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I am not quite the right audience for this book, because I'm a big fan of Hadestown, but I'm a fan of the 2010 concept album, not the recent Broadway musical!
This book contains the full lyrics to the musical, and notes from Mitchell about the process that took each song from its beginning to its final form. She talks multiple times about the ongoing need to change poetry into something more clear and concrete for the show, which makes a lot of sense for a musical, but which makes me sad as someone who loves an earlier and more poetic version of the songs.
A full length musical does have specific needs, and all of her discussion of how to shape the music and the story into what it needed to be to succeed was certainly interesting. But it's basically the story of how she took something that was very good at being one specific art form, and turned it into something that's very good at being a different art form. And I just don't have the emotional attachment to the Broadway version to be invested in the direction the edits took her.
(This might change if I ever see the musical live! But I haven't had the opportunity, and I don't know if I ever will)
This book contains the full lyrics to the musical, and notes from Mitchell about the process that took each song from its beginning to its final form. She talks multiple times about the ongoing need to change poetry into something more clear and concrete for the show, which makes a lot of sense for a musical, but which makes me sad as someone who loves an earlier and more poetic version of the songs.
A full length musical does have specific needs, and all of her discussion of how to shape the music and the story into what it needed to be to succeed was certainly interesting. But it's basically the story of how she took something that was very good at being one specific art form, and turned it into something that's very good at being a different art form. And I just don't have the emotional attachment to the Broadway version to be invested in the direction the edits took her.
(This might change if I ever see the musical live! But I haven't had the opportunity, and I don't know if I ever will)
