Nicole schreibt...

Sometimes the maddest things can come out of a simple "Why don’t you...?", in this case written by a friend in response to me chewing his ear off about my sudden (or not so sudden) obsession with the Broadway musical Hadestown. So his question stood to reason: With London in such a disappointing state that I actually canceled a whole trip in October (and a subsequent one in November looking not that much better), why not go to New York to see this show again which I came to love so much? After a few days of dithering, two announcements clinched the deal: The wonderful Lena Hall joining Little Shop of Horrors and erstwhile Lady Persephone herself, Amber Gray, announcing concerts just for the weekend I was aiming for. Which made it rather ironic that she had to postpone her concerts later – but lose a Persephone, win an Orpheus. More on that later.
With Lufthansa asking silly prices and Germany insisting it knows better than the rest of Europe when it comes to handling Covid, I decided to throw my lot in with Air France and flights from Düsseldorf via Paris to JFK for a decent price. It also ticked an Aviation Geek box for me, as I usually go to Paris by train and thus Charles de Gaulle Airport was the last major European airport I had never been to. It gets moaned about a lot, but despite the confusing naming of the terminals that defies every attempt at logic, I found it easy to navigate and Air France really impressed me – serving free food on the 45-minute-flight to Paris and then lovely service on the long-distance flight (and I got a chance to watch a French TV show I had been hoping to see for a while!). Not their fault we couldn’t land for ages because hurricane Fiona was rattling around the Eastern seaboard, so we had to circle for a while and then I experienced the bumpiest landing ever. Ow. JFK has also reverted back to being the Seventh Circle of Hell with long queues at immigration (but a really lovely immigration officer, they do exist!), so I was really glad I had booked an airport hotel for the first night and only had a short distance to travel there (and the less said about the hotel and its location, the better).
Not even breakfast materialized, so I left early for a stop a Tim Horton’s at Jamaica Station, then decided I couldn’t be bothered with the subway and took the much pricier but faster and nicer LIRR commuter train to Penn Station. From there it was only a short walk to the Airbnb apartment I had rented with my friend to share. Because that was the second big draw of the trip, spending a few days with my Person after these last years of Covid drama. He didn’t arrive in Manhattan until the early afternoon, so I dumped my luggage there and hung around the Herald Square area for a while until it was time to meet another friend for lunch, catch up on theatre gossip and visit the newly re-opened and truly beautiful Drama Book Store, before returning to the Airbnb to meet my friend and check in.
First show should have been Amber’s concert on Friday evening, but when she postponed to next spring, a sudden opportunity presented itself to catch the current muchly hyped revival of Sondheim’s Into the Woods. While I’ll never ever understand the hype around Stephen Sondheim and his works in general, Into the Woods has always been among those I did enjoy and with Stephanie J. Block and Krysta Rodriguez joining the cast as Baker’s Wife and Cinderella respectively, the new Broadway version suddenly got 100% more interesting for me. Add to that, that I’ve only ever seen a terminally boring German Stadttheater version and the London Open Air version on a cold rainy evening that made me wish to be anywhere else, I felt it was only fair to give ITW another chance. My friend (expecting me to be at the concert) had meanwhile booked The Lion King for himself, as he had never seen it, so in honor of our tradition to match dinner with the show, we ordered West African food from a place called Teranga to eat at our apartment to match his show with African food at least – let’s face it, the most appropriate for Into The Woods would have been German and I really don’t need that over there. It was really delightful and who knew you can drink baobab juice?
In his show Sondheim flings a bunch of classic characters from Grimm’s Fairy Tales such as Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack (of Beanstalk fame) together for a journey of (self-)discovery in the woods. Everyone’s wishing for something – the Baker and his Wife for a baby, Cinderella for a ball (and not so much the Prince who starts pining for her) and the Witch to protect Rapunzel from the world. But of course wishes are children and things don’t go as planned for anyone.
