A Glance Behind the Curtain of the Underworld: A Conversation with the Cast of Hadestown
It’s Sweeny Todd meets Romeo and Juliet. It’s a fairy-tale, but how the Grimm Brothers originally imagined: a dark and gritty reimagination of an otherwise beautiful love story. A post-apocalyptic reinterpretation of a classic Greek tragedy is what comes to mind when I think about Hadestown. This grand musical tells the tale of not just one Greek myth, but two in a modern setting. It interweaves the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, two lovers destined to be drawn apart, and the story of Hades and Persephone, another pair of lovers with a complicated relationship.
To quickly summarize a long and twisting narrative, Orpheus and Eurydice plan to marry, despite their lack of the proper funds to live an enjoyable life. As they celebrate their love, Orpheus tells the story of Persephone, who has temporarily escaped the underworld, ruled by her boyfriend, Hades. While rejoicing in the happiness of the above-world, Hades forces her to rejoin him, and Persephone showers him with nothing but disrespect for his home. In retaliation, he sets out to find a replacement for her, and stumbles upon Eurydice, who is strangely fascinated by the underworld. They travel to the underworld together and Eurydice signs her contract to be a worker in Hadestown. Meanwhile, Orpheus discovers her absence and sets off towards Hadestown along with Persephone to bring her back. With all four lovers in Hadestown, harsh arguments explode in song, which ends in Hades and Persephone reconciling and Hades giving Eurydice the chance to leave with Orpheus, as long as Orpheus leaves first and doesn’t look over his shoulder. Following the famous Greek myth, as fate would have it, Orpheus’s doubt and curiosity get the better of him, and he turns around, thus punishing Eurydice to a life in Hadestown.
This past week, I had the pleasurable opportunity to sit down with two extremely talented members of the touring cast of Hadestown while they prepared for their set of shows in Philadelphia. Along with Elena Rouse, a student at Villanova, we interviewed Maria Im, a violinist in the orchestra, and Kimberly Marable, who plays Persephone.
Maria Im has been playing since the age of nine and received formal training and two degrees from the Juilliard School. Her extreme versatility in music preference has led her to perform all over the world on famous stages and locations such as Carnegie Hall, the MoMa Sound Garden, Radio City Music Hall, The Met Gala, and even on two late night shows, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.
Kimberly Marable has been acting on Broadway for the past 15 years and records voiceover for ABC, the CW, and CBS Sports. She is a theater graduate from Dartmouth College and has built up an extremely impressive resumé including appearances in the Broadway musicals of The Lion King, Sister Act, The Book of Mormon, The Wedding Singer, and Hairspray.
Elena: How does it feel to be back on stage after being shut down for so long because of COVID-19?
Kimberly: It’s very exciting! Being here on Zoom is sort of a testament to this. Something that was missing for so long and I think we have all been missing for so long is the ability to be in the same space together. I think it’s really wonderful that eight times a week we get to be in a community and share beautiful music and storytelling together, and breathe the same air. It’s exciting to be able to do that again. I certainly missed it and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one.
Maria: I echo the same sentiments. I think as performers a lot of our energy that we output is also fueled by hearing responses from the audience and feeling the energy in the air. At least for me, during the initial lockdown, I was doing a lot of remote stuff, which I was so grateful for, but I was really missing the instant, real-time feedback that I would get on stage, both from my colleagues and from the audience members. To be able to hear people gasp when they see something incredible happen and hear applause have been my favorite moments on stage.
Phoebe: How long have you been with the Hadestown touring cast, and how long do you plan to stay?
Maria: This is the first national tour, so we are all on this tour together for the first time. I was not involved with Hadestown before this tour, so I guess September is when I would have first joined, and I will be with the tour until the end of April. I believe I will end in Tempe, Arizona…
Kimberly: … Which we are very sad about. It’s rare that in a show you get to share the stage with a musician, as an actor, and this has been such a gift and an honor to be able to make music together, in real time and in real space! So, we’re going to miss you Maria! But anyway, I was in the Broadway company of Hadestown, so it’s not the beginning of my Hadestown journey, but as far as the tour goes, yes, we all started at the same time in September with rehearsals in New York, and then we went upstate and had more rehearsals in New York. We’ve been traveling around and performing around the country since October, and it’s been pretty rad! I know for a fact that we are all very excited to be in Philadelphia.
Elena: What has been your favorite city so far?
Kimberly: That’s hard… There’s been a lot of cities, but also I feel like in every city we try to find what that city is about: the food, the outings, the sights to see. I know this is a cop-out but for me there hasn’t been a favorite. Every city has had something pretty awesome to offer.
Maria: I’m just going through the rolodex of where we’ve been. I would agree. Every city has something really unique to offer and each audience is so different from one city to the next. I think the most memorable one for me is probably New Orleans, only because this show has such deep ties to that city. Also, we were there for the New Year, so it was a beautiful time for the entire company to just celebrate the newness of the year together. But again, I don’t want to disqualify any other city, I just remember the fireworks of New Orleans.
Elena: I do have one question, regarding the show itself. I haven’t seen it and I’ve listened to some of the music, but I am wondering how you guys would describe the show to someone who knows nothing about it?
