Last week I went through hell to get to Hadestown, a Tony award–winning Broadway musical at the National Theater. Hades is another name for Hell. I drove through hell to get to Hell.
By hell I mean the concrete four-lane “Greenway” roaring past sterile metal-and-glass boxes where farmlands and orchards once stood and cows grazed.
By hell I mean traffic—cars, cabs, buses, trucks, bikes, scooters, and skateboards zipping in and out of congested lanes while sirens blared. By hell I mean a parking garage stuffed with mechanical beasts forged by mechanized people. By hell I mean a line of people inching past security guards, outside and inside.
We reached our seats. Ah, safe, at last. The play began. First song: “Road to Hell.”
In the play, Hades is ruled by “the king of silver and gold, of coal and oil.” A lot of people work for him, toiling like mindless machines. It pays.
Never mind how they got there. They’re not tormented by fiends or flames. This is not Dante’s Christian hell. This is Homer’s Hades. (A river runs through it.) It’s more like suburbia or America itself—or Western Europe. It’s protected by a wall.
(No, it’s not that wall. This musical was composed in 2010, before that wall became a thing.)
What is the wall for, my children? sings Hades.
To keep us free! To keep our enemy out!
And who is our enemy?
Our enemy is poverty. We build the wall because we have and they do not.
And what do we have that they do not?
We have a wall to work upon. We have work and they have none. Our work is never done. And the war is never won. We build the wall to keep us free.
Never mind that everyone in hell has signed their life away and forgotten their name. Safety’s everything. Freedom!
And never mind that we paid good money to see this show between four walls and behind guarded doors. The poor of this city can’t get in.
Other than that, how did you like the play?
I loved it.
Orpheus entered Hadestown to lead his beloved Eurydice out. She will be free as long as Orpheus doesn’t look back at her.
It’s a tragedy. It’s a sad tale. It must be told again and again.
The End.
We drove back to Shepherdstown and pulled up the drawbridge.
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