WAY DOWN HADESTOWN REPRISE
Fates
The deal is signed?
Eurydice
Yes
Fates
’Bout time
Get on the line
Eurydice
I did what I had to do
Fates
That’s what they did too
Hermes
Now, in Hadestown there was a lotta souls
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Hermes
Working on a wall with all their might
Workers
Huh! Kkh! Oh you gotta keep your head
Hermes
Ya see, they kept their heads down low
Workers
Huh! Kkh! If you wanna keep your head
Hermes
You couldn’t quite see their faces right . . .
But you could hear them singing
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Hermes
Swinging their hammers in the cold hard ground
You could hear the sound of the pick-axe ringing
Workers
Huh! Kkh! If you wanna keep your
Hermes
And they called it
Hermes & Workers
“Freedom”
Eurydice
(to Workers) I’m Eurydice
(to Fates) Doesn’t anybody hear me?
Fates
They can hear
But they don’t care
No one has a name down here
Mister Hades set you free
To work yourself into the ground
Free to spend eternity
In the factory
And the warehouse
Where the whistles scream
And the foremen shout
And you’re punchin’ in
And punchin’ in
And punchin’ in
And you can’t punch out
And you’re way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Low, oh, you gotta keep your head
Low, if you wanna keep your head
Oh, keep your head low
Eurydice
Why won’t anybody look at me?
Fates
They can look
But they don’t see
You see?
It’s easier that way
Your eyes will look like that someday
Down in the river of oblivion
You kissed your little life goodbye
And Hades laid his hands on ya
And gave ya everlasting life
And everlasting overtime
In the mine
In the mill
In the machinery
Your place on the assembly line
Replaces all your memories
Way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down Hadestown
Way down under the ground
Workers
Oh, keep your head, keep your head
Low, oh, you gotta keep your head
Low, if you wanna keep your head
Oh, keep your head low
Eurydice
What do you mean, I’ll look like that?
Fates
That’s what it looks like to forget
Eurydice
Forget what?
Fates
Who you are
And everything that came before
Eurydice
I have to go
Fates
Go where?
Eurydice
Go back
Fates
Oh—and where is that?
So—what was your name again?
You’ve already forgotten . . .
Hermes
Ya see, it’s like I said before
A lot can happen behind closed doors
Eurydice was a hungry young girl
But she wasn’t hungry anymore
What she was instead, was dead
Dead to the world anyway
Ya see, she went behind those doors
And signed her life away
Fates
Saw that wheel up in the sky
Heard the big bell tolling
A lot of souls have gotta die
To keep the rust belt rolling
A lot of spirits gotta break
To make the underworld go round
Way down Hadestown
Fates, Workers, Hermes
Way down under the ground
Notes on “Way Down Hadestown Reprise”
Workshops
The first workshop I did with Rachel was the “tough love” table-read in 2013. Mara was there, but we hadn’t yet linked up with NYTW. I was living in Vermont and had a tiny infant, so the whole family traveled to Manhattan and posted up at a Midtown hotel while we worked. We’d begun to identify missing plot points, and one of them was this: We needed to contextualize Eurydice’s rueful soliloquy “Flowers” by preceding it with an underworld “reality check” that revealed Hadestown for what it was. At first, I envisioned this dark news being delivered to Orpheus by the Fates in a loose reprise of “When the Chips Are Down” and “Gone, I’m Gone.” I shared this at the table-read; it was called “No One Now”:
Fates: Used to be a blushing bride / That was on the other side / Better to forget her face / Now she’s like the rest of us / One more number in a crowd / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now
Used to be a loving wife / That was in another life / Carve it on a marble stone / Now she’s like the rest of us / One more body in the ground / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now
Brother, don’t you think we all / Used to have a name to call? / A tale to tell as well as her? / Now she’s like the rest of us . . .
