Tony-winning 'Hadestown' is coming to Tucson's Centennial Hall

When they opened “Hadestown” on Broadway in 2019, the response was immediate: Presenters wanted to see the musical on their stages.

“Almost immediately after opening we began hearing from presenters around the country including in Tucson about the desire to bring this show” to them, said its Tony-winning director Rachel Chavkin. “The way that audiences have responded to this show and the word of mouth has been — touch wood — pretty exponential.”

Broadway in Tucson opens the musical Tuesday, April 12, for the first of eight shows through Sunday, April 17, at Centennial Hall.

The “overnight success”-like response came after a 12-year journey to get “Hadestown” from writer/composer Anaïs Mitchell’s concept to the stage, a journey that was in many ways a backward trek.

A couple years into the creative process, Mitchell in 2010 released a concept album of “Hadestown” on Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe label.

“I fell in love with that album when she shared it with me,” said Chavkin, whose credits include directing “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” and “Moby Dick” on Broadway. “I thought it was just extraordinary, some of the most beautiful music I had ever heard.”

Chavkin and Mitchell dissected the album song-by-song, filling in gaps of the storytelling until, six years later, they had fully fleshed out the twin love stories of Orpheus and Eurydice and King Hades and Persephone.

Although the stories are based on Greek mythology, the action takes place in an intimate jazzy music hall — Chavkin said she used New Orleans’ famed Preservation Hall as inspiration — and the massive oil barges in the mythical Hadestown, an industrial wasteland laid amuck where pollution-spewing factories run 24/7.

“A myth is a myth in many ways because it is timeless and can keep getting reset,” Chavkin said.

In “Hadestown,” Orpheus and Eurydice are an older couple of little means, rediscovering the love that drove Orpheus to the Underworld to rescue Eurydice. King Hades and his wife Persephone are the younger, more well-to-do couple who are absolutely miserable.

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“Ultimately it’s a tragedy, but it’s told with an incredible amount of joy, an incredible amount of warmth,” Chavkin said. “I think there’s something unique about ‘Hadestown’ that has made it in demand.”

Probably the most unique aspect is the music, which borrows from jazz, rock and folk, genres not often associated with Broadway musicals.

“All three of those sonically are running though the score, and it is telling this incredible, universal, ancient-made-new beautiful love story,” Chavkin said.

“Hadestown” earned Chavkin a Tony Award for best director in 2019 — one of eight Tonys it earned, including best original score for Mitchell’s music. The cast soundtrack album earned a Grammy in 2020.

The audience enthusiasm and critical acclaim after the show’s 2019 opening led to plans to tour the show as early as fall 2020. They lined up the creative casts from directors and actors to musicians and started considering an itinerary of cities.

Then COVID happened and Broadway shuttered.

The tour was put on hold until fall 2021.

“It took quite a lot of work to get the wheels going again,” Chavkin said, but everyone who had signed on pre-pandemic was still on board a year later.

The tour opened in Greenville, South Carolina, in October. Chavkin was in the audience for opening night.

“There were so many tears and applause,” she recalled. “It was so emotional. ’Hadestown’ doesn’t pretend that the audience isn’t there. The first thing that happens is our cast waves to the audience, so there’s this greeting that is part of the show, that has always been part of the show, that became so meaningful after the shutdown because it was like, ‘Oh, we’re happy to see you.’

The tour opened in Omaha last week “and apparently, there was sustained applause when the cast entered,” Chavkin said, recounting reports from the Omaha cast. “Our Hades King of the Underworld got entrance applause. The most iconic number of the show, ‘Wait for Me,’ received show-stopping applause. It’s really been awesome.”