The iconic not-quite Act I finale of Hadestown is musical theater at its finest: a perfect intersection of dozens of art forms that transcends them all.
Wait for What?
“Wait for Me” is probably the single song most associated with the musical Hadestown, thanks to a performance at the Tony Awards in 2019. And yes, 5.5 million viewers does not exactly constitute breaking through to the general public, but the fact Hadestown is still running today indicates that something about the show broke through, and the fact that “Wait for Me” has by far the most plays on the cast album on Spotify suggests that song had something to do with it. Winning eight Tony Awards also might have helped…
Regardless, “Wait for Me” is Hadestown, and musical theater in general, at its best. “Wait for Me” is an epic moment thanks to its narrative significance; music and orchestrations; direction; performances; and set, lighting, and sound design. For many audience members, the haunting song with the swinging lamps (and its incredible Act II reprise) forms the most lasting memory from the entire production.
Wait for Why
IMPORTANT: If you haven’t seen Hadestown in person, I would caution you against proceeding further here. If you might see it someday, hold off until you get a chance to1. This moment hits harder without spoilers ahead of time.
For this post, I’m going to focus most on the last couple minutes of “Wait for Me,” where Orpheus is confronted by the Fates and uses the song he’s been working on to get past them and finally enter Hadestown. This is really the climax of a 5-minute sequence including a prelude listed on the cast recording as a separate track. Speaking of the track, I’ve included timestamps from the cast recording throughout the analysis, which will hopefully make it easier to follow if you’re not as deeply familiar with the sequence as, cough, some of us are.
So why is “Wait for Me” so good? In short, it captures an important moment perfectly. And in long:
Narrative Significance
The moments in art that move us the most effectively leverage their form to make us feel something. “Wait for Me” arrives at the moment that Orpheus realizes that Eurydice, his love, has taken a deal to go to Hadestown (the underworld). The song represents Orpheus’s longing and his commitment to reunite with Eurydice. Hermes punctuates the beautiful melody of Orpheus’s longing with his rhythmically spoken narration that explicates the difficulty of what Orpheus is attempting to do by following Eurydice to the underworld.
Music
The music and lyrics by Anaïs Mitchell do a lot of the heavy lifting in this sequence. The chorus that starts with Orpheus and eventually grows to encompass the entire company is beautiful and haunting, not to mention one of the catchiest melodies in a show full of musical ingenuity. Melodies like this one pull us in and then stay with us. They anchor our memories of the moment.
Orchestrations
Deconstructing the orchestrations of Hadestown could fill their own post (which I would not be qualified to write), but for this one I’ll just say that Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose do incredible work in “Wait for Me.” The build from when Orpheus first sings his melody to the Fates into the full reveal of Hadestown is epic, and, to my amateur orchestration-fan ears, builds as follows (starting at 1:37):
- Simple, heartbeat-like, piano/bass vamp
- Violin arpeggios
- Ominous, deep trombone melody
- Cymbal roll to transition into the final section
And once again everything drops away to that initial pulse, and we focus on Orpheus’s voice, punctuated by hits from the full band. Finally we exit into the last instrumental section, largely built out of components established earlier and with a vibe I can only describe as chaotic (listen to those drum fills!). All of this grandeur is pulled away with a final button that indicates our arrival in Hadestown.
Direction
Rachel Chavkin takes on a lot of challenges in Hadestown, few more daunting than conveying the obstacles Orpheus faces on the way to the underworld in this sequence. Chavkin, in partnership with her designers, shows the journey as a sprint through the darkness, full of obstacles represented by swinging tungsten lamps and an ensemble we can barely see apart from their omnipresent headlamps. The choreographer, David Neumann, surely plays a part in the eerie motion of this sequence as well.
Performances
André de Shields gave an incredible performance as Hermes, and this moment (as well as “Wait for Me (Reprise)” in Act II) is a highlight of that performance. Here he settles into the narrator side of his role, the observer of Orpheus’s trek who can explain to us just how difficult it is.
Reeve Carney’s performance in Hadestown has proven divisive among musical theater fans. I’m personally a fan, and he’s at his best in this number, harnessing his unique voice and the heart-wrenching music to show us Orpheus’s love and desperation.
