as sitting in the theater with him. I agree that there's a lot in Hadestown that won't translate without the visuals, but I like the new music and in many cases the new arrangements so much that I want the recording in its own right, not just as a record of the live show. Right now I have the down-and-dirty trombone slide of the show's "Way Down Hadestown" stuck in my head and I doubt it's going anywhere without some repeat listening. (Also, because the New Orleans jazz funerals I was reading about last week belonged to Barbara Hambly's Dead and Buried, there are some weird intertextual things going on in my head, which is really not the fault of anybody involved in the show.)
here's the review I wrote after seeing it.
Thank you! I shall read it. I don't think self-linking is automatically gauche, especially if there's no particular reason for the other person to have seen the material already. It only gets obnoxious when it's a sort of dudebro pattern: oh, hey, I see you said something about which I have an opinion, well, here's what I said about it instead without actually engaging with the post itself. That is not what you did!
But that's one of the things I was so impressed by too; that it's a complex enough show it can support multiple readings.
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I have to say that I was really impressed by Hades. I imprinted so strongly on Greg Brown in childhood that any actor who replaced him would have had to be a knockout, and Patrick Page was. That basso gravelissimo voice, like Tom Waits doing Don Giovanni's Commendatore or some hellish riff on Johnny Cash, the Man in Really Black. He sounded like the veins of the earth; he sounded like the weight of deep time. And a sense of humor, which only made it worse.
I don't know if you're familiar with it (though at this point I assume everyone on Earth is at least vaguely aware of the concept), but I was lucky enough to finally get tickets back in June
I live in many ways under a pop-cultural rock, so while I have read about Hamilton and most of my friends are heavily into the show both as itself and as a fandom, I don't actually know most of the music.
But even if/when one exists, I don't feel like it could do a very complete job of conveying the entire show. There's so much that's not in the audio component.
That's true of most musicals, though, sometimes even deliberately—I remember that the original cast recording of The Drowsy Chaperone left out most of the linking narration by the Man in the Chair, I believe partly because they thought it wouldn't convey the same effect as sitting in the theater with him. I agree that there's a lot in Hadestown that won't translate without the visuals, but I like the new music and in many cases the new arrangements so much that I want the recording in its own right, not just as a record of the live show. Right now I have the down-and-dirty trombone slide of the show's "Way Down Hadestown" stuck in my head and I doubt it's going anywhere without some repeat listening. (Also, because the New Orleans jazz funerals I was reading about last week belonged to Barbara Hambly's Dead and Buried, there are some weird intertextual things going on in my head, which is really not the fault of anybody involved in the show.)
here's the review I wrote after seeing it.
Thank you! I shall read it. I don't think self-linking is automatically gauche, especially if there's no particular reason for the other person to have seen the material already. It only gets obnoxious when it's a sort of dudebro pattern: oh, hey, I see you said something about which I have an opinion, well, here's what I said about it instead without actually engaging with the post itself. That is not what you did!
But that's one of the things I was so impressed by too; that it's a complex enough show it can support multiple readings.
Yes. Myths should do that.