Hadestown is soon to hit the big screens, as the Tony-winning musical looks to expand its audience and, potentially, chart a new course for theatrical live captures.
The live capture of the musical is coming to movie theaters for a five-night run starting July 24, with the film featuring five of the original cast members. After seven years on Broadway and two years on the West End, the goal of the film version is to spread word-of-mouth even further for the show.
“I sort of look at the audiences of Hadestown in concentric circles, and the inner circle are the core fans, and then they tell their friends, and then there’s the next circle, and they tell their friends, and then next circle, and part of what we’re trying to do is build the concentric circles as wide as possible to to draw everyone into the storytelling,” said producer Mara Isaacs.
The show intertwines the two mythic love stories of Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone, as Orpheus must go down to Hades’ underworld to rescue Eurydice after hard times befall the couple. Anaïs Mitchell penned the folk-jazz score and book. Rachel Chavkin directed the stage productions.
The idea for a film had pre-dated the show’s 2019 Broadway run, but producer Mara Isaacs said the show wanted to make sure they had the right creative team in place and vision for the film before proceeding.
“When I think about live captures, very few have figured out how to translate the theatrical experience into an actual filmic experience that has fidelity to what the theatrical experience is, but actually really works in the film medium,” she said. “There have certainly been captures, but they always felt like a kind of compromise.”
She calls the Hadestown film, led by director Brett Sullivan of Steam Motion and Sound, a blend of both a film adaptation of the show and a live theater capture, with Sullivan employing cinematic tools to tell the story. One example, Isaacs said, is the choice to do a one-take shot of Eurydice (played by Eva Noblezada) as she sings “Flowers,” with the camera slowly moving in as she bemoans her choice to go to the underworld.
The live capture was filmed in London’s West End, where costs are lower, but where there’s also a different contracting set up, so that all cast members leave and start at the same time. This cleared the way for original cast members Noblezada, Reeve Carney, Patrick Page, Amber Grey and Andre De Shields to all step into the London production for one-month runs in winter 2025 in order to participate in the film. The lower costs to produce the film also made it feel less “risky,” Isaacs said, since the film was shot on spec, before being acquired by Bleecker Street’s Crosswalk and LD Entertainment and then premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Three live performances were filmed for the live capture, with a few more additional shooting days without a crowd in order to get needed camera angles. The shoot was a multi-camera set up with moving cranes.
It is relatively rare to release a live capture of production while the show is still running on stage — Hamilton is one of those rare examples — as many in the industry have feared that the film would cannibalize the audience for live theater. Isaacs said she is still waiting to see how the data pans out, but said she believes that cultural consumption has changed so that consumers are more interested in repeat viewings. Hadestown has also had luck with repeat attendees at the show thanks to a number of creative casting choices.
“I think that we really need to take into account how younger generations are consuming culture and their interest in having the same experience from multiple perspectives,” Isaacs said.
