The whole great thing about Hadestown is the lack of worldbuilding -- the "world" being "built" is that these are supposed to be Depression-era wandering troubadours coming up with this shit based on half-remembered Greek myths -- but I still can't help myself
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(STYX and LETHE are the intelligence services STYX patrols Hadestown's borders, monitors external PR, makes sure that Hadestown remains a dark cipher to the World Above LETHE does brainwashing/propaganda, they run the radio station Hades broadcasts "Why We Build the Wall" from)
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And so "Wait for Me (Reprise)" is a mass general strike Everything in Hadestown stops The miners in Sisyphus lay down their tools, the Ixion turbines shut down one by one as their operators abandon their posts, all the lights flicker out and the motors run silent
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The Cerberus officers throw down their weapons in solidarity (This part is close to canon, the script refers to the Workers' chorus as "Cerberus" in "Why We Build the Wall" and Hermes refers to "the dog inside your head" as they begin singing in "Wait for Me (Reprise)")
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The CRTs and speakers stop blaring the constant advertisements and propaganda Everything is shut down except for the barebones infrastructure necessary to show everyone the only thing they want to see -- Orpheus and Eurydice's journey back to the surface
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Amber Gray said in an interview about the show that she considers herself a lifelong civil rights activist and the frustration of the ending is how she feels about activism Three steps forward, two-and-a-half steps back Orpheus always turns around at the last minute
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But every time he gets *closer* Just before the moment the song stops, and Eurydice's shocked face vanishes into the darkness And everyone sighs, surrenders, goes back to their work stations as the cops put their badges back on and the lights turn back on
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Like another famous Greek's obsessive musings We never actually get there, to the world where the cops and the laws and the toil and the suffering ends We cross half the remaining distance, then half of the remainder of that, then half again of that
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12.5% of the way left, then 6.25%, then 3.125% Every new Orpheus goes through the same epic journey the last one did, and seems to get EVEN CLOSER to the mountaintop, before hitting the point where he fails
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I'm not even that old, but I feel like the end of history, the end of the world, has been happening all my life This massive rattling rickety system keeps on seeming like it's about to collapse under the weight of its contradictions then rallying for another go-round
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The turbines shudder and groan back into motion, all the addicts suddenly remember they need today's hit of their addiction of choice, work calls you back to shift another load of stone onto the next layer of the Wall Cerberus jerks awake and tenses and growls
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The show -- especially the song "Why We Build the Wall" -- but the whole thing really -- so perfectly captures this 21st-century zeitgeist of this system so huge and so awful and so byzantine it simultaneously seems impossible that it hasn't died yet and that it ever could die
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(And, okay, I gotta hand it to them, the big spectacle where the whole set "falls apart" and rapidly converts from the train station set to the Hadestown is money well spent, it makes this point visually very well)
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End of conversation
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