The Long Walk Home From Hadestown
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The Long Walk Home From Hadestown
A few weeks ago I took my kids to see Hadestown on Broadway. This was, in part, a conciliatory gesture for my eldest, whose taste for rustic vacations has steadily eroded with time. But I was unprepared for how hard and true the show would hit me, too.
When the lights came back on my face was wet with tears. I felt like the aunt in “A Wagner Matinée” who visits her nephew in New York and is transformed by an afternoon at the opera. Aunt Georgiana sobs, when the music stops, that she doesn’t want to leave. I felt a little that way, too, but not because I had to return to a frontier homestead.
Hadestown explains so much about the world we live in and why the world as it could be, which we crave so much, keeps getting dashed upon a river of stones. I felt grateful for that elegance and clarity, but a little wrecked by the tragic cycle it follows.
Aristotle said that the purpose of tragedy is catharsis, that piquing our imaginative pity and anguish allows us to let those things go, the way we might shake off a terrible dream. But as I walked back out onto the crowded streets, I carried everything I’d seen and heard. It felt too true to release.
I’m carrying it still.
The day started with a ferry ride across the Hudson from Weekhawken. It was one of those piercing blue days that blends the best of summer and fall, mid-70s and clear, just a touch of breeze.
We tramped to the subway and then to the Lego store on Fifth Avenue, buying kabobs and burgers from street vendors, trying to fit in something for everyone. Friends tell me that NYC is always changing, and I’m sure that it is, but the scene from our lunch spot on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral seemed pretty timeless to me.
A panhandler set up shop nearby, ostensibly raising money for priests to retire more comfortably, but offering no assurances that I could see that any donated funds would reach the local diocese. Presumably one could serve the same cause by inquiring within St. Patrick’s itself, but I kept that thought to myself.
The kids ate their burgers and took it all in, passing no judgment. That is one of the gifts a city gives: the endless stream of humanity.
But soon it was time for the main event, and we carried our Legos and souvenirs over to Broadway.
