It’s so rare that audiences get to see a professionally shot recording (which I’ll refer to as a pro-shot for the remainder of this review) of a Broadway musical, and it’s even more rare they get to experience one in a movie theater with a bunch of other people who are equally excited to be there. I first fell in love with the magic of live theatre when I was very young, and still to this day it’s one of my favorite things in the world. It’s a world I go to whenever reality becomes too much. It’s the magic of seeing a narrative story unfold in front of you, played with the kind of intensity and energy that is often so rare in Hollywood movies. The ability to see a show I once saw performed live with thousands, in an oversized, plush cinema recliner with the bag of popcorn and big soda you get at the movies, feels like the best of two of my favorite worlds, and it’s a remarkably special thing.

And I’ll be honest with you from the jump, there’s no way I’m going to possibly be completely objective about a pro-shot of Anaïs Mitchell and Rachel Chavkin’s Hadestown. Hadestown is probably one of my top five musicals of all time, for reasons I’ll get to in the paragraphs below. But I’ve seen a lot of Broadway pro-shots get the show wrong. There are a lot of cinematic choices that can either make or break the experience. Camera angles that can either bring you closer in or pull you away. But Brett Sullivan, who previously directed pro-shot recordings of Waitress, Newsies, Kinky Boots, among others, was absolutely the right man for the job. Hadestown: the Musical captures everything I love about this iconic show so much, preserving the undeniably transcendent experience of live theatre for viewers to discover and embrace for years to come. 

Hadestown is a modern interpretation of Greek mythology, staged to look like it takes place in a sort of a prohibition era New Orleans speakeasy. Our de facto narrator Hermes (André De Shields) tells us the story of Orpheus (Reeve Carney) and Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), two fated soulmates who are very much in love, but living in poverty. He’s a musician who’s writing a song he’s certain will bring spring again to his world of seemingly eternal winter, she’s wondering if she’ll ever live a life that feels like her own. 

Meanwhile, Hades, god of the underworld (Patrick Page) owns a bunch of factories and mills, full of miserable workers who signed their lives away at the promise of a better life and now can never leave. Hades is married to Persephone (Amber Gray), ‘our lady of the underground’, who essentially controls the weather in the world above. Once Hades seduces Eurydice into coming to Hadestown, promising her a life of prosperity and wealth, but really trapping her in a world of never ending work and no self agency, Orpheus is horrified. He travels into the terrifying unknown in hopes of bringing the woman he loves back home. 

Hadestown is a pinnacle of musical theatre – a wildly creative and viscerally thrilling piece of work that transcends musical theatre genres and is always subverting audience expectations of what you’d imagine this story to be. And the choice to film this stage musical with the original Broadway cast, rather than a Hollywood movie directed by…I don’t know…Rob Marshall or somebody, was absolutely the correct choice. The staging of Hadestown is so singular and so innovative, the magic of it would absolutely have been lost in the context of a traditional movie. Anaïs Mitchell’s score is mostly sung through, and I’m sure we would’ve had a lot of songs cut or made into dialogue scenes, which is something we often see in stage-to-screen adaptations, that predictably fills me with rage. Thankfully none of that nonsense is happening here. Every bit of the magic of Hadestown is captured beautifully in this gorgeously filmed pro-shot. A traditional Hadestown movie would likely be awful, but this film sings a song I’m going to sing again and again and again.

The complete original principal Broadway cast from the 2019 production was reassembled in London’s West End last year to film this pro-shot, and you can definitely tell this cast is giving you these performances after years of perfecting them. Everyone here could not possibly be any better and has never been any better. Everyone sounds better than they do on the original cast recording, and everyone is bringing an unmatched level of emotion and enthusiasm to their characters. I’ll start with our central star crossed lovers, Reeve Carney and Eva Noblezada, now a real life married couple, fun fact. Their chemistry is electric, and Carney in particular, sounds far better than he does on the 2019 cast recording. He’s got charm for days, but you can tell he’s really perfected his version of Orpheus. Noblezada has always been a powerhouse talent, but the detail of her performance here, particularly in the act 2 heartbreaker Flowers, is legitimately awe inspiring. 

Patrick Page suffered a leg injury shortly before the filming of this pro-shot and is wearing a boot, but the boot is kind of integrated into the show in ways I found impressive. He brings such a unique, menacing presence to the villainous Hades. Hades is very modern-day billionaire coded in ways that are pointed and unmistakable, but never feel heavy handed. Bella Brown, Madeline Charlemagne and Allie Daniel also star as the Fates, the Greek chorus ‘always singing in the back of your mind’, and they’re extraordinary as well, each filled with haunting, intimidating presence.

But the real stars of the show are Amber Gray  and André De Shields, as Persephone and Hermes, respectively. In this script, Persephone is reframed as a woman trapped in a marriage to a man she barely recognizes anymore. He’s developed a bloodthirsty hunger for power and she has developed a nasty drinking problem to cope with what she can’t control. Gray gets a few of the best songs in the show, Livin’ it Up On Top and Our Lady of the Underground, and the fiery energy she brings to these numbers is unpredictable and utterly thrilling. But nobody in this cast has the utter presence of André De Shields, bringing vivid life and sorrow to Hermes, basically a narrator who also nteracts with the story’s characters. De Shields is a powerhouse talent, has been for several decades, but the emotional response he elicits from the audience is almost indescribably brilliant. He nails Hermes’ moments of humor, but also when we get to the end of this sad song, the sensitivity of De Shields’ delivery moved me deeply. 

Like I’ve said, Brett Sullivan has directed a slew of live theatre pro-shots, and really we should just have him do all of these from now on. One thing that annoys me frequently in musical pro-shots is the overuse of close-up shots. This was a problem in the recent Merrily We Roll Along recording. In doing this, we lose a lot of the enormity of the stage performance, and we also undercut the work of other cast members who aren’t the primary focus in any given moment. Sullivan’s direction of Hadestown somehow gives you something better than the best seat in the house. There’s a particular shot involving a hole in the center of the stage that opens up when characters travel to the underground world of Hadestown, where the camera is placed inside the hole looking up, and this is obviously a view you’d never get onstage. And that shot was so powerful, it felt like a punch to the gut. Just all the more reason why we should be filming every single Broadway show, so the memories of these experiences and these performances could not simply be lost to the time, reduced to a ‘you just had to be there’ story people tell for years after.

Hadestown’s Tony-winning score from Anaïs Mitchell is a marvel. Eclectic, innovative and always musically fascinating, with devastatingly clever lyrics that offer surprise at every turn. With a mostly sung through score, some songs are obviously going to be better than others, but I could rattle off the names of at least ten numbers in Hadestown I found particularly memorable. And of course, like any fan of a Broadway musical, I have my favorite numbers, and they’re realized so beautifully in this film. A lot of that has to do with original Broadway director Rachel Chavkin’s staging, and the way the actors get so much out of the minimalist setting. 

In case it isn’t painfully apparent by now, I consider Hadestown to be one of the best Broadway musicals of the 21st century. I am absolutely delighted by the fact that this pro shot exists, making the experience of this Broadway musical accessible to audiences who could never see it before. There’s something so beautiful about the idea of a young child living in the middle of nowhere going to this film at their local multiplex attached to a shopping mall, with a family member, and having this be the moment they fell in love with the power of musical theatre. There is so much depth, humor, heart and emotion in the devastatingly beautiful world of Hadestown, and it’s well worth a visit to the movie theater. See it with a crowd on the biggest screen with the best sound possible. It’s a sensory overload, a viscerally thrilling experience, and it’s probably one of the best pro shot recordings of a musical I’ve ever seen.