Stories of how the world could be

Hadestown and why I need to sing the light at the end of the tunnel

I’ve been spending a lot more time than usual underground, both in my imagination and in reality. I went to see Hadestown, the critically acclaimed musical retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth with a score by Anaïs Mitchell [this post will contain spoilers for both]. Hades’s underworld, in this version, is a suitably hellish hole of industrial activity, powered by fossil fuel furnaces and the labour of the enslaved. Down into the tyrants kingdom, through a wall designed to keep out “the enemy of poverty”, comes Orpheus. He is a (maybe the archetypical) holy fool, the one innocent enough to believe that justice might be possible, love stronger than death.

“Orpheus was a poor boy

But he had a gift to give

He could make you see how the world could be

Inspite of the way that it is”

I was listening to the score the week after, on a canal holiday. Perhaps foolishly, this shadowy land was filling my ears and imagination at the moment when our boat entered a long tunnel.

When the captains of industry who built the canals in the 19th century came across an inconvenient hill they simply dug through it. Well, I say they. Poorly paid miners actually dug them, using pickaxes, shovels and gunpowder. Deaths and injuries were common, and at night they returned to wooden shanty towns hastily thrown up near the site. Once dug, the tunnels were too narrow for the shire horses which normally pulled the boats transporting coal, so men who could get no other work “legged” the boats through the tunnel. This meant walking sideways along the dripping walls while laying on a plank on the roof.

I love canal boat holidays (outdoorsy, slow pace, wholesome family time) but I do not love tunnels. Partly because I know all this brutal history, and partly because I’m claustrophobic. I got trapped in a lift in my teens and for a while would have debilitating panic attacks when hemmed in. I can manage it now, thanks to some CBT, but still have to concentrate on keeping my breathing steady and repeating my CBT mantra (“what an adventure!”) to myself. We’d taken this route because my son was obsessed with the idea of going through a tunnel in a boat, and I love him more than I am scared of small spaces.

As we nosed in, the wet green light of May was sucked backwards. I sat in the prow of my parents boat, gazing into the long dark. I’d avoided being with my kids, not wanting to infect them with my fear and spoil the excitement, so they were on the boat behind with my husband. What an adventure, I breathed. I watched our navigation light bounce and shatter, swallowed by the black liquid, and felt oily drips on my head. Diesel engines stink and the throbbing created a sort of low moan as it reverberated along the 2,000 metre tubular cave. The tunnel we were in is notorious not just for its length but for having a “kink” in it, not being straight enough to reliably see the light at the exit. Other boats going the opposite direction would appear as a dot of headlight far off, only looming fully into view after long minutes as they passed, or bumped our boat in the 4 metre wide space. What an adventure, I breathed, as the brick and stone walls warped the sounds from the boat behind. Was it laughter, or screaming? Had a child fallen overboard, disappeared into the coal-coloured depths? Could I reach them? Could I swim back through the slick water and find them? How could I see them, in this blackness? Underworld despair flooded up and my lungs clenched in on themselves and the tunnel went on forever, the black walls closing until…there. A cool green arch, floating, not far off. The end. What a bloody adventure, I laughed, but I could breathe again if I fixed my eyes on it. When we finally burst out into spring rain the drops falling from the leaves felt like confetti thrown on a couple emerging from church after a wedding. Then I burst into tears.

Hadestown follows, at least in part, a similar trajectory. We are story shaped creatures, and we bring to each new (or very old) tale all the stories we have heard before. It unfolds, at least initially, in expected steps: implacable enemy (Hades/Miss Trunchbull/Voldemort etc) meets innocent, admirable underdog (Orpheus/Matilda/Harry Potter), struggle ensues, oppressed people rise up, tyrant falls. Darkness to light. Home, away, home again.

This underdog who comes from nothing and helps people believe another world is possible is central, and exquisitely moving. Orpheus is writing

“a song to fix what’s wrong, take what’s broken, make it whole, a song so beautiful it brings the world back into tune”.

