← MickeyJoTheatre
MickeyJoTheatre
Are HADESTOWN's original Broadway stars coming to the West End to film a proshot?
00:22:57
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
Mikki Jo
I don't know why everyone's acting so surprised. I mean, they told you they were gonna sing it again. Oh my God. Hadestown. Welcome back to my theater themed YouTube channel. My name is Mikki Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre and I have been so excited for this news to drop. I found out slightly earlier this week that it was rumored that the original Broadway stars of Hadestown may be coming over to the West End production for a brief stint in the new year. With the current cast set to leave at the beginning of February and no new cast members announced, that news has official broken today and we're going to be discussing exactly what that means and all of the details and why it's so exciting right here on my theatre themed YouTube channel. There is also one more detail that I don't think they have told us. There is a little secret I think they are keeping here and it's to do with the whole reason that the cast would be coming over in the first place. Spoiler alert. I don't think it's just to have a nice five week holiday in London. I say holiday, they'll literally be doing a show. My thinking is that the whole reason this is happening is because they might be filming a Hadestown pro shot. Don't get too excited. Excited. This is not yet confirmed and it might be years before we see it even if it does happen, but we're going to be talking about that in today's video as well in this theater news recap. Oh, I'm excited. Apologies to those who were expecting a Wicked Wednesday video from me today. I do have one for you this week, but it won't be coming to you on Wednesday. My apologies. Trust Hadestown to throw regular timings out of whack. Anyway, I'm going to read you through the two press releases I have just been sent from either side of the Atlantic because everyone's very excited about this news. But in the meantime, I would love to know what you think about it. Have you seen Hadestown before? Are you a huge Hadestown fan? How do you feel about this news? Which of these cast members are you most excited to see on stage? For me, I think it might be Amber Gray, but honestly, all very exciting. Finally, if you are new to my channel or if you haven't yet subscribed, then what are you doing? Please make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Click on the button somewhere down there below my face. That way you can step to date with all of the theatre news happening in the West End and on Broadway, as well as all of my reviews and my theater trips, many more of which I have coming very soon, yada, yada, yada. Let's talk about Hadestown, because this is huge. Okay, so the first thing that I, we have to address here is that many British audience members may have seen this quintet of performers before, because Hadestown, before it made it to Broadway on its road to the Walter Kerr Theatre and to its Tony Award winning Broadway success. It played a pre Broadway run in the Olivier Auditorium of the National Theatre here in London, where, you know, it happened. And a lot of people saw it, A lot of people I know went to go and see it, I went to go and see it. But it wasn't hugely buzzy in the sense that, you know, this was a brief limited run at a non commercial venue. It didn't get a bunch of awards nominations on the back of it. It wasn't happening in secret, but it was, it was a little low key compared with how we perceive Hadestown now. This is part of the reason why when Hadestown came back to the West End at the Lyric Theatre, which was technically its West End premiere, because like, how do you classify the National? It wasn't eligible for many of the categories at that year's Olivier Awards, which is slightly frustrating. Now, the cast who did it at the national included the five principal performers, or five of the principal performers, I should say, who would go on to reprise those roles on Broadway. Those being Reeve Carney as Orpheus, even Oblizada as Eurydice, Amber Gray as Persephone, Patrick Page as Hades and Andre de Shields as Hermes. And they were joined at the national by a company of British performers. When the show came back to the Lyric, it was an entirely new cast featuring Donal Finn, Grace Hodgett, Young Zachary James, Gloria Anitry had actually been in that National Theatre cast, understudying the role of Persephone, understudying Amber Gray, as well as playing one of the Fates and Melanie LaBarrie. Four out of five of those cast members have already left the West End production with some new performers having come in to replace them. But everyone was set to leave on like February 9th. I think they were all mentioning on socials that their final scheduled performance was going to be February 9th and we weren't hearing anything about a new cast. And then I started to hear this rumor which has actually been floating around for a couple of months now, about the idea of some or all of the original Broadway principles of Hadestown coming to the