Edmonton
Once “Road to Hell” took over as our opening number, “Any Way the Wind Blows” had to work harder on behalf of the story, paint a more specific picture of our young lovers, especially Eurydice. In Edmonton it remained the Fates’ song, but they sang directly to Eurydice, and Rachel foregrounded her visually.
I had an elaborate scene in mind, and I tried to write it into the song. It involved Eurydice asking for a match, to build a fire, and Orpheus trying to strike one and failing. Eurydice takes his matches and successfully strikes one, but the Fates blow it out, once! twice! and the third time Eurydice outsmarts the Fates, the fire gets lit, Orpheus is impressed by her practical skills (not his strong suit), and so on—all in sixteen bars of music and spare-almost-to-the-point-of-abstraction poetry.
It didn’t work. Over the course of three productions we let go of the fire (Rachel had the better, not to mention safer idea of a hurricane candle) and the act of Orpheus getting anywhere near the matches (with the candle, it was very Rent). We found we really only had time to foreground one match-lighting moment (as it turns out, it takes time to light a match!). But Eurydice’s lines Anybody got a match? and Give me that survive to this day, and those seven words have become essential to her character.
There was a final Hermes stanza in Edmonton—a summary of the match play—that I loved at the time and knew wouldn’t last:
Hermes: This hungry young girl struck a match / And she lit a flame in the poor boy’s heart / Wind didn’t want that flame to catch / But it caught . . .
(Orpheus: Come home with me . . .)
I was obsessed with the sound of that rhyme: heart and caught. I know this is a minority opinion among theatrical lyricists, but I want to offer a quick public defense of the slant rhyme. Never before I entered the world of theater did I find people so dogmatic about true or “perfect” end rhymes. What puzzles me about it is this: the sound of words, the weaving together of them, is about so much more than end rhyme. It’s consonance, assonance, internal rhymes wherever they can be discreetly woven in. I appreciate these devices because they don’t call attention to themselves; the seams don’t show. The perfect end rhyme waves its arms and shouts, “Look, Ma, I made a rhyme!” There’s a place for that kind of satisfying resolution, just as there’s a place for a “button” in music. But there’s also a place for the mystical, the modal, and the unresolved. The rhyming of heart and caught hit me at an angle that no true rhyme ever will.
London
I give my husband, Noah, credit for asking: Should “Any Way the Wind Blows” actually be Eurydice’s song, and not the Fates’? I started giving her lines, and it felt very right. We still craved the Fates’ involvement, as a setup of who they are, how they function in the story, and especially how they relate to Eurydice. But to hear Eurydice speak for herself, so early in the show, was game-changing. I had to rewrite the language for her, because lines like In the fever of a world in flames / In the season of the hurricanes felt hyperpoetic and therefore not believable from the mouth of our practical heroine. In London Eva Noblezada brought her tough charisma to these lines: Strange things happen in the world these days / Fall comes early, spring comes late / One day summer comes, the next she goes. And later: Strange things happen when the seasons change / In the east they got a hurricane / While the west is going up in smoke. I also gave Eurydice something like an “I Want” moment, very Eliza Doolittle: And sometimes you think / You would do anything / Just to fill your belly full of food / Find a bed that you could fall into / Where the weather wouldn’t follow you / Wherever you go . . .
I remember reading, quite deep in the process of working on Hadestown, Jack Viertel’s excellent book The Secret Life of the American Musical and realizing that our weird little show—born in the wild woods of Vermont and developed with a lot of downtown artists who disdained commercial formulas—was actually coming to resemble a classic Broadway musical structure. Our opening number was now a full-throttle company sing-along. This was followed by something like an “I Want” song from Eurydice. After that came “Wedding Song,” a playful, unconsummated courtship that could qualify as what Viertel and others call a “conditional love song.” None of this was intentional! We were feeling our way in the dark, and when something worked, we kept it. But it gave me a certain reverence for those classic formulas, which aren’t merely “commercial,” but tap deep into a human storytelling culture older than any of us can remember.
In London there was one more beloved final stanza from Hermes that was bound for the cutting room floor, a casualty of our Orpheus crisis. It went like this:
Hermes: Orpheus was a poor boy / But he had a gift to give / Eurydice knew how to survive / Orpheus knew how to live . . .
(Orpheus: Come home with me . . .)
Broadway
It was a succinct summary of our lovers, but it didn’t do enough work for our Orpheus setup. For Broadway I exploded that four-line stanza into a rambling meditation on Orpheus’s nature (And this poor boy, he wore his heart out on his sleeve . . . ) and Hermes’s relationship to him (And I liked to hear him sing / And his way of seeing things). At our New Amsterdam crisis meeting, the outro of “Any Way the Wind Blows” was identified as prime real estate upon which to establish New Orpheus. One idea that came out of that meeting was to put the boy “under the wing” of a mentor figure, Hermes. In previous versions of the show, Hermes was an objective narrator, a shifty type who kept his allegiances to himself. So it was a major shift for both characters when Hermes became Orpheus’s guardian and champion.
