Patrick Page Talks Atypical Villainy and More in HADESTOWN at Citadel Theatre

By: Oct. 26, 2017
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More than a decade ago, folk singer/songwriter Anais Mitchell wrote the concept album Hadestown based on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. After various reincarnations, Mitchell teamed up with Tony award-nominated director Rachel Chavkin to develop a Hadestown musical for the stage. After a very successful workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 2016, Mitchell, Chavkin, and a team of producers brought the musical to the Citadel Theatre to revamp it for a larger stage and a possible Broadway run.

Broadway star Patrick Page, known for his roles in shows such as The Lion King and Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark, has been with the production since it was at the workshop stage. Page played Hades in the New York Theatre Workshop production Off-Broadway, and is continuing in the role here at the Citadel.

Below, the acclaimed actor spoke with Citadel Theatre's Sydnee Bryant about how he pursued the role and why Hades isn't a typical villain.

Citadel Theatre: When did you first become involved with Hadestown?

Patrick Page: I saw an ad in one of the trades that they were doing a workshop when it was Off- Broadway. I called my agent, which I rarely do, and said, 'hey, this role sounds really interesting. Can you ask them if they are interested in having me do it?' so he did and they said they were interested. It was really a case of me hunting it down. I heard the album and I fell in love with the concept album that Anai?s Mitchell had released. I thought it was unlike anything I had ever heard. I was into Greek mythology and folk music. Also, they were looking for a true bass, which isn't very frequent in musical theatre - almost never. I was like, 'maybe this will be fun,' and it has been.

CT: What's it been like being a part of Hadestown's journey from New York to Edmonton?

PP: Every time we've done the show - I think now I've done three workshops and the Off-Broadway production - and, each time, the creative team has made really interesting and good changes to make it clearer and more moving. For me, watching that process, being a part of it, and yet the piece has maintained its mystery, which it has to have. Anais keeps saying, 'let's not lose the fact that it's a poem.' It's not a prose piece. It's written in verse. The whole thing is in verse. Most of it is sung-through. Those parts that are spoken are rhymed couplets. So trying to keep that shape, that mystery, and that form, that romantic form of kind of a sung-through ballad, like an old balladeer would do centuries ago, it's been wonderful watching them create that, hold onto that form and yet get more and more narrative clarity in terms of the characters' motivations.

CT: Is it easier or harder to do a show that is mostly sung through and has all of the couplets instead of regular dialogue? Do you find a big difference?

PP: I don't. I think the work is usually kind of the same. But, having said that, we were all the time working to find out: what is the nature of this piece? It started out in concert form. How much is it a concert? How much is it a sung-through musical? It's gone on a long journey to become more and more a narrative musical on stage. When we did it in New York, for example, for many of the songs we still had hand-held mics because it was still keeping that element of the concert in it. We don't have that this time, except in a couple of places. It's sort of always been lifting it out of the concert world and into a world where the audience could lose themselves in the characters that's maybe a little less distanced from them.

CT: I've seen Hades called a villain and everything from seductive and suave to deliciously sinister. How would you characterize him?

PP: He's a capitalist and he's a husband - those are the two main things about him. He believes absolutely in making money, in providing work. He believes he is benevolent, in the sense that he gives work to these people that otherwise would be hungry. For that, they sacrifice a good deal of their lives - in fact, all of their lives. He's a husband to Persephone and is trying to hold that marriage together, trying to find his way back to the love that they once had. He is god of the Underworld, so some of the affect of him some might find intimidating or frightening. The Greeks didn't like to use the word Hades - they had all sorts of nicknames for him because they thought, 'I don't want to invite him.' And the myth goes that when the three brothers Zeus, Neptune, and Hades drew lots for who was going to get which parts of the sea, the heavens and the Underworld, Zeus got the best straw, Neptune got the second best, and Hades drew the short straw. But I think he's got a bit of a chip on his shoulder about that. After all, Zeus and Neptune only get to be with human beings 60, 70, 80 years - I get them forever (laughs).

CT: You've played some iconic villains before - Scar in The Lion King, the Grinch in How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Iago in Othello. How does Hades compare? What is it about playing villains that appeals to you?

PP: Acting is really about wanting something and trying to get it. That's what we go to a play to see. Hamlet wants to figure out what to do; he wants revenge but he doesn't know if it's the right thing. He's got a bunch of tests and obstacles and we watch him try to get to that point where he can finally get that revenge. That's what theatre - what acting is - in every case. Villains want something very badly and they're willing to break all the rules of society in order to get what they want. That lack of scruples is really fun to play because, of course, in life we have scruples. It's also fun to watch because the audience has scruples and wouldn't it be delightful if I could just act that way just once or twice?

But Hades is a bit different than some of those other characters because, although virtually all villains are convinced that they're doing the right thing - that the rest of the people are wrong - Hades actually has a real case to make. I mean, he is providing food and shelter for his workers. He is trying to get his marriage back together. Eurydice came to him of her own free will; he didn't drag her down there. And now this boy comes and tries to take her away. It's very easy for me to justify Hades' behaviour.

CT: And, like you said: he drew the short straw. That's how he ended up where he is. It wasn't his first choice.

PP: Someone has to rule this kingdom, and I'm ruling it. If I let Orpheus win, I have forever damaged my authority and my credibility.

CT: Director Rachel Chavkin once said that Hades "operates from a place of fragility and fear." How do you incorporate that into your performance of a character that is supposed to intimidate others?

