Anaïs Mitchell proves dreamers have power in Hadestown musical starring Christine Anu

One evening in 2006, American singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell was driving home when, as she traveled along a road in Vermont, a melody and some lyrics suddenly flooded her mind: "Wait for me, I'm coming in stockings and pearls. What tune will you play me to get me out of this wicked world?"

It seemed to be about the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Greek mythology. Mitchell had been fascinated since childhood by the rules set by Hades, the god of the underworld—don't look back at your lover, or she will disappear. She was drawn to a kind of kinship between the young lovers.

"They always captured my imagination… this young artist, dreamer, lover, believing in his way that he can change the world. But he runs up against the reality of the world. I think that’s how I felt in my early 20s," she said. Mitchell also stated, "The character I identify with the most now is Hermes; this storyteller, who is somewhat outside of the story, but you can tell his heart is in it."

From that snippet of a song that Mitchell created, she set about creating a work that would eventually become the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical "Hadestown," a folk opera retelling of two love stories narrated by the traveling god Hermes. In the play, Orpheus travels to Hadestown to rescue his lover Eurydice and lead her home. At the same time, the love story of Hades and Persephone, who have been together for a long time and are trying to figure out if they still have a chance at redemption, unfolds in parallel.

Mitchell found solace in this story of a dreamer challenging forces far greater than himself. "What’s most moving about Orpheus is that what makes him a hero is not that he succeeds and wins, but that he tries," she said. "There's a sense that, like the coming of spring, young people always appear, seeing what things could be like, and doing their best to change it."

Although Mitchell was working on her third album, "The Brightness" (2007), at the time, she couldn't stop thinking about the epic love story that seemed to have descended upon her in her car that night. She began developing a "DIY community theater version" of "Hadestown" with collaborators including Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose. Mitchell said, "These guys came from jazz and a broader big band/art rock sound, and all those influences went into the music. From the earliest days, Michael put the trombone in there, and suddenly it felt very New Orleans."

For years, she and her team continued to write songs and refine the work. They even produced a studio recording featuring Ani DiFranco. But it wasn't until Mitchell moved to New York City that she was able to fully develop the work for the stage. There, she met Rachel Chavkin ("Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812"), who became the director of "Hadestown," overseeing the show's off-Broadway, Canadian, and London productions, before it landed on Broadway in 2019.

Mitchell said, "It’s so funny because getting to Broadway was never the goal. It really was step by step… The fact that we were able to get to Broadway and that it’s been able to have its own life in the world is beyond my wildest dreams." Despite all the "effort, sweat, and tears" poured into "Hadestown," she can't help but feel that the play has always existed. "It’s almost like we were excavating something from the ground, or, like the idea of a sculpture in stone, it was already in there, and you’re just chipping away at it," she explained. "So, as it goes out into the world, it feels in a way like it was never mine. It was never ours. It just always was."

"Hadestown" is a work solid enough that it can be—and has been—transplanted to new stages, interpreted by new creative teams. Mitchell said, "I love imagining how Australians will receive it, and how that company will make it their own and bring their lived and felt experience to these characters, and see what resonates." To find the right people to bring an Australian imprint to "Hadestown," open auditions were held in Sydney and Melbourne in June 2024.

This led to newcomers Eliza Soriano and Joshua Kobeck performing alongside experienced actors such as Noah Mullins ("West Side Story," "RENT"), Abigail Adriano ("Matilda," "Miss Saigon"), and multiple ARIA Award winner Christine Anu. The audition process was a democratic one, echoing Mitchell's experiences in the folk music scene. She said, "It’s not like you need to be discovered by some company boys in a back room… It’s more like there’s an open door, and you walk in, and you say, ‘This is my song. I’ll play it for anyone who will listen.’"

That open door also allows for a greater degree of diversity—which has been an important part of "Hadestown" since its inception. Mitchell said, "Certainly, (diversity) is a spirit of Rachel as a director… that in telling this mythic story, to reflect the breadth of us as humans, to make it really feel like everyone’s story, that feels very mythic." Thus, while André De Shields originally played Hermes on Broadway, Anu plays the traveling god in Australia. The gender shift means that Anu's Hermes is referred to as "sister" rather than "brother." But this is not the first time the play's gendered language has been adapted.

She explained, "We had a Hermes in London who preferred to play a genderless or non-binary character, so I rewrote some of the language to allow for that… The world is changing, and ideally, the play can change with it." In the nearly 20 years since Mitchell first began developing "Hadestown," she has seen the themes in the work go from rhetoric to reality and back to rhetoric more than once.

In the first act, Hades and his workers sing about building a wall "to keep (them) free." Mitchell said, "I wrote that song in 2006, and it certainly predates 2016, when our then-president was running for his first election, and the exact same words (from him) were coming out of his mouth in a call-and-response way, and it was very chilling." Mitchell also said, "Part of our history is protest and people taking to the streets, and unionization and collective organizing, and all of that. And then there’s another part of our history, like compulsive capitalism, industrialism, and ultimately fascism, which is a word that I used to feel like I could use casually. But now it doesn’t feel so easy."

"Hadestown" is playing at the Sydney Theatre Royal until April 29, and will then play at Melbourne's Her Majesty's Theatre from May 8, 2025.