Maria: Hmmm. Full disclosure: when I got offered Hadestown I knew very little about it myself. My introduction to Hadestown was actually through my partner, who is a huge Anais Mitchell fan, so I heard about her through him, initially, a year ago. So when I joined the tour, I hadn’t actually seen the show fully. I had only listened to the cast album in preparation and a few clips. So now having experienced it over and over again, I think the way that I would explain it is this: there is no show like Hadestown. The music in itself is extremely unique. The band being onstage and being so involved with the show is so unique. I tell a lot of my friends, if you want to come watch Hadestown you have to be prepared to be blown away and not have any expectations. The genre is totally bending, the roles are bending, the diversity on the stage is, for me, so new and fresh. So that’s how I would explain it.
Kimberly: Yeah, I like your explanation! It’s a love story, it’s a Greek myth; that’s useful information to use. It is a story that is thousands of years old, and like Maria said, we have found a new way to breathe life into it that is exciting and not like any other show that you’ve ever seen. The show has music that will infiltrate your heart. Yeah, it’s a love song, it’s a sad song, it’s an old song, it’s a tragedy. It’s really really beautiful. I would bring a handkerchief and be prepared to have joy too! We do a lot of laughing together. I think that there are a lot of points of entry: different characters that you will find humanity in and you’ll be able to watch the show through their eyes and experience all the things alongside them. So, you’re in for a treat!
Maria: I feel like every person who walks in those doors will walk away taking a different story and a different message from the show, which I think is so cool because we’re not spoon feeding ‘this is what the story is’. It can touch on so many topics, both current and past, so that’s something that I feel is so unique to our show. It will touch a different part of your heart depending on what you’re coming into the show with.
Kimberly: I agree 100%!
Phoebe: Kimberly, did something draw you to Persephone specifically? And did you do any research on Greek mythology to prepare for your audition?
Kimberly: Yes and yes! Auditioning for Persephone was awesome! I think what drew me to her initially was the music. I think she has fantastic songs. Clearly I’m biased, but I think she’s got the best music in the show. Don’t tell other people. I just love the music that I get to sing every night. Delving deeper into the role, it’s been a really beautiful and wonderful challenge as an actor, too, because I think that we can just get lost in the surface of Persephone’s fur and booze and all that stuff. She is a complicated woman, goddess, and queen, who is coping with a lot of stuff and trying to find her way back to joy and love with her eternal partner. Gods are endless in that way. It’s been really fantastic to be able to examine that and re-examine that! And really figure out who Persephone is today. Who will she be tomorrow? What was the second question again?
Yes Research! I did! You know, we’re on the road so I didn’t get to bring my research with me because of limited space. I definitely did do some research. There’s a really great modern retelling and it is in fact an epic, like poetry epic. It’s called Persephone’s Fall. It’s maybe two or three years old, it came out right during the time that I was auditioning and finding out that I would be doing Hadestown. It was really great to examine how she ended up in this situation of spending half of the year below, half of the year above, and what her mother Demeter was like. She didn’t play games! Coming from that kind of lineage: strong queen goddess, it’s empowering and being able to approach this character from a place of joy, power and agency has been really wonderful. I’m just grateful that there’s material to be able to do that kind of research and make those character decisions.
Phoebe: Maria, my question for you is, many singers have a favorite song to sing due to their connection with the lyrics or to the music, so I was wondering if, as a violinist, there’s a particular song in the soundtrack that you connect to?
Maria: It’s really hard to pick just one, because I feel like this show takes you on this crazy emotional journey. You hit all of them: anger, sadness, joy. I do remember during our rehearsal period, when we played the dance song, when Hades and Persephone dance together, I was full-on weeping as I was playing. My line while I’m playing this song of this incredible moment of love being rekindled. That’s always one of my favorites when it comes up. I always say that to my friends and I’ll talk to the band and say “Y’all this song made me cry” I 100% am a cheeseball. That’s the one that’s always going to put me on the edge of crying while playing. That’s the one.
Elena: Just to round things out, do you feel like you know the show inside and out at this point because you’ve performed it so much? Or is it this elongated journey where you keep learning new things with every performance?
Kimberly: I think it’s both. For me specifically, I’ve been with the show for years now and on the one hand, it’s been really spectacular learning this company’s version of the show and hearing it through their voices. Eight times per week we have new people who are hearing it through their voices or their instruments and that’s been really exciting. But the other thing too, is that we’re living, breathing humans. Literally every day is different and how we approach the material, the story, and the music is different. It’s really neat to be able to hear and experience this show afresh every day.
Maria: I think from a band member’s perspective, most of our music is written out. We do have moments where we get to improvise and we get to have fun. That is always going to be different each performance, what we choose to do in those moments that we’re allowed to be ourselves onstage. In those moments of watching the actors and the singers do their thing, every night we think, ‘This is live theater, anything can happen’. We can know every moment by memory and it’s embedded in us at this point, but the beautiful nature of live theater is that anything can happen. And in those moments it’s what we choose to do in reaction to it that makes it so exciting. Anytime I feel like “I know this show. I know what’s going to happen”I feel like live theater reminds me “You don’t know, actually” because something as subtle as a moment where we’re used to an audience laughing and the audience is holding their breath and they don’t laugh because they’re waiting for the next thing makes me, at least, respond totally differently. That’s just the beauty of having it happen in real time. Like Kimberly said, we know it really well, but the stage will remind you, ‘It does not matter’.
The Hadestown touring cast will be in Philadelphia from February 9, 2022 until February 20, 2022 at the Kimmel Center. Get your tickets here!
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