PP: I think damaged people are the people who hurt other people. Healthy, whole people don't hurt other people. A villain - and again, I would question whether or not Hades is a villain - but an overlord like Hades is someone who is damaged. He's got a hole inside of him that nothing will fill up. He needs more and more and more. I have a lot of sympathy, a lot of empathy, for that, with someone who wasn't loved enough by his father, who was competitive with his brothers and who got the short end of the stick. I think it does come from a place of fragility, a place of hurt. And that makes him easier to play.

CT: And his wife wants to leave him for six months out of the year!

PP: That's right. It's a really tough relationship that he's gotten himself into.

CT: I read that you do intense research for all of your roles, such as when you read up on psychopaths for your role as Iago. What kind of research have you done for playing Hades?

PP: Hades is a mythical character, so obviously you study the myth - and there are many, many different versions of it - to see what's there and what's useful. I do a little actor trick I call "As If." It's "as if' this in my life, so then I personalize what I find in the research. For example, reading Ayn Rand is useful for Hades, to really get in the mind of someone who's made a philosophy out of selfishness. I read a couple biographies of Donald Trump to try to get into the mind of someone who seems so lacking in empathy and so unable to yield in any way, no matter how wrong he is - he cannot apologize, he cannot admit it.

There's a wonderful line that Anai?s wrote: "Give them an inch and they'll take it all. Show them a crack and they'll tear down the wall." That's Hades philosophy; that if I show the slightest weakness in any way, this whole thing is going to come crumbling down. And you see that in Trump - this incredible fragility, this kind of caricature of masculinity that comes from someone who doesn't feel masculine himself, someone who feels very small and insignificant, so he has to put his name in 40-foot letters on a building. A healthy person doesn't do that.

CT: Do you have a sense of the timeliness of this play in the context of the American political landscape, even though it wasn't written at this time?

PP: I do. My hope is that the political aspect of the play doesn't overshadow the universal aspect of the play. The metaphorical wall having now become concrete and actual, it might lose a little bit of its resonance because people can't get their mind off of this idea that this madman wants to build an actual wall. I think that song, which was written 11 years ago, is one of the great folk songs of all time in its circular logic - "We build the wall to keep us free" and we come back around to "What keeps us free? The wall keeps us free" so you just have to keep building it. It's the military industrial complex that is capitalism itself - that we just have to keep doing and doing because that's what keeps us free and it becomes this cycle. You could sing that song forever. I think the mythic element of what Anai?s has done, for me, far outweigh the political aspects of what she's done. I happen to agree with the politics of it but it's much deeper than that. It doesn't get tied to this moment; it's timeless.

It's the brazenness of the moment, this person using all of these old techniques: the wall, the big lie, the outrageous lie - the lie that is so evident - and doing it over and over and over again so you erode the very idea that there is any rational truth to be had. They use that term "alternative facts." We have alternative facts - that's really down the rabbit hole. But, I think it will strengthen people's need for the material, in a way, this particular moment in time. Of course, when we were doing [Hadestown] at New York Theatre Workshop, it was out there but none of us expected him to win. We all thought it was absurd. Then, he got the nomination and we thought, 'What's happening?". And you realize - there are certain moments in time, when you realize how little you know about your fellow human beings, that that many people could be, in my view, fooled so badly.

CT: You're a renowned Shakespearean actor. Do you find the Shakespearean canon informs the more contemporary roles that you do?

PP: Shakespeare helps with everything. And the more you've played, the more you can, in a way, steal from yourself. Let's say you've explored Macbeth, and you've played Hamlet, Iago, King Lear - there are aspects of all of those characters that might be useful in a character like Hades and you can steal little bits from yourself and cobble something together. Shakespeare wrote about everything. I've played Macbeth three times; I've played Iago twice; I've played Hamlet three times. And, each time, I find more and more and more and then I'm anxious to do it again. There's no bottom. With other roles, you do reach a certain saturation point. There's a line - I've got that, I don't need to come back to that again. Shakespeare is helpful with everything because everything comes back to him; all modern story-telling is, in some way, based on Shakespeare. We can't help it. The very idea that a villain might have some motiva- tion is a Shakespearean notion. Before that, they thought the way Nazis did - that people were bad genetically. Jews were bad, bastards were bad, black, brown people were bad, Muslims were bad - you could tell about that person by looking at them. It was Eugenics. Shakespeare began to think psychologically. So the very idea that we even raise the question of why Hades does what he does or why Iago does what he does is a Shakespearean question.

CT: Do you think Hades is a role that you can keep plumbing the depths of for a while?

PP: Yeah. You know, I've been working on it now for a few years in workshop and in performance and I've been so lucky, for example, that Amber Gray has been there the whole time because really my performance is dependent on hers. So much of what Hades does is about Persephone. I venture to say that everything he does is because of Persephone. It's really a love story. It's about a marriage at a crisis point and him trying to win her back. When he goes to get Eurydice, he does it out of jealousy and anger that [Persephone] hasn't appreciated everything he's built for her. So he says, 'I'll go find someone who will appreciate it.' He doesn't care about her. It's all about Persephone, and Amber is so alive in every moment as an actor that, as long as she's with the show, I could never get tired of doing it because there is always something new coming at me.

Hadestown runs November 11 to December 3, 2017, at Citadel Theatre. For more information or to purchase tickets, call 780.425.1820 or visit www.citadeltheatre.com.

Pictured: Jessie Shelton, Lulu Fall, Shaina Taub, Amber Gray, Chris Sullivan, and Patrick Page in HADESTOWN at NYTW. Photo by Joan Marcus.


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