Review: HADESTOWN: TEEN EDITION Presented by the Gator Lane Players of Land O'Lakes High School

Land O' Lakes High School’s Gator Lane Players are on a roll.  Before this school year, they put on incredible productions of what I deemed as questionable shows.  I know the kiddos like the likes of The Addams Family, Legally Blonde, Mean Girls and Mamma Mia, but apart from some of the cool songs or memorable characters, they have nothing to offer as shows.  Other than marketing and the producers’ needs to turn every movie or song catalogue into a musical, I can’t think of a reason for them to exist.  I know that sounds harsh, but a flawed show is a flawed show, even if a production of it has been stellar (which has been the case with the Land O'Lakes High School group, led by the legendary Sabrina Hydes).  Their productions actually made me appreciate so many aspects of these shows that, as readers know, are far from my favorite. 

But what happens when a show that they’re doing is actually quite good, like last fall’s Six: The Musical or their current winner, Hadestown: Teen Edition?  Then it’s a win-win situation.  Six is a good show, and their production was quite tight and electric, but Hadestown is something else…am I wrong to say that it verges on greatness?   (It also happened to be the last Broadway show I experienced before the pandemic shut everything down six years ago.)  And when you get a high school that does these shows justice, then all is well with the world and the future of musical theatre is in grand hands. 

As good as their past shows have been, Hadestown ranks as perhaps their best (it’s a coin flip between it and Six).  Everything comes together in this famous retelling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice (with book, music and lyrics by Anais Mitchell). 

Meet Eurydice, a wandering soul who ultimately escapes to the underworld to avoid the real world’s poverty and bad weather. Her poet-lover, the singer-songwriter Orpheus, travels to hell in order to rescue her from her fate. Hades, king of the underworld and god of the dead, can keep Eurydice for eternity, so what can our hero Orpheus ultimately do to win her back and return her to the land of the living?

Spotlighting the dichotomies of life (home vs. escape, love vs. loss), Hadestown says so much about our current world while dealing with a storyline originating 2500 years ago.  Still, it’s hard to disassociate politics from the show when you hear songs like “Why We Build the Wall,” which sounds like a current blustering anti-migrant campaign slogan from you-know-who.

And with Mitchell’s haunting score, we feel like we’re trapped in the 1990s in some never-ending grunge concert.    That said, Hadestown, as great as much of it is, is not perfect.  The musical goes on a wee bit too long for its own good, and many of the songs have a certain sameness about them.  But its highs—“When the Chips Are Down,” “Wait for Me,” “Why We Build the Wall,” “Way Down Hadestown”—are about the best that this century has had to offer the musical theatre gods.  When the shows stays grounded, it does its job; but when it soars, it really soars!

And the Gator Lane Players of Land O'Lakes High School truly soar in this, one of the better high school productions you will have the pleasure of seeing.  It closed at the Wesley Chapel Performing Arts Center on Saturday, February 28th.

Leading the way in the cast, you have a tremendous Eurydice in Jade Ethier (who I saw in the role of Persephone in Hadestown at Corbett Prep last summer).  Ms. Ethier, a senior, has been a standout in several LOLHS shows. She exudes that star quality, is always in the moment and, best of all,  sings fabulously.  Her Act 2 solo—“Flowers”--is a stunner that left the audience in tatters.

Jaxon Wallace as Orpheus gets better as the show progresses, looking like an amalgam of a young Bob Dylan and Justin Bieber in his teen idol days.  As his circumstances grew in the show—trying to save the love of his life—the performance grew.  Job well done.  

Sofia Acosta, another standout, makes for a rather sultry Persephone, an underworld floozy. She starts Act 2 off with a bang with her “Our Lady of the Underground" and never lets up.

Hermes is our Narrator, part Emcee from Cabaret, part Leading Player from Pippin. Played by the incredibly talented Andrew Martin, a junior, it’s a joyously energetic role as well as exceedingly cool.  But the part seemed to slink in the background as the show went on and by Act 2 you sometimes forgot he was there.    

My vote for the Best in Cast goes to three young women as a Greek chorus of sorts, the three Fates: Savannah Wardell, Mariah Rojas and Camila Trejos.  Donned in Goth black, the three Fates look like they’re auditioning for the part of Morticia.  But their harmonies are outrageously good, sort of like the Andrews Sisters of Death.  At times they have a deathly hollow TLC feel to them (instead of TLC, they should be called RIP).  All three of them are exemplary.  

