How do you choose what to go and see when there are so many different types of productions happening across London every day? I love to see my favourite musicals but try to challenge myself to see something new too. So when I saw an advert for Hadestown at the Lyric Theatre I booked tickets.

Hadestown at the Lyric Theatre

Hadestown is a Broadway musical by singer-songwriter Anais Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin. Hadestown has received 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical and the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album.

Hadestown takes a journey to the underworld and back, intertwining two ancient Greek mythic love stories – that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of king Hades and his wife Persephone. Hadestown invites you to imagine how the world would be. The show uses a narrator, Hermes, to introduce every character and explain the plot as it goes along so we found it easy to follow.

The music is a mixture of folk, jazz, blues and New Orleans-inspired sounds brought to you by a live orchestra who stay on stage throughout the show. We loved the staging of the show, which looks like a nightclub, and the way parts of the stage moved during the performance.

The show is suitable for ages 8 and over although on this occasion we didn’t take our teens. We enjoyed the staging and music although found the lack of spoken dialogue unusual. The story was easy enough to follow and although some parts were quite dark, the musical ended on a lighter note. I didn’t find myself humming along to any of the music after the performance, but it was a great night out.