"Is this how the world is?" wonders new teen musical

“If there’s nothing to be done, if it’s true that it’s too late…”

“Is this how the world is? To be beaten and betrayed and then told that nothing changes."

"It’ll always be like this."

"If it’s true what they say, I’ll be on my way.”

These phrases ring out in the auditorium of Decatur High School this week as the nation grapples with the results of what has felt to many to be the most divisive political election in the nation’s history. Whether in hope or despair, people continue to wonder what the next four years will bring.

Are we in for a long winter or is spring on the horizon? The drama that is playing out in Decatur High’s Performing Arts Center wrestles with the same questions but not in relation to the next American presidency and congress. Rather the dance between hope and despair is explored through an old tale about Orpheus and Hades. The former guided by love and the hope of human flourishing and the latter by power and the fear of economic scarcity.

For six shows from Wednesday, November 13 to Sunday, November 17, Decatur High School and Decatur Performs are presenting Hadestown: Teen Edition licensed by Concord Theatricals, directed by Raven Owen-Beyer with musical direction by Elise Eskew Sparks and set design by Chris Davis. Productions by this award-winning musical theater program sell out, so buying tickets in advance through decaturperforms.org is advised, but $15 and $20 tickets can also be purchased at the door if available.

Decatur High’s production is performed with live instrumentation and features two casts in alternating performances. The musical kicks off in an atmosphere thick with sweat and New Orleans jazz as an upright bass, guitar, violin, cello, piano and accordion blur the line between the Underworld and an underground club.

Orpheus, the mythical lyre player (played by Ashe Spears/Cole Kashdan) is reimagined with a guitar and a melodious folksinger’s voice. Eurydice (Connor Willingham/Sadie Miller) trills with a songbird’s soprano. The reverberating bass of Hades (Nathan Green/Joby Rogers) builds a wall of stony subjugation as he chants: “Why do we build a wall, my children?” before answering, “the wall keeps out the enemy” and “the enemy is poverty.” Hades’ stoicism can only be cracked by the fierce and flirty performance of his beloved Persephone (Elizabeth Netherton/Gabby Fenn). The quiet exuberance of Gavin Violante as Charon, Hades’conductor, fills out the range of human responses and ushers forth the choice individuals, whether god-like or groundling, have to make in life.

With the versatile vocals worthy of a divine messenger, Sasha Grow and Jack Marrah narrate the story as Hermes and guide the audience through this bittersweet tale. When doubt creeps in, thanks to the jazz trio of the three fates (Carnathan, Fishman, Daise or Davis, Cross, Didier-Sober), Hermes reminds us why we even bother with sad love songs and less-than-happy endings: “It’s an old song…It’s a sad song. It’s a tragedy. It’s a sad song, but we sing it anyway.”

How, why and when we sing the song determines the power of these plaintive pleas when all seems to be lost. The town of Hades is built on bad choices. Short-sighted decisions raise its walls and block out the sun. Our world may look a lot like this town, its foreman and its minions, but it doesn’t have to. Myths are not real unless in your heart you make them true. That is the stage where the struggle between love and power resist tragedy.

Hadestown: Teen Edition shines in this moment and in our community, because through its songs, its set and its staging, beauty emerges from what is broken. This drama is set between two worlds—on the precarious, scorched earth and inside the eternal furnace underneath it. Yet throughout the drama, this mythical world is aesthetically beautiful and dynamically vibrant in its costume, stage and lighting design (led by Sophie Levine-Tsang, Nora Casariego, Finn Pack, Willey Perrault). There is a dilapidated but classic beauty to the arched casement windows with panes painted to appear broken or the Doric columns that change from white to green to red depending on the place, mood or season of the scene. Darkness clings to the set like an ominous prophecy, but characters find their way with spotlights, backlights, lanterns, headlamps and swinging industrial pendants.

In black sequin pants, a silk paisley shirt and a moto-vest adorned with wing-shaped epaulettes, Hermes struts around the stage and conducts the action, introducing the ensemble as the “hardest working chorus in god’s almighty world.” This is both narratively and physically true. As the famished and impoverished citizens on earth’s surface they scavenge and dance for their lives, making a ballet out of boredom’s gestures and second-lining their sorrows into sweet oblivion. Their choreography (led by Sofia Satterfield and Ethan Klosky) is as versatile as their costumes and dynamic as the lighting design. As the mind-numbed miners of Hadestown, the chorus conforms in black jumpsuits, hides their eyes behind red headlamps then stomps, stacks and grunts on a chain gang. Though these nameless ones are often overlooked by the lead characters in this myth—their background existence, mere prop or parable—the sound of their collective voice holds a sway and a power over listeners that no single voice could harness.

In the end, Orpheus may “have put the world back in tune,” but it takes everyone playing their part and trying again to redeem what is lost and renew hope.

“We are all heroes not because we always succeed, but because we continue to try, especially when the odds seem stacked against us,” wrote director, Raven Owen-Beyer in her program note: “Many of the stories we hear every day are tragic and we can feel powerless in the wake of all that sadness. We must all work together and continue to strive to make our world better, because ‘maybe it will turn out this time.’”

The play which opens at 7pm on Wednesday, November 13 and runs through November 17 has evening performances Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2pm matinee performances on Saturday and Sunday. The run-time is about 2 hours with a 15-minute intermission when patrons are invited to partake of concessions and mocktails. Tickets are available at decaturperforms.org.

Decatur Performs is a 501(C) 3 non-profit that helps to foster a new generation of performing artists by providing exemplary choral, drama, tech and musical theater programs at Decatur High School and Beacon Hill Middle School.