west end open brackets in order to film the show. Close brackets. Now that hasn't officially been announced. Here is what has been said. So let's read from the British press release because I got that one 15 minutes earlier. Stars from the National Theatre and the Tony Award winning Broadway productions of Hadestown returned to London to join the critically acclaimed West End production for a strictly limited run. Reeve, Andre, Amber, Eva and Patrick at the lyric Theater from the 11th of February. So their first performance is going to be on Tuesday 11th February through to 9th March 2025. This is a brief period. In fact it is literally only a four week run. Why would they just come over and do a four week run? I wonder? How could they possibly make everyone's schedules work to do a random month out of the year? What reason could they possibly have? It's to film it, I'm telling you. So the producers of Hadestown are delighted to announce Yada Yada Yada Tickets. Let's talk about tickets because last week tickets for all of these performances were on sale and my friends who are visiting from the US who had an inkling that this was going to be happening was smart and got their tickets already. Now I believe some tickets have been taken off sale. The information in this is different to the American press release. I think this news was meant to break on Monday and it didn't break until Wednesday. That will also answer the question of why it was announced that Eva was leaving the Great Gatsby last week. Because everyone had to, you know, conference with everyone else and this announcement would have, you know, indicated that she was leaving the Great Gatsby. So they probably had a word with the Great Gatsby team and said you need to announce that she's leaving, otherwise people are going to find out because of this. It's fascinating how the network of Broadway PR and marketing works. Anyway, according to the British press release, it says tickets for these performances will go on sale to the public on Friday 20th December at 12pm noon, but a 24 hour period of priority access. Listen to this. If you want tickets from 12pm to GMT or 7pm Eastern Standard Time on Thursday 19th December will be available to those who signed up to either the Hadestown UK or Hadestown US mailing lists by 11.59pm GMT or 6.59pm Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday 18th December. That's today. That's today. You have until the end of today to sign up to the Hadestown mailing list. You can do that@uk.hadestown.com or hadestown.com and that will get you priority access. They have been doing Rush tickets. I think initially it was lottery and then they change to Rush tickets here in the uk. There is no guarantee that they will continue to offer these throughout the four weeks that those stars are in the show. Because you know it's going to be popular. This is going to be popular. I would advise you to book ahead. We also don't know if all of those performances are going to be on sale because, again, because I was aware of this happening last week, we had a look and there were some performances that had been taken off sale. There was a random performance Tuesday night that was off sale and there was an entire week, I think, right at the end of February that had been taken off sale. Again, I think it's because those performances won't be regular performances. I think they'll have cameras. I think they will be invited audiences because they're filming the show. Now, in previous examples, like with six the Musical, they have done ballots and you can enter for the chance to be a part of that audience, which is obviously an incredibly special experience. I got to be in the audience for the taping of the second act of the SpongeBob musical. That was really fun. You can see me right at the start of the second act, actually, during the poor pirates scene. But with other shows like Frozen, it was strictly invitation only. Even though the Theatre Royal Drew Lane is huge, this was happening very much in secret, but not a very well kept secret. So because they haven't even announced that this is happening yet in Hadestown and this is all speculation, we have no idea how this is going to work. My suggestion would be, don't hold out. If you want to see these performers in the West End, get tickets now. So sign up for that priority booking and get those tickets. I promise, Hadestown aren't paying me to say that. It's just. It's just good advice. Now, there is a statement here from producer Mara Isaacs who said it is nothing short of Divine Magic to be able to welcome Reeve, Andre, Amber, Eva and Patrick back to London. I think with those schedules and with the demand on those performers, it probably is Divine Magic, actually. This transatlantic collaboration which began with the national theatre production in 2018. Gosh, was that 2018 is baked into Hadestown's DNA. We couldn't be more thrilled to bring them home as Hadestown continues its love affair with the West End. Oh, lovely. And there is on the American press release, a lovely picture of the five of them outside the National Theater back in 2018. It's