“Hadestown” National Tour Brings The World Back Into Tune

Hadestown-morgan-siobhan-green-chibueze-ihuoma
PHOTO: Kevin Berne | South Pasadena News | Morgan Siobhan Green and Chibueze Ihuoma in Hadestown North American Tour.

In case you missed your chance to see the Tony Award winning Broadway show “Hadestown” during its run at the Ahmanson, you’re in luck. The extraordinary national tour is back in the southland playing at Segerstrom Center for the Arts through August 21, 2022. The show is so unique, having begun as a concept album by writer Anaïs Mitchell. She wrote one song and the story kept on coming until it eventually became a show on Broadway in 2019 that won 8 Tonys including Best Score and Best Musical. The music is indeed beautiful and in the hands of this stellar tour cast, it soars.

The story is familiar – based on Greek myths about the love between Orpheus and Eurydice and Hades and Persephone – but the telling of it is wholly new and visually stunning. It opens on what appears to be a smoky New Orleans speakeasy where our hero, the soft-spoken and touched by the gods, Orpheus, is working as a busboy. He is played with an earnest, wide-eyed wonder and a touched by the gods voice by Chibueze Ihuoma. He falls in love at first sight with the feisty Eurydice, played with a ferocious tenacity and killer pipes by Morgan Siobhan Green. The two have beautiful chemistry and their duets are highlights.

Hadestown North American Tour
PHOTO: Kevin Berne | South Pasadena News | The cast of Hadestown North American Tour.

Tony Award winner Levi Kreis is our sexy, soulful storyteller, Hermes, who poignantly delivers the explanation, “it’s a sad song, but we’re gonna sing it anyway.” We know how the story ends – it’s a tragedy. But oh the telling of it is so glorious that we still hope it will turn out differently.

- Advertisement -

Kimberly Marable is a fierce and fabulous Persephone and Kevyn Morrow is truly worth the price of admission with his buttery vocals and off the charts charisma as Hades.

The Fates, played by Belén Moyano, Bex Odorisio, and Shea Renne, deliver stratospheric harmonies and the strong ensemble features Jordan Bollwerk, Lindsey Hailes, Sydney Parra, Eddie Noel Rodríguez, Jamari Johnson Williams, and Marquis Wood. Swings for the tour include Tyla Collier, Ian Coulter-Buford, Alex Lugo, and J. Antonio Rodriguez. And the on stage band is smokin’!

PHOTO: Kevin Berne | South Pasadena News | Chibueze Ihuoma and Morgan Siobhan Green in Hadestown North American Tour.

The show celebrates, as Persephone says in her toast, “the world we dream about, and the one we live in now.” It’s an invitation to listen to, as Hermes tells us, a love song, a tragedy, that they sing to us again. Because beautiful stories are worth retelling and as Orpheus so optimistically tells us, spring will come again.

Hadestown plays through August 21, 2022 at Segerstrom Center for the Arts located at 600 Town Center Drive Costa Mesa, CA 92626. Tickets start at $28: (714) 556-2121 or visit SCFTA.org or in person at the box office.