Working on a Song

by Anaïs Mitchell

  I’d shortened the beginning of “Epic III,” but I remained obsessed with the idea of shortening the ending as well. I became fixated on switching to a three-versus-four-stanza version of the final acoustic section. This is what I came up with:

  Orpheus: I know how it is because he is like me / I know how it is to be left all alone / There’s a hole in his arms where the world used to be / When Persephone’s gone

  Hades is king of silver and gold / But inside he’s as lonely as anyone else / He has all of the riches his walls can hold / And in spite of it all, he’s a poor boy himself

  (Where is the treasure inside of your chest . . . ?)

  I loved it, with the exception of the second line Inside he’s as lonely as anyone else. I loved that it was a continuation of Orpheus taking his own experience of love and loss and making of it an empathic connection. I put the entire section in near the end of previews and I honestly couldn’t figure out if it was an improvement. In my heart I loved the brevity and simplicity of it, but many others (including Rachel, some producers, and what probably spoke loudest to me in that particular moment, Team Music) found it much less moving than the old section. In particular, the line He’s a poor boy himself didn’t quite make emotional sense to others. I countered that the line But what he doesn’t know is that what he’s defending / Is already gone had never quite made emotional sense to me!

  At this point we were fast approaching the lock date for Broadway. I’ll just say that I changed my mind many, many times, and kept hunting furiously for the one line that could “bring home” the new version. Here were some alternatives for the elusive second line:

  ~ With his back bent low from the weight of his wealth

  ~ He is filling a hole that can never be filled

  ~ And the river of stones and the road to hell / He has set us upon with his wealth and his walls . . .

  I was still hunting for the line when I climbed into Mara’s bed in the middle of the night. She woke up, and I went back to work while she, bless her, went to fetch melatonin (a natural sleep aid) for me from a twenty-four-hour pharmacy. It didn’t work. When the sky got light and I was still awake, I fled to Brooklyn and told Noah the whole situation. We decided that if for nothing else than the sake of my health, I should let it go. It wasn’t just the three-versus-four-stanza ending of “Epic III” that had to be let go. It was the show itself, and the work that had come to define a third of my life. I cried for hours, and then I fell asleep.

  EPIC III INSTRUMENTAL

  Hermes

  Orpheus was a poor boy

  But he had a gift to give

  This poor boy brought the world

  Back into tune, is what he did

  And Hades and Persephone

  They took each other’s hands

  And, brother, you know what they did?

  They danced . . .

  Notes on “Epic III Instrumental”

  From the earliest days in Vermont, there was an instrumental interlude during the joyful climax of the show called “Lover’s Desire.” It was a traditional Afghan folk tune that Michael Chorney discovered and arranged—a positively uplifting, run-on sentence of a melody, over a single drone chord. Our Vermont productions coincided with the early years of the American war in Afghanistan, which made this jubilant, human, musical expression from that country especially poignant. “Lover’s Desire” appeared on the studio record and in every pre-Broadway production. It was the reason for the old “Epic III” lines A lover’s desire is a mutiny / A lover’s desire is a wilderness. At one point I even attempted to set the melody to words; this was an early idea for an intro to “Wedding Song”:

  Orpheus: Lover, can you hear me? / I’m asking for your hand / Your hand for better or worse / Forever / Whether you’re sick or well / For rich or poorer, to have and to hold for as / Long as we both shall live

  Eurydice: Lover, can you hear me? / I’m asking for a hand / A hand that’s steady and strong / To lean on / To catch me if I fall / That’s the hand that I’ll have and I’ll hold for as / Long as we both shall live . . .

  Those lyrics never saw a production, but the “Lover’s Desire” instrumental remained. For NYTW I wrote a text intro for it, after which it was practically ordained that Hades and Persephone would dance:

  Hermes: And one song became two songs / And two songs became three / It ain’t so much that the kingdom fell / It just got swept off its feet / And Hades and Persephone / They took each other’s hands / And brother, you know what they did? They danced . . .

  That line And one song became two songs was meant to explain the fact that we were now segueing from the familiarity of “Epic III” into the never-before-heard melody of “Lover’s Desire.” We had Orpheus play the drone chord on his “lyre” (fun facts: in Vermont, Orpheus played a banjo; pre-Broadway, a tenor guitar; and on Broadway, a little arch-top electric). It was essential to me that we understand Orpheus to be directly responsible for the music, the dance, the reconciliation of the gods. But it never quite felt that way; Orpheus seemed to fade from the scene. I began to feel especially troubled by this in London, since I’d gone to great lengths to set up Orpheus’s “gift” as the return of the forgotten music of the gods. I couldn’t help but feel that the gods should be dancing to some version of “their” song. On top of that, our Act II–length woes made me wonder if the introduction of an entirely new musical theme in this moment was further adding to the perception of length. I wanted the dance to exist as an outro to “Epic III”—the final movement of one big number, rather than the beginning of a new one. Some mourned the loss of “Lover’s Desire,” which had undeniable magic. But the trade-off, for me, was the sense that Orpheus had really done what he set out to do. As Hermes puts it: This poor boy brought the world back into tune, is what he did.

