OVERVIEW
Dark times of cold and hunger open Mitchell’s sung-through Hadestown: The Musical, scored in folk and New Orleans jazz and recorded across three performances at London’s Lyric Theatre. Orpheus (Reeve Carney), a son of a muse, believes the song he is composing, based on a melody he has always known, can put the seasons back in order. His wife Eurydice (Eva Noblezada), unable to face another day of hunger, signs her name to the underground factory Hades (Patrick Page) runs in exchange for food and shelter. Inconsolable and determined, Orpheus goes down after her, and Hades agrees to let her go on one condition: he walks out in front and never turns to check that she is following.
BACKGROUND
After a long development path that began as a DIY community theatre project, became a Grammy-nominated concept album and a concert tour, the unique take on the Greek tragedy by folk singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell reached the Walter Kerr Theatre in 2019. Brought to the stage by one of Broadway’s most unconventional directors, Rachel Chavkin, the musical won eight of its fourteen Tony nominations and has been playing to almost full houses ever since, now in its seventh year.
You would think a recording of a musical this successful would help the struggling theatre world, but producers fear the capture eats the ticket sales, which, combined with high residual costs, keeps the Hamilton treatment rare. Musicals seldom travel beyond their own country, so only a privileged few ever get to experience them (I was lucky to be one of them), and most people in the world will never see the cast that originated these characters, or the show at all. The five reunited for a five-week limited engagement in the West End, where the number of shows filmed grows every year. One of the central names in that growth is Brett Sullivan, whose Billy Elliot the Musical Live was the first live event cinema release to top the UK box office, and who has three more captures arriving in 2026 alone, for Netflix, Universal, and Disney+.
THE REVIEW
Before getting into how it works as a pro-shot (spoiler alert: exquisitely, and unreasonably cinematic), I should say that Hadestown has always been a musical I admired and appreciated more than I loved. There is a lot to like, from the character and costume design that makes each figure iconic to the unexpectedly funny jokes to the unforgettable gut-wrenching conclusion. The song compositions are intelligent, with lyrics that can be studied for their subtleties and internal rhymes, and masterful melodic foreshadowing. The song Orpheus is composing grows and evolves with the young man’s experience of the world, until he is finally able to connect all its pieces in “Epic III,” where the impact is undeniable. The grim and hopeless view of the world is embodied in the theme first introduced in “Any Way the Wind Blows,” which keeps returning to haunt the characters as its lyrics keep proving true. The show also makes bold changes to a few of its characters, adding complexity while sharpening the themes of the original myth, especially the forces that drive Eurydice to the underworld. And above all, Rachel Chavkin’s staging is environmental in the way her Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 was, trusting the audience to choose where to look, so no two viewings catch the same show.
The set is close to minimalist, a turntable, a band visible onstage, a workers’ chorus in continuous motion, and the effect is often spellbinding. If you find yourself in New York, it belongs on the must-see list, yet strangely, it never quite reached my heart. This is a work that begs to be revisited to be fully understood, and I never felt compelled to go back, partly because I am not big on folk and the mid-tempo groove becomes repetitive and indistinguishable to my ear after a while, but mostly because I was never pulled into the emotions that should sit at the core of the story. The romance between Orpheus and Eurydice, and their sleep-inducing “All I’ve Ever Known,” always kept me at arm’s length.
That song is still a bore, but in every other area, Hadestown: The Musical improves the experience with some of the best cinematography and editing choices ever made in a pro-shot, narrowing the focus onto the characters and onto the five performances that ground them. Contrary to what happened in Merrily We Roll Along, the background set and performers are used to fill the world, making it feel far greater than the small stage suggests. Extreme close-ups are thankfully avoided, and instead we gain points of view that are impossible to get from any seat in the house. We ride down with Persephone into Hadestown, or watch the world shrink from where Hades sits above it. Elsewhere, the camera pushes back to place Eurydice in deeper isolation from Orpheus, and later to show the hardship of his journey after her.
Where Sullivan gets it right is the balancing act between a live performance and a film. We see the audience and the stage’s limits. Yet the opening, which follows Hermes from backstage, as he gets into character, until he finally addresses the house and begins the story, takes the viewer inside that world in a way the stage never managed for me. There is constant intentionality in the camera blocking, including a moment in which Orpheus is made small simply by sharing a frame with Hades. Not since Ingmar Bergman rebuilt a theatre stage inside a film studio for his 1975 The Magic Flute has filmed theatre been this determined to adapt to the new medium rather than record what was already there.
The performances gain real life in the translation, sounding considerably more raw and powerful than they do on the cast recording. Reeve Carney’s Orpheus is unworldly and unguarded, and you understand completely when Hermes says he is unlike anything Eurydice has seen. The awkwardness he brings to the role, as if the actor himself were afraid to perform, adds a dimension in which the character seems to be fighting his own predetermined fate, a dynamic that pays off enormously late in Act Two. Noblezada’s pain is as powerful here as it was on stage, and it was her performance that stayed with me when I saw it live. The way her voice breaks on “it’s me” is heartbreaking. The whole “Wait for Me (Reprise)” sequence through to the ending is perfection, both leads at their finest in some of the most gorgeous shots in the film. I watched it holding my breath.
Yet it is the supporting trio that benefits most from this approach. Amber Gray’s Persephone finds the balance between broad and completely authentic, while Patrick Page, cane in hand, is as menacing and as broken as ever. Their marriage is the hidden heart of Hadestown, and the two convince us as a couple whose love has curdled into resentment. But the performance that makes Hadestown, and that may be the reason I did not connect with it the first time, is André De Shields, who had already left the production when I saw the show. The veteran has the energy to pour life into even the darkest and slowest scenes, and the subtlety of his work, the small pauses, the regretful looks, is what makes the film. You know how the story ends, and as he keeps singing it anyway, hoping it will turn out different, you start to believe that this time, for once, it might.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Hadestown: The Musical is a landmark in the pro-shot form, with Brett Sullivan’s ambitious direction never satisfied with merely capturing the show and making it accessible, always seeking ways to use cinematic language to add depth to the story. What changed for me was distance. Chavkin’s staging hands the audience the freedom to choose where to look, which is a gift in the theatre and a problem for a story whose emotions live in faces I was sitting forty feet away from. Sullivan takes that choice away and makes it himself, and by doing so, he finally puts me in the room with these characters. I was pulled into the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, engaged as each character made their comprehensible but ruinous choice.
In the past, I would not have included pro-shots on my ranking of the year, finding it hard to compare a film with a capture of something already recognized long before. Sullivan’s work proves that I was wrong, and Hadestown rightfully belongs among the best films of 2026.