Hadestown Wows Milton Community
By Madeleine Wu ‘27
This past Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, the Milton community eagerly gathered in King Theatre to watch the fall musical: Hadestown.
Hadestown, written by American singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell in 2010 and initially performed on Broadway in 2019, offers a clever modern twist on the Ancient Greek tale of Orpheus and Eurydice by incorporating contemporary themes of industrialization and exploitation. The story follows Orpheus and Eurydice—two fated lovers—who must navigate a world of hardship and poverty inflicted by the deteriorating marriage between Hades, the god of the underworld, and Persephone, the goddess of springtime. For director Ms. Eleza Kort, who has followed Hadestown since its inception as a concept album, the “timing felt right” to perform the musical at Milton, given the “political climate in the world,” and the play’s exploration of themes of exploitation and collective resistance. Moreover, assistant director Rue Tanzi ‘26 emphasized how the musical’s inclusion of elements not in the original myth “built new meaning and made the whole thing feel modern while still respecting the original myth.”
Given the gravity of the themes, all involved with the production poured immense effort and passion into the performance. Tanzi, despite being a Milton theatre veteran, was “surprised by how much of the work happens outside the rehearsal room.” Actors attended practices five days a week that ranged from two to four hours in length, and spent additional hours researching and understanding their characters. Kort emphasized how, despite having an original vision, she wanted actors to “find their own understanding of their characters.” Actors’ understandings of these inner motivations and their deliberate deliveries imbued the performance with a sense of intimate vulnerability. Nora Jin ‘28, for example, recalled a meeting she had with Kort where they dissected her character Hermes’ intentions in telling an ultimately doomed tale. After analysing Orpheus’ line “we will always raise them up in a world we dream about” in the song “Livin’ it Up On Top,” she understood that Hermes’ motivations lay in the realizations that, “there’s this world we hope to achieve, and by telling this story—even if it ends the same sad way each time—we hope maybe it’ll change something.”
Aside from the cast and crew’s thematic and storytelling choices, the show required extensive technical effort. Rhys Adams ‘26, who played Hades, notes that all principal actors “modified [the original cast’s performances] to suit their own voices and then their scene partners’.” For Adams, this was no easy task. In the original score, Hades has a notoriously deep voice requiring Adams to “train to maintain the lower register without damaging it.” He noted that if he had sung with such a deep register a few days after getting cast, his voice “would’ve been put out of commission.” Moreover, unlike in a standard play, the cast needed to learn choreography in addition to memorizing their lines. Kort noted that the production “was a true collaboration” between her and choreography director Ms. Kelli Edwards. Finally, Kort extended tremendous gratitude to the support of costume designer Ms. Amy Fink and set designers Mr. Willie Byrum and Mr. Shane Fuller.
Ultimately, all of this hard work did not go unnoticed. Audience member Isa Cavallini-Hsu ‘27 remarked that “the show absolutely blew [her] away. [She] was so impressed with how technical it was and how amazing everyone was at singing!” Jin noted that she received overwhelming compliments from across the community, including from English teacher Ms. Lisa Baker and from Upper School Principal Ms. Rachel Madeleine Wu ‘27 PAGE 10 SPORTS Stone. Jin furthered that she is “honored to be a part of something bigger, and able to touch the hearts of so many people.” Kort shared this sentiment, commenting that she received many emails from people all across campus about the play and the profound impact it had had on them. She enthusiastically exclaimed that “this [engagement] is the goal of theater!” Milton’s production of Hadestown undoubtedly achieved this goal, resonating deeply throughout the Milton community.