My heart sank when the show began as I suddenly remembered this was a transfer from the Encores concert series with a big orchestra on stage and no real stage sets, but the incredible cast made me forget about that within minutes. I had a fantastic time with all the amazing fast-paced scenes and the songs presented so incredibly well with so many funny but also very touching moments ending on the wonderful “No one is alone” in the second act. Truly, this may have been the best time ever I’ve had at a Sondheim show. Stephanie J. Block was as amazing as I knew she would be as the Baker’s Wife (with RL hubby Sebastian Arcelus as the Baker), but there wasn’t a weak link in the cast from Krysta Rodriguez’ sassy Cinderella and Patina Miller's big-voiced Witch to Kate Geraghy’s incredibly funny snarky Little Red Ridinghood and the two delightfully over the top princes Gavin Creel and Joshua Henry. Special mention must go to Milky Way and her puppeteer Kennedy Kanagawa, who made her every appearance a hoot. So what can I say, while I’ll never be a Sondheim fan, these were 190 very very well spent dollars (ouch) for a fantastic evening among Broadway royalty. If Friday was the warm-up, Saturday became the foreplay. After a leisurely morning at the apartment with breakfast and a card game, we headed out to the tiny West Side Theatre in Hell’s Kitchen for Little Shop of Horrors – another show I had only ever seen as a bland German Stadttheater production and never in its English original version. And as per my resolution to focus on casting when choosing Broadway shows (as the shows themselves so often will sooner or later turn up in London at much cheaper prices), this had already tickled me to see Rob McClure again (who I had enjoyed in Beetlejuice) and pulled me in fully with Lena Hall, who had absolutely bowled me over at Bat out of Hell at the New York City Center with her incredible rock voice. She moved on to play breakable chanteuse Miss Audrey in Netflix’s Snowpiercer after that and so it was just splendid to see her tackling another breakable Audrey in the cult classic musical. Little Shop of Horrors by later Disney stalwarts Alan Menken and Howard Ashman is based on a horror B-Movie in which a flesh-eating plant from Outer Space unexpectedly arrives in the life of perennial loser Seymour, who works in Mr Mushnik’s flower shop on Skid Row, in the shoddy end of town. The plant, whom he names Audrey II after his secret crush Audrey, turns him and the shop into celebrities, but as it will never be satisfied, ends up eating them all. It’s nonsensical and daft, but Menken wrote some of his best songs like "Somewhere that’s Green" and "Suddenly Seymour" for it and while I don’t think it was worth $150 for this rather slight Off-Broadway production, it’s probably as good as this show is ever likely to get and I had a good time, with Lena and Rob carrying the show easily and wonderfully.
After that we had a topical Greek dinner at Souvlaki, a delightful little taverna on 56th Street, before it was finally time for the biggie – to take my friend on the road to hell down to Hadestown. I had caught its tryout at London’s National Theatre a few years ago (not least thanks to him giving me that particular nudge) and it had stunned me like few other shows have across the years. I eagerly waited for it to finally arrive on Broadway and release a full Broadway Cast Recording, but when I held that in my sweaty hands at last, I’d just listened once or twice, then put it aside. But for reasons I shan’t bother to get into here, I picked it up again in early summer and this time irrevocably fell in love with its smart plot, beautiful jazz-folk melodies and that rarest of beasts these days, smart, profound lyrics. Singer/Songwriter Anaïs Mitchell spent a good 15 years crafting her show from its start in a barn in Vermont and much as with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton you can sense how much of a labor of love it has been (which in itself is such a rarity now with so many commissioned musicals churned out only to milk some movie franchise).
Mitchell and her director Rachel Chavkin combine the old Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice with the story of Hades and Persephone, turn hell into a Metropolis-style vast underground factory in 1930s depression era America and throw in climate change for good measure. And on paper it’s hard to see how it even works, but work it does splendidly. In Greek mythology Persephone (daughter of Demeter and Zeus) is the Goddess of Flowers, who was abducted by Hades, God of the Underworld, which in turn pissed off Demeter. A deal was struck that Persephone would live half the year above ground, so that flowers and grains could grow, and half the year down below with Hades while the earth lies dead – basically the Greeks’ explanation for the seasons. In the show Hades has turned into a Trumpian madman amassing riches and Persephone into a sozzled harridan, their rift causing climate chaos up above. There, young Orpheus, son of the muse Calliope, got it into his head that he can fix the world by writing one great song, which doesn’t stop him from first wooing Eurydice and then promptly forgetting about his young wife. Eurydice’s death jolts him awake and Hermes sends Orpheus down the long way to Hadestown to recover her from the Underworld. Where he succeeds in reuniting Hades and Persephone and fixing climate change with one song (if only it was that easy) but bungles his rescue mission and leaves Eurydice behind in hell forever. Come on, it’s not a spoiler, it’s one of the best-known (and most often adapted) Greek myths after all. Which made sitting through the last five minutes of the show in London one of the most intense experiences ever for me – Hades allows Orpheus to take his