His innocence and hope come up against poverty, oppression, and the cynicism of his wider culture. His lover Eurydice, searching fruitlessly for food in the wind and cold is told by the fates that “people get mean when the chips are down”.

“And the first shall be first and the last shall be last

Cast your eyes to heaven and get a knife in your back”

When she compromises, accepts a ticket to Hadestown for the promise of food and safety, they sing

“Go ahead and lay the blame

Talk of virtue, talk of sin

Wouldn’t you have done the same

In her shoes”.

When she arrives, her fellow enslaved workers in the underworld sing “Nothing Changes”. Why bother hoping for justice, believing in freedom, they ask. Just keep your head down, here in the dark.

To rescue her, Orpheus must descend, his love for her stronger than his fear. He confronts Hades, the powerful king of shadows. Our hero arrives at a familiar narrative resting place: the dark night of the soul. The tunnel is too black, the tyrant too strong, injustice too immovable. And then, as in all the stories we love, he passes the kink and the cool green arch swims into view. Part way through “If it’s true”, he moves from “If it’s true what they say/if this is how the world is” to “it isn’t for the few/to tell the many what is true”.

And we’re off the to the races. We know what is coming and our storied souls rise up to meet it. The workers who have feared believing in a better world hear his song. They lift their heads. They see again the far off light of what is possible. It’s Do you Hear the People Sing in Les Miserables, The World Turned Upside Down in Hamilton, Revolting Children from Matilda. It is the song of teenage mother Mary, singing her Magnificat, about God pulling tyrants down from their thrones and lifting up the lowly.

Hope. The hope that justice is more than a sour tale to taunt us.

Hadestown is wonderful, partly because of the music, but mainly because it shows (as promised) what the world could be, inspite of what it is. It acknowledges the tunnel, but leads us out of it.

Except it doesn’t. Making his way up through the long dark, Orpheus starts to doubt the light. Sounds warp there, laughter and screams indistinguishable. The narrative takes us somewhere we are no longer very used to going, at least in stories: back down into the dark. And that is where it ends, with the tunnel closed off and the roof dripping.

Hadestown, as anyone who knows the myth will have guessed, is a tragedy. Even though I knew the ending, I found it almost physically painful. Like reading a romance novel which breaks its contract with the reader to deliver a Happy Ever After (known as HEA in the academic literature), I had emotional whiplash. Hadestown is trying to tell a story from one world in a radically different one. It sets our feet on a familiar narrative path: home, away….then lands us back in the bleak ethical landscape of Ancient Greece, unresolved. Far from home. Love is not stronger than death, there, and the tyrant wins.

I don’t know for sure if the great myth-patterns changed, after Christ. I am not a scholar of theatre history.

Martin Shaw

could probably tell me. It is just a hunch, a way too explain why Greek drama now feels so unrelentingly bleak. I do know that a story of an underdog outsider who sacrifices himself to defeat evil, to raise up the lowly, liberate the captives and and call bullshit on brute power (and, crucially, wins) is written deep into me. Into us. I think we might need it to be. The possibility that justice will be done, the last will be first, and every tear wiped from every eye seems a more sustaining story than Hadestown, brilliant as it is. Watching the play made me feel the pain, again, of living in this imperfect world, my rebellion against its ending a powerful cathartic experience in itself. The final song plays cleverly with the tension:

It’s a sad song

But we sing it anyway

But here’s the thing

To know how it ends

And still begin to sing it again

As if it might turn out this time

I learned that from a friend of mine.

It’s beautiful, in its sadness, but I’m glad it’s not the model for our stories anymore. In order to keep breathing, I need a light to fix my eyes on, here in the dark. What an adventure.

What else I’ve been up to

• This article came out in The Times about our intentional community.

• I’ve been doing lots of podcasts and interviews about the book, for example with The Holy Post, The Booking Club, Re-enchanting and The Examined Life.