The hardest part for casting a teen in HADESTOWN would certainly be in finding a Hades, that Caiphas-voiced king of the underworld.  On Broadway, we had the lower-than-low bass of Patrick Page, whose every word shook you and rattled the walls of the theatre (and in the process, rattled our souls as well).  In any of the youth versions of the show that I’ve encountered, this is the part that is near-impossible to correctly capture.  Here, with Lurch-tall freshman Elliot Smith in the role, he hovers over the rest of the cast but he doesn’t have the commanding deep voice necessary for the part (i.e. the theatre walls don’t shake when he sings and my soul certainly wasn’t rattled).  Mr. Smith does an admirable job here, especially for being so young, and his potential knows no bounds.  But without that deep voice of doom--what the Grim Reaper would sound like if he could sing, a Phantom not of the Opera but of Hell itself—we’re missing out on so much of the story’s power. 

Once again the LOLHS ensemble is so good, including Magdah Moore, Abi Parilla, Gabe Gasparini, Kingston Gordon, Ethan Gingras, Alexander Ruiz, Christian Rosas, Max Schmitt, Fiona McMillan,Isabel Cula, Aislyn Morris, Akilah Polanco, Gracie Jenkins, Olivia McNees, Lyla MacQuarrie, Marley Shoulders, Hope Kawa, Alanna Smith, Emilee Allen, Hailey Barrron, Annalee Van Ost, Chloe Mullins, and Monica Brewer.  My vote for best ensemble member goes to Mae Logan, who is always in the moment, always electric onstage in the group numbers.  And last but not least, the show’s stage manager, Amelia Smith, gets her moment onstage as a solo trombonist that earned lots of applause from the audience. 

The show’s best moment, a highlight here and on Broadway, is “Wait For Me,” with some of the most evocatively cool lighting imaginable. It’s the number we take with us, where the cast, choreographers, tech crew and directorial vision come together to create something so inventive and majestic (terrific lighting effects care of Keith Eisendstat, with a light crew that includes Daniel Harris, Dallin Boothe and Addy Gillespie).

Sometimes the choreography (by Isaac Parrilla, Jade Ethier, Amelia Stinson and Samantha Cressman) was off the charts amazing ("Wait for Me" and “Way Down Hadestown,” the latter where my foot could not stop tapping).  But other times it seemed less than great, kind of tossed together with a few flips and gymnastics thrown in for good measure.

The band, a combination of high schoolers and professionals, simply rocks.  I know it’s easier for schools to choose pre-recorded tracks, but there’s nothing like a live band to bring a show to the next level.  And that’s certainly the case here.  Led by the incomparable music director, Renee Palma, the band includes Jayden Hydes on piano, the aforementioned Amelia Smith on trombone, Thomas Batt;e on the cello, Joan McNamara and Rhea Nair on violin, and Jacob Barber and Nate Miller on drums (the drumming during the fight scene in Act 2 was wildly out of control).  On guitar is Milannia Travaglino, who I saw as a guitar-strumming Hermes in the Corbett Prep production last summer; it’s wonderful that she and others are back for what must be their favorite show.  

The costumes (led by costume chief Zoraiyah Lozada, with Jordan Richardson and Ethan Pumarejo on the crew) are all over the place, with some suggesting a Ren Faire appeal while the Underworld Workers (the souls of the dead)  are clad in maroon t-shirts (it didn’t feel cohesive). Peter Eales’ set design certainly works, like some sort of a muted psychedelic train station/saloon. The mics worked well, thanks to sound designer Matt Endo and the sound board operator, Ellie Young.

Director Sabrina Hydes keeps outdoing herself.  A theatre teacher extraordinaire, Ms. Hydes stands as one of the best local visionaries, who puts her heart and soul in each production.  And her cast and crew follow her lead and all do awe-inspiring work.

The show is the epitome of cool, instantly putting the viewers in a hypnotic trance.  It works from the very start when the audience instructions are read and the cast join one another  onstage, an instant camaraderie that never dissipates.

As always with the Land O'Lakes High School productions, the tech kids, the unsung heroes, get the final bow. And for the seniors, this is their last big show in high school, the last hurrah, and they proudly leave the school on an exceptional high note.  But Ms. Hydes has a great group of juniors coming up, so it will be interesting to see what shows she picks for next year.  Whatever is chosen, it will be quite a difficult task topping the excellence that was Hadestown. 
 

Photo credit: Pasco County Schools.