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The profile · researched 30 October 2026
Orpheus keeps walking: Hadestown's second road company, mid-route to 2027
Anaïs Mitchell's sung-through Orpheus-and-Eurydice musical won eight Tony Awards in 2019 and has not stopped moving since. Its second North American tour is booked through June 2027, a first UK and Ireland tour opens in February, and a cinema capture broke records for a filmed stage show in July 2026.
Vermont, 2006: a folk show that outgrew its folk songs
Hadestown began as a community theatre project in Vermont, where an early sung-through version was performed in Barre and Vergennes in 2006 and taken on a small regional tour the following year. Anaïs Mitchell, a singer-songwriter rather than a theatre composer, wrote the music, lyrics and book, and her source was the oldest story in the repertoire: Orpheus goes to the underworld to fetch Eurydice back, and looks over his shoulder.
Unsure whether the stage piece had a future, Mitchell released a concept album in 2010 and the songs took on a life of their own among listeners who had never seen a production. Director Rachel Chavkin joined the project in 2012, and the two of them spent years expanding a loose song cycle into a plotted two-act musical, with Hermes as narrator, the three Fates as a close-harmony chorus, and Hades recast as a boss running a walled industrial town.
Off-Broadway, Edmonton, the Olivier, the Walter Kerr
The expanded version opened Off-Broadway at New York Theatre Workshop, running from 3 May to 31 July 2016, with a live cast album from that production released on 6 October 2017 through Ghostlight and Parlophone; it entered the Billboard cast albums chart at number three. A further development run followed at Edmonton's Citadel Theatre from 11 November to 3 December 2017, and then a stint on the National Theatre's Olivier stage in London from November 2018 into January 2019 — the engagement that sharpened the staging into something close to its final form.
Broadway came next. Hadestown opened at the Walter Kerr Theatre on 17 April 2019 and took eight prizes from fourteen nominations at that year's Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Original Score, with Chavkin winning for direction and a design team of Rachel Hauck (sets), Michael Krass (costumes) and Bradley King (lighting) also recognised. David Neumann choreographed. The 40-track original Broadway cast recording arrived digitally on 26 July 2019, reached number one on the US cast albums chart and number 49 on the Billboard 200, and won Best Musical Theater Album at the 62nd Grammy Awards.
The records, then the film
The discography has grown steadily around the stage work: the 2017 Off-Broadway live album, the 2019 Broadway recording, a seasonal release called If the Fates Allow: A Hadestown Holiday Album on 20 November 2020, and Hadestown: Live from London on 6 December 2024, documenting the Lyric Theatre company that opened in the West End on 21 February 2024.
The largest recent development is not a record but a film. Hadestown: The Musical, directed by Brett Sullivan of Steam Motion and Sound, was shot in the West End with five original Broadway principals — Reeve Carney as Orpheus, André De Shields as Hermes, Amber Gray as Persephone, Eva Noblezada as Eurydice and Patrick Page as Hades — and opened in North American cinemas on 24 July 2026. It took $10.2 million across 1,949 locations on its opening weekend, the biggest opening recorded for a live-show capture, narrowly ahead of the $10.1 million Hamilton managed in September 2025. It went out for digital rental and purchase on 25 August 2026. The capture matters to the touring picture because it moves close-up performances of these songs into the hands of audiences who will next encounter them in a 2,000-seat road house.
Two road companies, and what changed between them
The first North American tour ran from 5 October 2021 to 26 May 2024 — one of the earliest Broadway tours to relaunch after the shutdown — and logged more than 980 performances in 85 cities. It carried a version of Hauck's Broadway design, revolving stage included.
The company now on the road is a different animal. This non-Equity tour launched on 3 October 2024 at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury, Connecticut, with over 40 dates initially announced, and is now booked through June 2027. It plays what the producers describe as a new tour concept developed by Chavkin on the foundation of the Broadway staging: Keenan Tyler Oliphant directs the tour, T. Oliver Reid has retooled Neumann's choreography, David L. Arsenault has designed a set after Hauck's original, Aja Jackson lights it, Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz did the sound and Cody Owen Stine supervises the music. RCI Theatricals general-manages; The Booking Group handles routing. The practical consequence, noted by nearly every critic who has seen both, is that the revolving floor and the trapdoor are gone, and the balcony that Hades and Persephone command sits lower and more centrally.