wife out of hell, but only if he walks ahead and never looks back to check if she’s really following. And you know the myth, you KNOW he will look back and yet you sit and just pray it won’t be so. And since Greek myths are all about the human condition and human shortcomings, this one drives the point home that humans are their own worst enemies – doubting and worrying until they ruin it for themselves with their doubt (or, as the Fates sing: Men are fools, men are frail, give them the rope and they’ll hang themselves). Something that resonated very very strongly with me back in London and still packed a mean punch now, even though I knew what was coming (and when). Mitchell and Chavkin used every trick in the book of ancient Greek theatre from employing three hilariously cynical Fates as a Greek Chorus voicing the characters’ inner thoughts and inviting the audience to judge them, to the classic Epic storytelling by a single guy and his lyre, the style in which Homer once told his endless stories of the Trojan War (the Illiad) and Odysseus’ adventures. Here they are taken over by Orpheus and his guitar to supply background information for the audience and use his storytelling to finally break cold old Hades – and me as well in the process, because the final confrontation between the cruel God of the Underworld and the young idealistic bard singing literally for his life was wonderfully performed, involving the entire company. Some of the original cast I had seen in London were still around and only improved over time, especially Eva Noblezada, who stopped channeling whiny drippy Kim from Miss Saigon and played Eurydice with far more sass (for all the good it does her) opposite Reeve Carney’s not-quite-there Orpheus, who sings so high you fear for the glassware, contrasting Patrick Page’s impossibly deep bass, which you could use to lay a gravel road, as Hades. Former Fate Jewelle Blackman has been promoted to first cast Persephone and while she had Amber Gray’s huge shoes to fill, she did so wonderfully in what’s probably my favorite female lead in ages (but mitts off my man, Goddess, you got your own!). The biggest surprise was the casting of Lilias White as new Hermes, replacing André De Shields, but "Missus Hermes" as narrator and kinder softer mother figure to Orpheus worked wonderfully well, and my (Greek) God(s), what a pair of lungs that woman has under her massive bosom! Overall it was a fantastic evening, giving me all I had hoped for in seeing this show live again at last and now in its better fleshed-out final Broadway version. And yet, as I said, it was only the foreplay to the true triple treat that was Sunday – starting with the Broadway Flea Market, which had been the reason for me to choose this particular weekend to begin with. I’ve been lucky enough to visit it twice before and I just love rummaging around all the treasure troves of old merchandise and unique props, clothes and promo material to begin with. Of course it’s even sweeter when you got an obsession with a show going, so I arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning to raid the Hadestown table for a signed playbill of the current cast, a votive candle for Lady Persephone and one of Orpheus’ notebooks in which he scribbles his one big song throughout the show (and the curious sod in me had always wanted to know if he was just pretending, doodling flowers or putting together tomorrow’s grocery shopping). I was able to pick up a few other goodies, including some rare old playbills, CDs for a silly low price and other bits and pieces, but overall the flea market has become so big and crowded, it’s quite a knackering experience. Still, always great to feel so at home among all the freaks and geeks that are my people. I withdrew to the apartment, to dump all my shopping and recover for an hour, before I returned on a solo trip to hell to enjoy Hadestown once more for myself and from the other side of the front row (which was a good decision, as I now sat on Missus Hermes’ side and could watch her a lot better). No need to repeat what I wrote above, as it was exactly the same wonderful experience. The day still wasn’t over yet, though, as the Fates had been smiling on me for this weekend. While Amber had to postpone her concerts, Eva and Reeve coincidentally scheduled concerts of their own for the same weekend at The Green Room and being the shallow female that I am, of course I picked the pretty boy over the girl (and admittedly I HAVE carried a small torch for him ever since his Spiderman spandex days). Reeve gets a lot of stick for being a shitty actor (he is), but in my opinion not enough credit for being a dang good songwriter of his own with two albums to his name. So I did like Eurydice and asked: What else you got? And that turned out plenty of really good rock music and a completely different guy, when he could just do what he seems to love most for a good 90 minutes – a perfect ending to a wonderful day and long weekend in New York. And as if the whole trip hadn’t been amazing enough, Air France once more did me a good turn – when I had booked my flight, I hadn’t really thought about the late departure time of 23.00, but as my friend headed home to Boston at noon and I had no plans at all for the final day, it would be a very loooong time at JFK. So once there I headed to their customer service desk, made puppy eyes at a nice guy and got a change to an earlier flight (including earlier connection to Düsseldorf) free of charge. Merci beaucoup, mes amis, and I will definitely be using Air France again! All in all a truly incredibly wonderful time was had, so I'll end this with a big thank you to my Enablers for talking me into going ahead with this mad venture that was worth every ridiculously expensive dollar. Broadway, I'll be back!