Winner of eight Tony awards in 2019, smash-hit American musical Hadestown survived the Covid lockdown, and is still running on Broadway. Now, it’s time for London audiences to have their chance to go way, way under the ground again: the last time we saw Hadestown was at London’s National Theatre in 2018. The global fandom and critical acclaim of the musical speaks for itself; but London audiences expecting the same lightning-in-a-bottle quality of the 2018 National Theatre run might be disappointed by this West End transfer.

Fans of the original concept albums (2010, 2017), and the Grammy-winning Broadway cast recording (2019), love Anaïs Mitchell’s score for its poetry, and gentle, acoustic simplicity. We need calm and candles. But this production plays against the score in the strangest way, with manic, technicolour disco lighting (Bradley King) and harsh, brash sound design (Nevin Steinberg, Jessica Paz).

The cast are hell-bent on squeezing out the joy from this tragedy, dancing and grinning in all the fast bits; to help the inevitable twin tragedies of Orpheus (Dónal Finn) and Persephone (Gloria Onitiri) at the end seem more potent by contrast. But it just comes across as false crowd-hyping: inconsistent with what audiences are expecting, and what the show needs.

Newcomers are still likely to enjoy the on-stage, seven-piece New Orleans jazz ensemble, and it’s fun to see world-weary narrator Hermes (Melanie La Barrie) played by a woman for the first time. But this West End transfer is missing mystery and magic.

Playing at the Lyric Theatre, 10 February – 22 December 2024.