very sweet. And everyone dressed like they're going to a completely different party afterwards. What else do we have here? We have a lot of information about the performers which I can share with you if you are curious, as well as information about the show. The fact that it's just celebrated its fifth anniversary on Broadway, the fact that they've just released a highlights album from the West End production, which was a live recording that they did on the final day, that the original West End cast were all in the show together, which is crazy. As well as a little note down at the bottom here that Reeve, Andre, Amber, Eva and Patrick are appearing with the support of Equity uk, incorporating the Variety Artistes Federation pursuant to an exchange program between American Equity and Equity uk. What this means is anytime you have British performers going over to on Broadway or Broadway performers coming over to work here, if they don't have some kind of dual citizenship, like Marisha Wallace, who has now become a British citizen, yay for her, then it's usually part of an Equity exchange program where they say, okay, if these five Americans are going to come over here, then five British performers get to go over and work on Broadway. It doesn't have to be at exactly the same time, but that's my understanding of how that works. So I'm curious what the swap would have been or whether there's something we're going to see coming up. I mean, the hills of California sent a bunch of British performers, performers to go and do that play on Broadway. And they aren't the only ones. Just like these aren't the only American performers currently appearing in the West End. Now, I don't think it's been confirmed necessarily if this is a full cast change and there's a lot of questions about who the ensemble are going to be during this time and also who's going to be playing the Fates. Because if they are filming it, which I'm still pretty sure they are, then these performers as the Fates are going to be the ones who do it for the Hadestown pro shot. And something interesting here is that all of these performers have American accents, right? And the West End production, when it opened, if you don't know, Hadestown, as we've gathered over time, allows performers to use their own accent in the role. So when the West End production opened, you had Melnila Barry portraying Hermes with a Trinidadian accent. You had Zachary James, an American performer, American accent, Gloria, a British accent, Donal Finn, Irish accent, Grace Hodgett Young Midlands, Northern British accent. You had this glorious and wonderful mixture of all of these different voices and backgrounds and cultures which made it, I've said this before, sound like this story of the world that didn't really belong to one specific place. But it's going to be a little interesting and perhaps even slightly jarring to hear five American principal performers and then the Fates with British accents. I mean, because they're so sung, you can tell that they're singing with a British accent. Certainly when I've seen the show in the West End, maybe they'll get told to do it American. I feel like that's happened for a pro shot filming before. It escapes me which example I'm specifically thinking of. But I mean something like Wicked. When British performers who have played Elphaba in the West End go over to Broadway, they have to then start doing an American accent. Carrie Ellis, Rachel Tucker, Lauren Samuels, currently on the US Tour, all play Elphaba with an American accent in North America just to make the show feel more cohesive. I would love it if the current Fates continued because I think they are brilliant. One of the original West End Fates, Madeleine Charlemagne, actually then subsequently became Eurydice and is currently playing Eurydice. So will they revert to the original West End fates for those five weeks? Will we get different fates? Will we get American fates? Will we get the National Theater fates back? I kind of doubt that that's going to happen for a whole handful of reasons, but I am curious about where we're going with this. Now let me give you. I usually do this at the start, but I wanted to get straight to this news. Let me give you a little bit of background and context. If you don't know what Hadestown is and you're starting to wonder why I care so much about any of this, so. Hadestown is a Tony Award winning folk musical created by singer songwriter Anais Mitchell, who wrote the score and the book. And it adapts Greek mythology, specifically the stories of Hades and Persephone as well as Orpheus and Eurydice, in order to tell a timeless and timely story about the world that we live in now, as well as the world that we dream about, the way that we would want the world to be and how we go on living every day knowing all of the struggles and the. The griefs and anxieties of the modern world. It's about that and also so much more. With Hadestown and Persephone's story in the rear view, it tells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and talks about a bunch of relevant themes. But what I really love about it, and