  PROMISES

  Eurydice

  Orpheus . . .

  Orpheus

  Yes?

  Eurydice

  You finished it . . .

  Orpheus

  Yes

  Now what do I do?

  Eurydice

  You take me home with you

  Let’s go

  Let’s go right now

  Orpheus

  Okay, let’s go—how?

  Eurydice

  We’ll walk—you know the way

  We’ll just go back the way you came

  Orpheus

  It’s a long road—it’s a long walk

  Back into the cold and dark

  Are you sure you want to go?

  Eurydice

  Take me home

  Orpheus

  I have no ring for your finger

  I have no banquet table to lay

  I have no bed of feathers

  Whatever promises I made

  I can’t promise you fair sky above

  Can’t promise you kind road below

  But I’ll walk beside you, love

  Any way the wind blows

  Eurydice

  I don’t need gold, don’t need silver

  Just bread when I’m hungry, fire when I’m cold

  I don’t need a ring for my finger

  Just need a steady hand to hold

  Don’t promise me fair sky above

  Don’t promise me kind road below

  Just walk beside me, love

  Any way the wind blows

  Orpheus (indicating Hades)

  What about him?

  Eurydice

  He’ll let us go

  Look at him—he can’t say no

  Orpheus (indicating Workers)

  What about them?

  Eurydice

&
nbsp; We’ll show the way

  If we can do it, so can they

  Eurydice & Orpheus

  I don’t know where this road will end

  But I’ll walk it with you hand in hand

  I can’t promise you fair sky above

  Can’t promise you kind road below

  But I’ll walk beside you, love

  Any way the wind blows

  Orpheus

  And do you let me walk with you?

  Eurydice

  I do

  Orpheus

  I do

  Orpheus & Eurydice

  I do

  Eurydice

  And keep on walking come what will?

  Orpheus

  I will

  Eurydice

  I will

  Orpheus, Eurydice, Workers

  We will

  Notes on “Promises”

  Off-Broadway

  When I began working with Rachel, one of the missing story beats we identified was a moment of reckoning and reconciliation for the young lovers in the underworld. This was before I’d written “Come Home with Me Reprise,” so there was essentially no moment of togetherness or communication between them until they were preparing for their final walk. I sat down to imagine what the lovers might say to each other, and came out with this early intro to the song called “Promises”—an intro that only appeared off-Broadway:

  Eurydice: Promises you made to me / You said the rivers and the trees / Would fill our pockets and our plates / Promises you made

  You said the birds would blanket us / You said the world was generous / And wouldn’t turn its back on us

  The river froze, the trees were bare / And all the birds, they disappeared / And so, me too—I flew away / From promises you made

  To which Orpheus replied:

  Orpheus: Promises you made to me / You said that you would stay with me / Whatever weather came our way / Promises you made

  And we would walk side by side / Through all the seasons of our lives / ’Neath any sky / Down any road / Any way the wind blows . . .

  Then we launched into the body of the song, which always felt to me like a romantic Irish ballad. The verses have remained unchanged for years, with two tiny exceptions. The initial lines I wrote for Eurydice were: I don’t need gold, don’t need silver / Just keep me warm in your arms when I’m cold but others flagged this as schmaltzily dismissive of the real physical needs that Orpheus had failed to meet aboveground. Similarly, her outro line And keep on walking come what will was originally And try and catch me if I fall, which brought tears to my eyes but painted her again as a bit of a weakling, not what we wanted for our tough heroine.

  I’d always intended for “Promises” to come after Epic “III,” as it does in the Broadway version. But there came a moment at NYTW when the tide turned against the song in that spot. There was a sense of frustration with Eurydice, because Orpheus had just done this impossible thing, and here she was complaining about promises he hadn’t kept. In NYTW previews, we moved the song to the spot after “His Kiss, the Riot,” which meant that Hades had already set the terms of their release and the lovers were reckoning and reconciling in anticipation of the walk ahead. Since they now understood that they wouldn’t be walking side by side, I changed the chorus from But I’ll walk beside you, love to But I’ll walk with you, my love. To make the transition work, I wrote this last-minute “intro to the intro” of “Promises”:

  Hermes: Here’s what Mister Hades said: He said he’d let you go

  Orpheus: He did?

