‘Hadestown’ Brings Broadway’s Underworld to the Big Screen: Original Cast Members and Creator Anaïs Mitchell on Reconvening for a Smashing Cinema Event
Popular on Variety On the eve of the film’s release, Variety talked with Mitchell, Sullivan and several of the five original Broadway cast members who...
Key points
- Popular on Variety On the eve of the film’s release, Variety talked with Mitchell, Sullivan and several of the five original Broadway cast members who reunited for the movie — Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, Patrick Page and De Shields — about why “Hadestown” seems to have found a permanent foothold in American culture and what went in to making this rendering such a surprisingly indelible cinematic experience.
- Says Mitchell, “In this film, there was a really beautiful collaboration between Rachel Chavkin (the stage director) and Brett from Steam Motion, who directed the film, and they did a lot of close work on the edits and figuring out how to present the story.
- There are enough shots where you’re seeing the stage in context of the audience, and seeing the beautiful theater, which is the Lyric Theatre on the West End.” Sullivan doesn’t shy completely away from offering long shots that incorporate the enthusiastic crowd, or even reaction shots, but mostly he stays locked into what’s happening on stage, so that it feels closer to a bona fide movie musical than something that sounds as reductionist as a “capture.” The five original Broadway principals — also including Amber Gray, as Persephone — got the old gang back together and went into the West End production five weeks before the film was shot in front of three live audiences.
- “There was a desire and an attempt to do this in the winter of 2022,” says Carney, “because Amber Gray, the first cast member to join the show, was about to leave the show, and so they were like, ‘This is our only chance to capture it with all of you guys.’ That didn’t end up working at that time, so we didn’t think it would ever happen.
What happened
Popular on Variety On the eve of the film’s release, Variety talked with Mitchell, Sullivan and several of the five original Broadway cast members who reunited for the movie — Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, Patrick Page and De Shields — about why “Hadestown” seems to have found a permanent foothold in American culture and what went in to making this rendering such a surprisingly indelible cinematic experience. Says Mitchell, “In this film, there was a really beautiful collaboration between Rachel Chavkin (the stage director) and Brett from Steam Motion, who directed the film, and they did a lot of close work on the edits and figuring out how to present the story. There are enough shots where you’re seeing the stage in context of the audience, and seeing the beautiful theater, which is the Lyric Theatre on the West End.” Sullivan doesn’t shy completely away from offering long shots that incorporate the enthusiastic crowd, or even reaction shots, but mostly he stays locked into what’s happening on stage, so that it feels closer to a bona fide movie musical than something that sounds as reductionist as a “capture.” The five original Broadway principals — also including Amber Gray, as...
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