what I think is a lovely way to summarize it, is Greek mythology came to be in order to explain phenomena that at the time couldn't be well understood. Why do the seasons seem to change? Why does the sky not fall down? It's for those reasons that those stories existed. The change of the seasons was explained by the relationship between Persephone and Hades. She would spend six months above ground where her mother, Demeter, would be thrilled that she was there. And then she would spend six months with Hades, underground, because he came and fell in love with her. Whatever. During those months that she was under in the underworld with Hades, her mother would weep for her. And this would cause winter and spring and the colder months of the year, which is a story for then. But we now live in a world that is different. A world that experiences climate change, a world that experiences a lot of dreadful things. And it's those new phenomena that Aeneas Mitchell is seeking an explanation for in Hadestown. And the answer to that is challenges in the relationship between Hades and Persephone. They've forgotten the extent of the love that they once knew. There is friction in their relationship. There is sorrow and regret and all sorts of complicated things. And that has caused a change in the world. Anyway, the music is fantastic. It sort of brings together Americana folk as well as, like, New Orleans jazz. And it has, for a whole handful of reasons, attained an extraordinary fan following, a large part of which was due to the fantastic performances of the original cast members. Let me tell you a little bit about each of them. So four out of five were Tony Award nominated for their performances in Hadestown. The one who wasn't was Reeve Carney, who had been seen previously as Peter Parker, Spider man in Turn off the Dark, the famously ill fated Broadway comic book musical adaptation. But he has a remarkable voice. He is also a musician. He has also been seen on screen. He was in Penny Dreadful. He was also in the film adaptation of the Tempest. I think opposite him, Eva Noblezada, who at that point was already well known to Broadway and West End audiences for having played the role of Kim in a huge revival of the musical Miss Saigon. She had also been seen in Les Miserables. She was also a Jimmy Awards winner or finalist. Do they say that here? I bet that's not still in her bio. It should be. No, no mention of the Jimmy Awards, of course. She is currently in the Great Gatsby on Broadway, where she originated the role of Daisy Buchanan. Then we have Patrick Page as Hades. He of the booming voice, he of the villainous Persona. He has recently been seen on stage with his solo show where he invokes many of Shakespeare's villains. He has been a veteran of 15 different Broadway shows, a handful of which are mentioned here. He has also been seen on screen and he will soon be heard on screen. He is voicing, I believe, the magic mirror in the upcoming live action Snow White Disney film. He was of course, in the second season of Schmigadoon, set in the world of Schmichargo, where again, he gave us a nefarious villain. He even played a gentrifying dry cleaner in the in the Heights movie. I love Patrick Page. I've only seen him the once in Hadestown in London because when I went back to see it on Broadway, he and Andre and Amber had already left the show. Reevan Eva was still in it. So I'm very excited to see and to hear him again. I've seen some great Hades'in my time, but no one manages to land those first lines and vocal deliveries with the same resonance and impact that Patrick did. Like that was such a moment with his first I missed you and the hey little Songbird. If you don't know, the role of Hades is profoundly low vocally and Patrick is this extraordinary bass, but it's this next performer I think I'm the most excited about getting the chance to see again again. I only saw her the once at the National. I'm talking about Amber Gray as Persephone, who was sensational in what I think is probably one of the best roles in the show. She is currently appearing on Broadway as well. She is in a play called Eureka Day which was previously seen here in London. That's at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. That finishes with just enough time for her to get on a plane over here and remember how to do Persephone in Hadestown and then do it in London for a month. She was also part of the extraordinary company who originated the roles in the Stephen Sondheim and David Ice musical Here we are at the Shed Off Broadway last year in New York. She was also in Natasha Pierre in the great Comet of 1812. We love Amber Gray. I believe she was developing the Daniel Fish version of Oklahoma as Laurie but chose to do Hadestown instead. And Damon, who had also been in both, chose to do Oklahoma. I'm pretty sure that was a thing. Finally, the cast member who won a Tony Award for their performance in the original cast of Hadestown, Andre De Shields recently seen in the UK at Musical Con where he was interviewed on the main stage by Shanae Holmes and where he put performed a couple of the songs of