  Eurydice: He did?

  Hermes: He did . . . There’s one thing, though / You have to walk

  Orpheus: We can walk / We can walk, I know the way

  Eurydice: You do?

  Orpheus: That’s how I got here / We’ll go back the way I came

  Hermes: Alright, alright, but here’s the thing / It ain’t easy walking, jack / He said you have to walk in front / And she has to walk in back / And if you turn to look at her, to make sure she’s coming too / Then she goes back to Hadestown, and ain’t nothing you can do / You’ll have to trust each other / You’ll have to have no doubt / So if y’all got something to say to each other / Say it now . . .

  Orpheus: Eurydice . . .

  Eurydice: Orpheus . . .

  Orpheus: I know the way / I promise

  (Eurydice: Promises you made to me . . .)

  The situation was similar to the “Any Way the Wind Blows” crisis off-Broadway. I didn’t feel right about moving the song, which I’d intended for another spot, but it was either that or cut the song in its entirety, which would have left a gaping hole in the story of our young lovers. It was another rethink I didn’t have time for until Edmonton.

  Edmonton

  As soon as we started planning for the Citadel production, I put the song back in the old spot, and tried to figure out a way for it to earn its keep. The Promises you made to me intro that had sparked the whole number had to go, as much as I loved the parallel imagery with “Wedding Song.” We needed Eurydice fully on board with Orpheus—in fact, I became enthusiastic about the idea of Eurydice, rather than Orpheus, instigating their escape. I’m embarrassed by the Edmonton version of the intro scene, but here it is:

  Eurydice: Take me home

  Orpheus: Are you sure? / It’s in the middle of nowhere

  Eurydice: Spring is coming

  Orpheus: Who says?

  Eurydice: You / Everything you said was true

  Orpheus: Not everything . . . / I said the wind would never change / But I can’t promise that it won’t

  Eurydice: Then don’t / Just take me home

  (Orpheus: I have no ring for your finger . . .)

  In the Edmonton interlude, the roles were reversed:

  Orpheus: Let’s go—let’s go right now

  Eurydice: Okay, let’s go—How?

  Orpheus: We’ll walk—I know the way / We’ll just go back the way I came

  Eurydice: What about him?

  Orpheus: He’ll let us go / Look at him / He can’t say no

  Eurydice: And if he does?

  Orpheus: He won’t / I’m not going back alone

  London & Broadway

  For London, I made Eurydice the instigator of both intro and interlude, and added that gesture toward the Workers: What about them? This was something Rachel had always craved: some way to tie this moment of romantic commitment to a broader societal commitment. For Broadway, I went full circle and brought the It isn’t finished yet motif to a close with Eurydice’s You finished it! I had no idea that Orpheus’s Now what do I do? would be funny. That’s how it is with me and humor—often a joke I think will land never does, and a line written in seriousness turns out to be hilarious.

  WORD TO THE WISE

  Hermes

  And so the poor boy asked the king

  Orpheus

  Can we go?

  Hermes

  And this is how he answered him

  Hades

  I don’t know

  Fates

  Gotta think quick

  Gotta save face

  Caught ’tween a rock and a hard place

  What you gonna do?

  What you gonna do?

  What you gonna do?

  What you gonna do now?

  If you tell ’em no, oh, you’re a heartless man

  And you’re gonna have a martyr on your hands

  If you let ’em go, oh, you’re a spineless king

  And you’re never gonna get ’em in line again

  Damned if you don’t

  Damned if you do

>   Whole damn-nation’s watching you

  What you gonna do?

  What you gonna do?

  What you gonna do?

  What you gonna do now?

  Here’s a little tip

  Word to the wise

  Here’s a little snippet of advice

  Men are fools

  Men are frail

  Give them the rope and they’ll hang themselves

  Notes on “Word to the Wise”

  I wrote “Word to the Wise” for a workshop in advance of NYTW in hopes of inserting some up-tempo levity into Act II. It was a satisfying turning-of-the-tables for the Fates to plague Hades the same way they’d plagued Eurydice throughout the show. And it gave Hades a lot to chew on in “His Kiss, the Riot.” Early workshop versions had this extra verse:

  Fates: Hey / Hey / Hey / It’s judgment day! / Are you gonna let ’em just walk away? / What you gonna do . . . ?

  There was something about that Are you gonna let ’em just walk away? that reminded me of the Spice Girls’ I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want and I remember asking our workshop Fates to go full-Spice with it. The result was hilarious and terrible; I recanted right away. Ultimately, I cut the verse to keep Act II moving.