Maybe when she first arrived / So alive, so naive / All the bright lights in her eyes / All her insides fluttering (alt. Heart aflutter on her sleeve) / Maybe she was someone then / Back when Hades drew her in / Like a moth into his flame / Borne aloft on burning wings / Well, she ain’t the first and she ain’t the last / Hades’ fire is hot and fast / Just ask all the other girls / Sweeping up the ashes in the underworld / See even when the flame is new / She doesn’t hold a candle to / The woman Hades truly loves / So maybe she was someone once / But now she’s like the rest of us / All used up, all burned out / Maybe she was someone once / She ain’t no one now
The song was discarded—it was more “poetic portraiture,” which posed dramatic challenges, and musically it didn’t “swing”—but a lot of the language was recycled a year later when I wrote the first version of the “Way Down Hadestown Reprise.” I wrote it in preparation for a very different workshop: NYTW’s summer residency at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. This was an immersive two-week creative love affair in which a whole group of very game New Yorkers rehearsed all day and hung out all night, passing around guitars and whiskey and often continuing to rehearse for fun.
I was still trying to achieve a pre-“Flowers” reality check. I knew I wanted the music to be dark, but not slow; “Flowers” is a dreamy number, and to precede it with any kind of sluggishness made it fall flat. What I couldn�
�t figure out was who should deliver the song, and to whom! At first it was Hermes’s song, directed at Orpheus. Later it was the Workers’ song, describing their own circumstances. Finally it became the Fates’ song, directed at Eurydice, with the Workers chanting in descant beneath the choruses. At Dartmouth I was exploring an early version of Hermes’s verbal narration. The Hermes part was played by the brilliant Taylor Mac, and this was his advice to Orpheus:
Hermes: If you wanna get around down here in the tank / Down here in the clink / Down here in the hole / You got to think the way they think / Which is to say, your mind is blank / Which is to say, don’t think at all / Come / I’ll show you how it’s done:
Mister Hades set us free . . . / To work ourselves into the ground . . .
Later, he introduced the Workers:
Hermes: Welcome to the skeleton crew! / Welcome to the chain gang, kid / Lemme introduce you to / The members of the working dead / Old Jack Hammer! Mister Miner / Wandering forever in the catacombs / Working on a hole to China / Diggin’ up them dino bones / Way down . . .
Sweatshop Sally! Missus Miller! / Workin’ in the cellar where the sun don’t shine / Sad-eyed little Cinderella / Sweeping up the ashes of the summertime / Used to be one a the boss’s pets / Now she’s just another stiff / One night in the boss’s bed / And a lifetime on the graveyard shift / Way down . . .
Off-Broadway, Edmonton, & London
For NYTW, I cut many of those verses and gave the remaining ones to the Fates, who made them deliciously vicious. I also inserted a series of recitative exchanges between the Fates and Eurydice. This was something both Rachel and Ken had pushed for: an explicit, beat-by-beat realization on the part of Eurydice that she has made a terrible mistake. Ken described it in cartoon terms like this: “All right! / What? / No! / Oh, shit . . .” My first version of those exchanges leaned toward the abstract:
Eurydice: I’m free / We’re free / Mr. Hades set us free
Fates: Mister Hades set you free . . .
Eurydice: But I don’t understand / You said this was the promised land
Fates: You sell your soul, you get your due / That is all we promised you
Eurydice: But don’t you see? / It’s different with me
Fates: Different than who? / They thought they were different too!
Eurydice: There must be some mistake!
