Marley Fenton, Bethany Antonia, Clive Rowe, Rachel Adedeji and Alastair Parker (Hadestown)

Fresh from the rehearsal room and stepping into the spotlight, the new West End cast of Hadestown are already finding new depth in Anaïs Mitchell’s genre-defying musical. I sat down with the company, including Clive Rowe, Bethany Antonia, Marley Fenton, Rachel Adedeji and Alastair Parker, to talk about stepping into these iconic roles, reinterpreting a well-loved story, and how the show continues to evolve now it’s in front of an audience.

From discovering new layers in Orpheus and Eurydice’s relationship to balancing humour and heartbreak as Hermes, the cast reflect on the emotional weight of the material, the freedom within the storytelling, and the lines that resonate most deeply with them night after night.

Clive Rowe (Hermes)

Did you experiment with different storytelling styles for Hermes, or was the tone set early on?

I came and saw the show quite early in rehearsals and it has its feel. I was given freedom in the way that I wanted to express it, but like all great writing it just comes off the page and unless you really want to mess with it, you fall into a natural rhythm of things. My big thing was that I wanted to get a narrative across. The singing is obvious and fantastic but I wanted people to understand that Hermes' connection to Orpheus was one that was real and a love of a son figure. Watching him go through that torment again and again and what that does to him, and that was my decision.

There’s a warmth and a wit to Hermes – what’s your way of balancing humour with the show’s darker themes?

Just play the truth of each moment. That is life. We can literally in a moment go from joy to despair in a second so rather than try and play it as such, you just let the piece run its course. When you get to that roadblock of despair, you embrace it and equally when you get to that roadblock of joy, you embrace it and don’t apologise for it and find the truth in it.

What line or lyric hits you the hardest?

I think it’s at the end of flowers, Eurydice says ‘come and find me in the bed that I made’ and it is just her understanding of singing about flowers and flower beds, and then you go I’ve made this bed and now I’ve got to lie in it. You know there’s so many, it’s incredible.

Bethany Antonia (Eurydice) and Marley Fenton (Orpheus)

Do you still discover new things about Orpheus and Eurydice even after opening?

Marley: Oh my gosh definitely! I feel like with a show like this, we’re going to get to the day before we finish and I’ll go oh my gosh I’ve never thought of that before. When you’ve got such amazing writing and such an amazing story, that is always going to happen because the characters have so many layers that you’ll never know everything until you’ve left the show and it’s 10 years on.

Bethany: Always, every day. For me, it’s the best bit of the job. Now we have shown the work in rehearsals, we now get to do it on stage and get to finally think. Watching how one choice an actor makes differently on a night has a ripple effect and now I’m going to make a different choice and then they’re going to make a different choice. That’s been the best part about this week for me, it's watching everyone’s new choices now were out of rehearsals and feeding into it.

What line or lyric hits you the hardest?

Marley: For me, Hermes has the lines.

Bethany: Oh my gosh he does.

Marley: ‘The meanest dog you’ll ever meet, it ain’t the hound dog in the street. He bares his teeth and tears your skin, but brother, that’s the worst of him. The dog you really got to dread is the one that howls inside your head’ for me, that’s gorgeous and it’s so true and current. It’s incredible.

Bethany: It has to be that for me too. It’s the message of the whole show. Because it’s also based on if they could just see past the doubt in their minds this whole story would’ve been different so it has to be that line. It’s so beautiful.

Eurydice and Orpheus are often seen as almost symbolic lovers – how do you ground them in reality?

Bethany: I actually think that even though the story feels so far away from us, that they actually feel so relevant to us as people because so much of their relationship is based on trust or lack of trust in themselves or in each other at the beginning when they meet. Eurydice is so distant from him and he is so open and so willing, and then they sort of switch by the end and I think that is so relevant to all relationships new, old, struggling, thriving, so I find something in them every night that feels really relevant.

Marley: I mean, it’s just so cool to feel like you’ve got the reins and that you can put your own spin on things and there’s no set way. I find it hard to put into words it’s just so cool.

Rachel Adedeji (Persephone) and Alastair Parker (Hades)

Did your interpretations of each other’s characters influence your own performance during rehearsals and now opening?

Alastair: I think we seem to kind of respond with each other so what one person is doing, you kind of counteract it and that’s where it's more of a dialogue going on.

Rachel: Yeah I agree with Al, as well it’s kind of made me come up with good choices for Persephone especially working with Al, as we’re such a lovely duo and it helps when Al makes a certain choice and I can feed off of it and we bounce off each other.

If they could finally be completely honest with each other after the show, what would they say?

Alastair: I mean I’d probably get a list of stuff. I would need to go away and have a serious word with myself.

Rachel: I think she would definitely tell him to think about how he does things and how he runs things in Hadestown.

Alastair: You’d tell me to get some therapy.

Rachel: Yes, to seek therapy. So in the show, she says to him wait for me and I feel like after that wait for me, she’s going to be like right sit down we need to talk.

Alastair: Hades would be on the front foot. He’d have to go away and think.

Rachel: She’d probably be like there’s nothing you need to say to me, I’m perfect.

Alastair: It would always be a fiery relationship I think.

Has the audience energy changed the way you play certain moments?

Alastair: You kind of interact with the audience more, so you feed off them more. Everything is also heightened when you’re in front of an audience.

Rachel: But actually, I think we were really encouraged in the rehearsal room to go full out which I actually really enjoyed, I think it’s really easy to sometimes just pace through it. But once we were actually like we’ve got this now, we know the words, we know the steps, it was great to run it a good few times and really do it like the audience is there so it doesn’t throw us off too much when we get in front of the audience. But because I have a few interactions in Our Lady of the Underground, she is like ‘come on brother’, and obviously when I’m doing it in the rehearsal room, it’s just to nothing, so it does help to lean into the audience a little bit more and have a play.

What line or lyric hits you the hardest?

Rachel: Mine is when Clive’s character Hermes says to Orpheus ‘the meanest dog you’ll ever meet, it ain’t the hound dog in the street’ and then he goes on to say ‘the one that howls inside your head’. I feel like that hits me the hardest because I’m like oh wow, it's quite deep because there’s been times where I’ve probably been my own worst enemy. It really is that, when doubt comes in, you have to shift your mindset in moments that require.

Alastair: I don’t know, there’s so many that each night it’s a different thing. You hear a different one so I couldn’t really pinpoint. There's so many that it depends on how you’re feeling.

Hadestown is currently playing at the Lyric Theatre and is booking up until 13th December - tickets and more information can be found here.

Photography by Brinkhoff-Moegenburg