At that same meeting, Team Dramaturgy charged me with the exercise of imagining a more detailed backstory for Orpheus—not that any of it would necessarily go in the show, but it might shed light on his character. I began picturing a childhood for Orpheus as the “son of a muse.” I pictured his mother as a free-spirited bohemian who loved her child but might also abandon him for long periods of time in pursuit of her own adventures. I wrote that line for Hermes: His mama was a friend of mine—which appears twice—and I hated it at first, it felt too specific, the stuff of realism. But both Rachel and Ken loved it, so I humored them and left it in . . . and then I, too, came to love this imagined “friendship” between Hermes and the mysterious lady who had left her son in his care.
I thought of the extended “heart on sleeve” Orpheus outro as brand-new for Broadway, but I came across this orphaned line in the rubble of some discarded Hermes lines for this same transition from 2017:
Hermes: Orpheus was a poor boy / He wore his heart out on his sleeve / And he fell in love with Eurydice / Like an apple from a tree
More on that tree in the next scene!
COME HOME WITH ME
Hermes
You wanna talk to her?
Orpheus
Yes
Hermes
Go on . . .
Orpheus—
Orpheus
Yes?
Hermes
Don’t come on too strong
Orpheus & Chorus
Come home with me
Eurydice
Who are you?
Orpheus & Chorus
The man who’s gonna marry you
Orpheus
I’m Orpheus!
Eurydice (to Hermes)
Is he always like this?
Hermes
Yes
Eurydice (to Orpheus)
I’m Eurydice
Orpheus & Chorus
Your name is like a melody . . .
Eurydice
A singer? Is that what you are?
Orpheus
I also play the lyre
Eurydice
Ooh, a liar, and a player too!
I’ve met too many men like you<
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Orpheus
Oh no—I’m not like that
Hermes
He’s not like any man you’ve met
Tell her what you’re working on!
Orpheus & Chorus
I’m working on a song
It isn’t finished yet
But when it’s done, and when I sing it
Spring will come again
Eurydice
Come again?
Orpheus
Spring will come
Eurydice
When?
I haven’t seen a spring or fall
Since—I can’t recall
Orpheus
That’s what I’m working on
Orpheus & Chorus
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
Back into time
And all the flowers will bloom
Orpheus
When you become my wife
Eurydice (to Hermes)
Oh, he’s crazy!
Why would I become his wife?
Hermes
Maybe . . .
Because he’ll make you feel alive
Eurydice
Alive . . . that’s worth a lot
(to Orpheus) What else you got?
Notes on “Come Home with Me”
Off-Broadway
I can’t think of a scene I rewrote more times than “Come Home with Me”! I started it for NYTW as a way of contextualizing “Wedding Song.” Initially, I’d conceived of “Wedding Song” as a scene between preestablished lovers who were contemplating marriage. In the course of trying to expand the show, though (it was about an hour on the studio record, and we were aiming for two), it made sense to explore more of the lovers’ backstory. I started to imagine “Wedding Song” as less of a literal wedding proposal and more of a playful courtship between two people who had just met. “Come Home with Me” was that meeting. I loved that Orpheus could repeat the opening phrase in the underworld and it would no longer be a come-on, but a heartfelt statement. For years, though, that opening line gave us trouble, and it had to do with our Orpheus problem. I’d always imagined Orpheus as irrationally hopeful; that seemed inherent to his mythological character. But the line Come home with me—for years the first statement we heard from Orpheus—did not endear him to people. It went beyond hopeful, and painted him as cocky, with a machismo incompatible with his “sensitive” soul. It didn’t help that many of his other lines in earlier versions of the scene came across as self-aggrandizing. It took years to figure out how to reframe the scene in his favor.
Every version of “Come Home with Me” began with some version of the cosmic “naming” of the lovers, which is a motif in the show. Something about the lovers speaking or singing each other’s names aloud invoked the cosmos, Romeo and Juliet, the star-crossed inevitability of their love. Off-Broadway, more than one person asked, “But why does Orpheus fall in love with Eurydice?” And my response was, “Because he’s Orpheus . . . and she’s Eurydice!” For many, it wasn’t enough. The “naming” was followed by the “lyre / player” joke, which seemed to have staying power because it gave our heroine a chance to be tough, smart, and funny right out of the gate. Off-Broadway, the “naming” and the “lyre / player” joke were followed by this exchange:
Orpheus: I’m not like any man you’ve met
Eurydice: Oh yeah? What makes you different?
Orpheus: You see the world?
Eurydice: Of course I do
Orpheus: I’ll make it beautiful for you / For you, I’ll change the way it is
Eurydice: With what?