Fates: Oh, it was a mistake, alright / And now you got to pay / And pay / And pay for it / For the rest of your life
The following verse appeared only at NYTW. The song was overstaying its welcome, so I cut it:
Fates: Heard that mighty trumpet sound / Crossed the river to the other side / Thought you’d lay your burdens down / And rest in peace in paradise / But there ain’t no rest for your weary soul / Hades keeps you toiling / Shoveling coal in a big black hole / To keep his boiler boiling
Broadway
With the exception of the verse cut, this song didn’t change in Edmonton or London. During Broadway rehearsals, though, Rachel began flagging it again as a dramaturgical weak point. It was a place she felt we should be tackling head-on a question we’d heard many times over the years: “What is so bad about Hadestown?” In earlier versions of the show, Eurydice had come to the underworld under false pretenses—believing it was the lap of luxury, or that as Hades’s mistress she’d be under his protection. We’d now framed her as a tough, smart character making a clear-eyed choice. She’d come for a job, and she’d gotten that job. She’d willingly sold her body and / or soul in exchange for the security she craved, and now it was hers. For our tough heroine to be appalled by “hard work” was a disservice to her character. Returning to the mythology, I found that what had always frightened me most about the underworld was the idea of “forgetting.” The dead are made to drink of the waters of the River Lethe, which causes them to forget their former lives. This was the river of oblivion in “Way Down Hadestown Reprise.” Numbing and forgetting play a big part in “Flowers.” There was also an early cutting room floor version of “Wait for Me” in which the Fates “brainwashed” Eurydice! The first stanza went:
Fates: One (one, one) / You forget the sun
Eurydice: I forget the sun
Fates: You forget where you come from / You forget the sun
Eurydice: I forget the sun
Fates: Two (two, two) . . .
With that in mind, I took a baby step toward addressing the note, making one change in the Fates’ language. The line that once went: Running his old assembly line from Pluto to the Pleiades became: Your place on the assembly line replaces all your memories. It wasn’t enough for Rachel, who wished the whole scene felt more like “a horror film.” So I went further, adding the series of exchanges that culminates in the Fates’ So, what was your name again? / You’ve already forgotten . . . The rewriting of those interludes was the last thing I finished before we locked the show for Broadway.
FLOWERS
Eurydice
What I wanted was to fall asleep
Close my eyes and disappear
Like a petal on a stream
A feather on the air
Lily white and poppy red
I trembled when he laid me out
You won’t feel a thing, he said
When you go down
Nothing gonna wake you now
Dreams are sweet until they’re not
Men are kind until they aren’t
Flowers bloom until they rot
And fall apart
Is anybody listening?
I open my mouth and nothing comes out
Nothing
Nothing gonna wake me now
Flowers, I remember fields
Of flowers, soft beneath my heels
Walking in the sun
I remember someone
Someone by my side
Turned his face to mine
And then I turned away
Into the shade
You, the one I left behind
If you ever walk this way
Come and find me
Lying in the bed I made
Notes on “Flowers”
“Flowers” didn’t exist in the early Vermont productions, but there was a brief reprise of the long-lost “Everything Written” song that expressed Eurydice’s regret:
Eurydice: If it’s me—if it’s me you’re looking for / Orpheus, I can’t be with you anymore
Fates: She signed in blood / She signed for good
Eurydice: I signed before I understood / And I’d unsign it if I could / But it’s too late / They say that everything is written / Everything written in those stars / Even these lives we’re living / Even this love
Fates: Seven Sisters . . .
Eurydice never had a solo feature in Vermont, and I was determined to write one for the studio album. I’d started working, but was exceptionally stuck. At the same time, I’d commissioned my dear friend and brilliant artist Peter Nevins to create linoleum-cut portraits of the main characters as album art. Each character was portrayed with an object—Persephone had a raised cup, Hades held a bird—and usually we’d brainstorm the objects together. We hadn’t spoken at all about Eurydice when Peter showed me his portrait of her, eyes closed, holding a flower. “Why’d you give her a flower?” I asked. “I don’t know,” he said, “it felt right.” It was that image that sparked the lyrics of “Flowers,” and it was that image that ended up on the cover of the studio album, as well as tattooed on my right forearm. It was that image that became a visual touchstone for London and Broadway, both in the storytelling and in the marketing of the show. The flower kept revealing itself, as if by magic, and it was just as Peter said: “It felt right.”
COME HOME WITH ME REPRISE
Orpheus
Come home with me!
Eurydice
It’s you!
Orpheus
It’s me
Eurydice
Orpheus . . .
Orpheus
Eurydice
Eurydice
I called your name before—
Orpheus
I know
Eurydice
You heard?
Orpheus
No—Mister Hermes told me so
Whatever happened, I’m to blame
Working on a Song Page 11
