Hadestown

Hadestown has had a long journey of development. It began life as a concert-tour, which became a concept-album released in 2010. An expanded theatrical version of it opened at the New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, directed by Rachel Chavkin, and it is this which has come, via a run in Canada, to the National Theatre this year – with a Broadway transfer planned after the show's departure from London.

Knowing this history helps to explain my one chief difficulty with the production: it feels like watching a beautifully staged concert of a concept album. There's nothing wrong with this, per se: a through-sung narrative of this kind isn't far removed from the basic component parts of an opera; however it feels throughout as though something is missing, and I've concluded it's the real emotional punch that an epic story like that of Orpheus and Eurydice, Hades and Persephone has the potential to pack when told theatrically.