This runs up against the frankly spooky and beautiful harmonies of the Fates (Jewelle Blackman, Yvette Gonzalez-Nacer, and Kay Trinidad), who question Orpheus and stand in his way, starting around 1:16.
Set Design
The set by Rachel Hauck does a lot of work in this sequence, so I’ll start there on the design side. I’ll have to save a deeper discussion of how Hadestown leverages its turntables for another day, but needless to say the turntables feature heavily here, both as the ground passing beneath the feet of Orpheus and as a cinematic tool to focus our attention and pull our characters in and out of the darkness.2
In the moment when Orpheus finally reaches the underworld (the epic musical build described in the Orchestrations section), we see one of the most powerful set changes in musical theater history.3 Orpheus sings his song and seems to float center stage, the five lamps elevating alongside him. The static world our characters have occupied for the last hour literally breaks away, and the set (which we probably thought at this point wasn’t going anywhere) breaks into three massive pieces and pulls apart. Behind and all around the splintering scenery we see the walls of the underworld, stretching up beyond our view in the Broadway version, and brimming with audience blinders that punch through the haze.
Lighting Design
Lighting serves a lot of purposes in musical theater, but one of the most basic is that it tells us where to look. Bradley King provides a masterclass in harnessing that visual responsibility in the moment that we finally see Hadestown at the end of “Wait for Me.” As referenced in the Direction section above, Rachel Chavkin uses lack of visibility to convey the challenges Orpheus is facing throughout the number. Much of the action throughout is revealed to us by the workers’ headlamps and the practical swinging lamps themselves. But when we reach the Hadestown reveal moment, King transitions from a beautifully lit confrontation with the Fates (Orpheus seemingly lit by the workers’ headlamps and the three Fates appearing to float in the darkness upstage) to the destination we’ve been heading to.
We’re no longer in the tunnels or caves Orpheus has been traversing; we’re at the destination, at the place he longed to go. King reveals the scale of what Orpheus has done (and foreshadows that it may be difficult to get back out…) with blinders everywhere representing the mines, the fire, the power of Hades and his realm.
Sound Design
The sound design hits much differently in person than one can understand through the cast album. I can only describe it by saying that you feel the moment of transition to the underworld. Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz deliver a deep rumbling that feels like the trombone melody is ratting the earth and breaking it apart. It aligns perfectly with what we’re seeing onstage, and leads into the epic final moments of the number, when the hits from the orchestra are loud and powerful. You hear all the chaos described in the Orchestrations section, the syncopated drum hits, the arpeggios on the piano, all leading to the final button moment.
Musical theater is an art form in itself, but it’s really a combination of a lot of different art forms. A director brings together artists to tell a story and to ideally move audiences. Theater becomes magical when it harnesses the power of all these artistic disciplines to create something that transcends any of them individually. When a moment is so comprehensively realized that all the component pieces melt away, leaving only emotion and power.
“Wait for Me” in Hadestown excels as a theatrical moment, because every single creative category above (and more) work in tandem. Few moments in theater more completely transport an audience than Orpheus’s cry to the darkness for his lost love.
Postscript
Oft debated in the very exclusive musical theater nerd circles I frequent: should “Wait for Me” serve as the Act I finale of Hadestown? I just spent a lot of time describing how powerful “Wait for Me” is, so why make the audience wait another five minutes before they can freak out with their friends about what they just saw?
I don’t have a definitive answer to that question, but “Why We Build the Wall” (which, along with a brief outro, constitutes the actual Act I finale) is another effective musical theater moment in itself. It serves as a counterpoint to “Wait for Me.” Orpheus is romantic and passionate; Hades sees a world of commerce and threats to that commerce. Maybe the back to back presentation better sets up the conflict between Orpheus and Hades than separating the two pieces with an intermission.
- And if you want to get tickets right now, you could use my ticket-buying guide to help! ↩︎
- The turntables sadly did not make the trip to Radio City for the Tony Awards, and you can kind of feel the lack of them in that performance. That’s no criticism of anyone, the sequence was staged with turntables and had to be restaged without for a single performance. Only so much you can do. ↩︎
- There are probably better ones, but not many. The mirrors in A Chorus Line are pretty cool, as are the overture and title song sequences in Phantom of the Opera. I just really like this one too! ↩︎
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