 |
| Amber Gray and Reeve Carney |
By Darlene Donloe
If theater is the art of presence, then Hadestown: The Musical, the West End live capture now reaching cinemas for five nights only starting July 24, 2026, is a masterclass in how to bottle lightning.
Directed by Brett Sullivan with a filmmaker’s eye for intimacy and scale, this 141-minute rendering of Anaïs Mitchell’s mythic, genre-wrecking musical doesn’t just document a stage show — it reanimates it. The result is ecstatic, mournful, and utterly essential.
The miracle of Hadestown has always been its synthesis. Mitchell’s book and score braid Greek tragedy with Depression-era grit, New Orleans jazz with Appalachian folk, and come up with something that feels both ancient and radio-ready.
Onscreen, that alchemy is amplified. You hear the snare of the trombone, the ache in the guitar, the way a train whistle becomes fate.
You see sweat on brows, the tremor in a hand before a note, the architecture of Rachel Hauck’s industrial underworld stretched to cinematic proportions.
It’s hell as a factory town, and it’s gorgeous.
Then there are the five principals — the original Broadway quintet, reunited in London — and here the word “stellar” feels insufficient.
 |
| Reeve Carney |
Reeve Carney’s Orpheus is all open heart and breaking voice, a boy-poet who believes a song can move the world, and by the end, you believe it too.
Eva Noblezada’s Eurydice is flint and hunger and hope, her soprano slicing through the steam like a cold wind.
 |
| André De Shields |
As Hermes, André De Shields remains the show’s sly, omniscient spine — a trickster god in a glittering suit who narrates with a wink and a wound.
 |
| Amber Gray |
Amber Gray’s Persephone swaggers in on a six-foot buzz, summer personified and then winter-broken, and Patrick Page’s Hades is still the most terrifyingly seductive baritone on any stage, industrial or mythic. His “Why We Build the Wall” lands in a movie theater with the force of prophecy.
The ensemble, often overlooked in filmed theater, becomes the film’s secret weapon.
Every boot stomp, every shoulder shift, every glance toward the band is caught. Sullivan knows when to go wide and when to go close — a held note in “Wait for Me” becomes a universe — and the live audience is felt, not heard, like a sixth principal.
For the uninitiated: Hadestown follows two love stories braided together. Orpheus, the dreamer, tries to save Eurydice from the choices poverty forces on her.
Meanwhile, Hades, king of the underworld, and his restless wife Persephone negotiate their own fraying bond of power and season. It’s Romeo and Juliet meets The Grapes of Wrath, scored by Lead Belly and Louis Armstrong, and it asks the oldest question: can love change the world? — with the newest urgency.
What makes this capture sing is that it refuses to be a consolation prize for not being in the room. Produced by Mara Isaacs, Dale Franzen, Hunter Arnold, and Tom Kirdahy, the film understands that the camera is not a witness but an instrument. It doesn’t flatten the stage; it scores it.
In 2019, Hadestown took home eight Tonys, including Best Musical, and in 2020, it won the Grammy for Best Musical Theater Album.
This film makes the case that those honors undersold it. Seeing Carney finish “Epic III,” or watching Noblezada step toward Hades with dread and defiance, or catching the flicker of grief in Gray’s eyes as summer ends — these are moments that argue for theater as the most human of arts, and film as its most generous translator.
Five nights only is a crime. See it twice.
‘Hadestown: The Musical’
Director: Brett Sullivan
Writer: Anaïs Mitchell
Producers: Mara Isaacs, Dale Franzen, Hunter Arnold, Tom Kirdahy
Starring: Reeve Carney, André De Shields, Amber Gray, Eva Noblezada, Patrick Page
Runtime: 141 min
In theaters July 24, 2026
No comments:
Post a Comment