his career including From Hadestown. He is a Broadway and entertainment icon and legend. Multi award winner. He was seen in the Wiz, he was seen in the Full Monty. He was most recently seen Off Broadway downtown at the Perelman Performing Arts center playing the role of old Deuteronomy in Cats. The Jellicle Ball, the wild queer New York ballroom club scene focused reinterpretation of Angela Webber's Cats, which he was perfect for bringing his usual profound sort of a regal energy to it, which is also what he brings to Hadestown. Again. I'm very excited to see him reprise this performance as I am honestly for all of them. And people have mixed feelings about like who they would want to be in the pro shot. And we can all assemble like our dream Hadestown cast. And like I said, I love that thing that the original West End cast had with all of these different accents from all over the globe. But we have to pay respect to those performers who helped to create these characters. And even from the National Theatre over to Broadway, the show still underwent changes specifically around the framing and characterization of Orpheus as a character. I think Reeves performance was very different in the national compared to when I subsequently saw it at the Walt Occur on Broadway. And you know, without those performers putting in all of that developmental work and helping to build and shape and bring those characters to life, they wouldn't exist. And no one else would have the chance to follow that blueprint and reinterpret, which I think is always easier. It's easier to take over in a role than it is to build it from scratch. But anyway, that's the show. Those are the performers. This is definitely happening. It hasn't been confirmed if they're filming it, but I will be shocked if they're not. I think, listen, they're coming here for a month. It is not the best time of year, weather wise. It is not a time I would want to be in London for any other reason than to be a part of the pro shot of that show that I helped to build. And you know, it is probably right that those performers get to be in it. We have had other shows where subsequent casts end up being the ones in the pro shop because of timing, because of money, if you didn't know. It's easier and cheaper to film things in the UK than it is in the US because of union rights and a bunch of important things that create roadblocks and challenges, which is why you see so many things getting filmed in the uk. Like Disney seemed to film a lot more shows in the uk like Aladdin, which we're never going to see, and Frozen, which we hopefully will see very soon. Like spongebob, where again, they just flew the American cast over not to do a run of the show, but to just do private performances down in Plymouth to have it filmed for Nickelodeon that were kind of secret even then, not the entire original Broadway cast because not everyone was available. So it's, it's pretty miraculous that they've been able to get these Five to all be available at the same time. And even if they're not doing a pro shot, I'm very excited both for me to see it and for British audiences who didn't love Hadestown when it was at the national, who hadn't discovered it yet, yet who have since fallen in love with it, to have the chance to see the originals do it. I mean, that's so exciting for Hadestown fans and I expect that tickets will go pretty quickly. So take the advice. Sign up for priority access. Get your tickets on Thursday of this week, AKA tomorrow rather than Friday. And if we do find out that they're doing a pro shot, then I will be back here on YouTube to confirm that news and let you know as we find out more about that. As we've seen with other ones, like with Six the Musical, it can be a long, long wait before we find out how it's going to be distribute. I don't know whether, you know, Hadestown's a pretty popular show. Five years on Broadway, Tony Award win. You would hope that that is enough to get streaming platforms excited about it. But if six is having trouble getting someone to distribute the thing, then, you know, it does make me slightly anxious about the prospect of that for Hadestown, but keeping my fingers crossed and if they are doing film performances, that's the one I want to be in the audience of because I think that's a completely unique experience that I'd love to do again. Anyway, that has been today's breaking theatre news. Stay tuned for updates as well as more theatre themed content right here on YouTube. I hope that that's been informative. I hope that that has helped you get tickets. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section down below. Have you seen these performers in Hadestown before? Are you excited to see them again? Are you planning to see them again? Have you already got tickets and you have lucked into being a part of now, something very special. Let us know in the comments. In the meantime, thank you for watching this video. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have and a Stagey Day. For 10 more seconds. I'm Mickey Jo Theater. Oh my God. Hey, thanks for watching. Have a stagey day. Subscribe.