Where things stand, late October 2026
The tour is at Pittsburgh's Benedum Center from 27 October to 1 November 2026, then Cleveland's Connor Palace from 3 to 8 November and Boston's Colonial Theatre from 10 to 14 November. Further ahead sit Chicago's Auditorium Theatre from 27 April to 2 May 2027 and Toronto's CAA Ed Mirvish Theatre from 16 to 27 June 2027, with more cities still being added.
Meanwhile the property is unusually busy elsewhere. The West End production is in its third year at the Lyric. Australian stagings played Theatre Royal Sydney and Melbourne in 2025. On 4 June 2026 a first UK and Ireland tour was announced, produced by Mara Isaacs: it opens at Curve in Leicester on 19 February 2027 and visits more than twenty cities — among them Salford, Leeds, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Cardiff, Liverpool, Dublin, Belfast, Hull and Plymouth — running through November 2027. Mitchell's note on the announcement was that the West End casts had convinced her the songs sit comfortably in every regional accent. Korean, Polish and Danish productions are also in preparation.
The show in the room
Reviews of the current road company split along a consistent line: the singing and the score survive the downsizing, the spectacle does not. Reviewing the Washington stop at the National Theatre, which ran 18 to 23 November 2025, a critic clocked the show at two hours plus a fifteen-minute interval, praised Megan Colton's Eurydice in 'Flowers' and recorded an immediate standing ovation, while singling out the reworked climax of 'Doubt Comes In': without the trapdoor, Workers carry Eurydice away, which read as a clunky removal rather than a precise fall.
The Austin notice from the Bass Concert Hall run of 20 to 22 February 2026 was harder on it — the acting space felt pinched, the reduced choreography did not fill the gap left by the machinery, and the band came across as a pickup jam session, though the piece's arguments about class and a warming world landed intact. In Pittsburgh on 28 October 2026 the verdict was warmer: the score's richness and the band's Americana-tinged New Orleans jazz and blues were the evening's strengths, Rudy Foster's Hermes drove it, the swinging-lamp sequence in 'Wait for Me' worked, and the Fates sang and played well, with Miriam Navarette stepping in as Persephone after the interval in place of Namisa Mdlalose Bizana. Jose Contreras plays Orpheus, Hawa Kamara Eurydice and Nickolaus Colón Hades. For comparison, when the previous tour played the same Benedum stage in November 2022, the seven onstage musicians — cello, violin, trombone and accordion among them — and a set that turned a New Orleans street into an industrial mine drew a full-house standing ovation.
The show, now
A touring Hadestown runs around two hours plus a fifteen-minute interval, sung through in two acts with no support act — the band is the opening act, playing on stage throughout while Hermes welcomes the house in. The song order has not changed since Broadway: 'Road to Hell' sets the frame, 'Livin' It Up on Top' and 'Our Lady of the Underground' carry the comedy, 'We Build the Wall' closes the first half, and 'Wait for Me' and 'Doubt Comes In' do the emotional work after the interval. The difference on this tour is mechanical. David L. Arsenault's set, after Rachel Hauck's original, drops the revolving floor and the trapdoor and lowers the balcony to centre stage, so menace is built from Nickolaus Colón's bass voice, fog, lighting and a backdrop that shifts from stucco to deep red rather than from stage machinery; T. Oliver Reid's retooled choreography replaces some of what the effects used to do. Critics have divided on how well that trade works. The Washington run in November 2025 ended in an immediate standing ovation but flagged the reworked ending of 'Doubt Comes In', where Workers now carry Eurydice off instead of a fall; the Austin notice in February 2026 found the playing space pinched and the band undercooked; the Pittsburgh review of 28 October 2026 called the score and the band the high points, praised Rudy Foster's Hermes and the swinging-lamps staging of 'Wait for Me', and judged the loss of technical wizardry real but survivable for anyone meeting the show for the first time.
Researched from onstagepittsburgh.com · en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · broadwayworld.com · hadestowntour.com · ctxlivetheatre.com · broadwayworld.com · playbill.com
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