Producers of Hadestown have confirmed the return of this multi award-winning new musical to the UK. Winner of 8 Tony® Awards including ‘Best Musical’ and a Grammy® Award for ‘Best Musical Theatre Album’, Hadestown will make its West End premiere at the Lyric Theatre from Saturday 10 February 2024. This announcement marks the show’s highly anticipated return to London five years after its sold out run at the National Theatre in 2018.
Hadestown features music, lyrics and book by acclaimed Grammy® winning singer-songwriter and BBC Radio 2 Folk Award-winner Anaïs Mitchell, who originated Hadestown as an indie theatre project and acclaimed album. Mitchell then transformed the show into a genre-defying new musical alongside artistic collaborator and Tony® Award-winning director Rachel Chavkin, whose theatre credits include Mission Drift (National Theatre) and American Clock (The Old Vic).
Hadestown takes you on an unforgettable journey to the underworld and back, intertwining two mythic love stories – that of young dreamers Orpheus and Eurydice, and that of King Hades and his wife Persephone. A deeply resonant and defiantly hopeful theatrical experience, Hadestown invites you to imagine how the world could be.
Blending modern American folk music with New Orleans-inspired jazz, the Original Broadway Cast Recording of Hadestown is one of the most streamed cast albums of all time with over 300 million streams to date. It won the Grammy Award® for ‘Best Musical Theatre Album’, topped Billboard’s Broadway Cast Recording chart and debuted at #8 on the Top Album chart.
Anaïs Mitchell said: “We’re all thrilled to be bringing Hadestown back to London! We truly loved our time at the National Theatre in 2018 and felt so welcomed by your city that it feels like a homecoming to be returning (to the West End)! I’m excited to work in and with the fantastic theatre community of London, and to share the newest version of our show, as there was a great deal of development pre-Broadway based on things we learned at the National! And it’s always a curious gift to witness how this epic myth vibrates differently in different places and times. That is, West End Hadestown will be its own world- born of London and the now- and we can’t wait to discover it.”
The Hadestown creative team features Tony Award winner Rachel Hauck (set design), four-time Tony Award nominee Michael Krass (costume design), two-time Tony Award winner Bradley King (lighting design), Tony Award winners Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz (sound design), Obie Award® winner and Chita Rivera Award® winner David Neumann (choreography), Liam Robinson (music direction and vocal arrangements), Tony Award winners Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose (arrangements and orchestrations), and Ken Cerniglia (dramaturgy).
Hadestown is produced in London by Mara Isaacs, Dale Franzen, Hunter Arnold, Tom Kirdahy and the National Theatre in association with JAS Theatricals. Casting to be announced.
Hadestown opened in 2016 at the New York Theatre Workshop before a production in Edmonton, Canada and a sold out run at the National Theatre in 2018. After further development, Hadestown premiered at Broadway’s Walter Kerr Theater, winning 8 Tony Awards including Best Musical. It now holds the record for the highest grossing musical and longest running show in the theatre’s 100-year history. The North American tour is celebrating its second year of sold-out performances with many return engagements also announced from July 2023.
Hadestown was developed with funding from the Eli and Edythe Broad Stage at the Santa Monica College Performing Arts Center and was further developed by The Ground Floor at Berkeley Repertory Theatre. Hadestown was co-conceived by Ben t. Matchstick.
Hadestown in the West End is supported by American Express, the National Theatre’s Preferred Card Partner.