Orpheus (shows his lyre): With this
Eurydice: I’m sure you play it well / But only the gods can change the world / Me and you can’t change a thing (alt. Men like you can’t change a thing)
Orpheus: You haven’t heard me sing
Eurydice: Are you always this confident?
Orpheus: When I look at you, I am
Eurydice: When you look at me, what do you see?
Orpheus: Someone stronger than me / Somebody who survives
Those last two lines I wrote under dramaturgical duress and always hated, they felt heavy-handed, not of a piece with the poetry. But we were in danger of a situation where Orpheus falls madly in love with Eurydice and no one knows why. “Cosmic love at first sight” not cutting it for most people, and Eurydice’s interior qualities being undefined as yet, we had to assume he loved her because she was “beautiful,” which would have been a disservice to the depth of their love. I hunted a long time for a different line, and at one point a few days before we locked the show off-Broadway, I had what felt like a poetic epiphany. Rachel Hauck’s NYTW set was a spare, barnlike amphitheater dominated by a huge, twisted, sculptural tree. The tree was Rachel Chavkin’s inspiration, it was mythic and represented the earth, the seasons, a gathering place . . . but it was never mentioned in the text. I texted Rachel in profound excitement: When you look at me, what do you see? / I see a woman like a tree [!!!] But she wasn’t having it—we were deep in previews, she was starting to get protective of the actors, and she probably suspected the line wasn’t that good. And it’s true that we discovered multiple times that our set ought not be a literal representation of the language of the show. This hit home in Edmonton when Rachel Hauck designed a gorgeous silver train track (On the road to hell there was a railroad line!) that ended up getting cut between the first and second previews. Rachel Hauck, and the producers who’d paid for the tracks, were very Zen about their disappearance. The thing was, the railroad line had a vivid life in the poetry of the text, but to see it represented visually seemed to cheapen the metaphor. For the audience, it stole some of the free-associative pleasure of “filling in the blanks.” For the creative team, one literal choice led to another until the whole show felt heavy-handed.
Edmonton
Speaking of Edmonton, the Citadel Theatre version of “Come Home with Me” contained such cavalier lines as:
Orpheus: I’m Orpheus!
Eurydice: And I should care because . . . ?
Orpheus: Because you’re Eurydice / So come home with me
Later, when Eurydice asked what made Orpheus different, he replied, Well, I’m the son of a muse / And I’m gonna marry you! It was not a good line, but the “muse’s son” concept became important years later in my big Orpheus rewrite. There was another little exchange, born of an attempt to “ground” Orpheus in the “aboveground” world, that went like this:
Eurydice: And where would this home of yours be?
Orpheus: Right here
Eurydice: Right here? / This is the middle of nowhere
Orpheus: You should see it in the spring . . .
This whole line of inquiry turned out to be a distraction, but it got a big laugh from the Edmonton audience. Our production took place in bitter Albertan winter. The city of Edmonton has constructed an entire system of indoor pedestrian pathways so people can avoid walking outside; it’s bleak to say the least. It did feel like the middle of nowhere, and I’m sure—and I’ll have to make a trip back to find out—we should all see it in the spring.
London
The Edmonton scene had gotten long, so I went for brevity in London, where “Come Home with Me” included the most condensed summation yet of our young lovers:
Eurydice: You got something to eat?
Orpheus & Chorus: I got a melody . . .
For London, I made most of Orpheus’s spoken lines sung, and asked Liam Robinson (music director / vocal arranger) to arrange choral parts for the Workers, to back him up. I was ins
pired to do this by Justin Vernon, who sang the Orpheus part on the 2010 studio recording in many-part harmony with himself. I was listening to one of the later Bon Iver records and noticing how that choral quality could come and go quite naturally and set certain lines apart from others, lift them into a celestial place—very Orphic.
It was helpful to discover that Orpheus could express his dedication to a “project” in this scene. What exactly his project was became more and more specific over the course of various productions. In earlier drafts, he vowed to make the world beautiful or expressed his political values: I’d rather have a song to sing / Than all the riches of a king. In London I zeroed in on his “Epic”—the song he’s working on that he believes will bring the world back into tune. That clarity of focus was part of what audiences were craving from the character.
Broadway
But even a boy with a project isn’t necessarily lovable. He was still delivering swaggery lines like: Come home with me, I’m not like any man you’ve met, and Because I’ll make you feel alive. It wasn’t until Broadway, when I added the cautionary little Don’t come on too strong exchange with Hermes to the top of the scene, that his opening—Come home with me—became hilariously earnest. Now Hermes was able to act as Orpheus’s wingman (yeah, that pun was intended) and deliver all the lines formerly assigned to Orpheus that, while poetically satisfying to me, did not help us fall in love with the boy.
Working on a Song Page 3