I Never Planned on Someone Like You

of all the things that made the hadestown proshot worth watching, i was most impacted by the performance of Flowers. OBCR Flowers is beautiful and emotional, yes, but the proshot version is fucking raw. eurydice screaming and crying. desperately pleading: "IS ANYBODY LISTENING?" tears streaming down her face: "I OPEN MY MOUTH AND NOTHING COMES OUT!" and you believe it, somehow, even though you're sitting there hearing her, because you can feel the dead air as nobody answers. they can hear, but they don't care. what does it matter that we all hear her? no one says anything. how can she know anyone is listening if no one acknowledges her at all? you feel that song like being punched in the stomach over and over, like you're clawing through dirt but you can't quite dig yourself out of a grave. and that's just the power of eva noblezada man.

what they don't tell you about hadestown is that orpheus and eurydice are not the main characters. neither are persephone and hades. or hermes. or the fates. the main character is whoever in the band is playing the trombone because holy fuck

what they don't tell you about hadestown is that orpheus and eurydice are not the main characters. neither are persephone and hades. or hermes. or the fates. the main character is whoever in the band is playing the trombone because holy fuck

hermes in hadestown is the exact opposite of an unreliable narrator. a tortured narrator. a little *too* reliable. incredibly aware of exactly what is happening at any given moment, vaguely spoiling it for you in the beginning, despairing every second of it. but ultimately motivated to continue to tell the story over and over and over with a smiling face for the sake of the audience, and for the sake of the characters themselves, singing it again to keep them alive. knowing how it will end, but singing it again so that the cycle may restart and eurydice may come back to life. enduring the misery of it all, over and over, holding the knowledge of what will come to pass but continuing anyway to see orpheus happy just one more time before it all goes down in flames again.

I don’t think you get the full Hadestown experience unless someone in the audience is clearly unfamiliar with the myth and you get to hear a mortified gasp followed by quiet sobbing in the dead silence