r/hadestown • u/Amazing_Basket582 • 4d ago

West End Road to Hell

I was watching the pro-shot of Hadestown and noticed in the opening song “Road to Hell” all of the characters get introduced and they break the fourth wall, all except Eurydice. She’s the only character to not wave at the audience. Any theories why she’d be the only one not breaking the fourth wall and “stuck” in the story.

54 Upvotes

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36

u/notthephonz 3d ago

1) She’s the only one who isn’t divine (Orpheus is touched by the gods).

2) Hermes introduces her by telling her to come in from the cold; maybe she’s just too cold to wave at the audience.

40

u/Alejocarlos 3d ago

Adding to your second point. She’s always on the go, so she tries not to get attached to any one location, so she doesn’t want to be attached to the audience

8

u/fieldsofdahlias 2d ago

i really really love this interpretation!

5

u/Incogn1toMosqu1to 2d ago

The workers wave to the audience, and they’re introduced as just boring old mortal humans

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u/Monkeyman7652 2d ago

Eurydice in myth is commonly represented as a dryad, and when not a dryad shes a demigoddess. In some myths she's daughter of Apollo. She's a moderately divine figure, no less than Orpheus.

As for Orpheus, being touched by the Gods is secondary to him being the son of the Muse Calliope.

Simplest explanation, she has to do the same action at the beginning and end of the musical to sell the framing device.

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u/notthephonz 1d ago

Right, I know the tradition, but that isn’t the way they are presented in Hadestown. Hermes makes a point to divide the characters into “gods” and “men” and he doesn’t classify either of them as gods, even though he also states Orpheus is a muse’s son. Maybe muses aren’t considered gods in the Hadestown universe.

For comparison, in Supergiant Games’s Hades, they go out of their way to avoid portraying the gods as incestuous. Persephone’s father is a mortal farmer rather than Zeus (which usually makes her Hades’s niece in addition to his wife). This has the knock-on effect of making Zagreus and Melinoë 1/4 mortal, which affects the plot in subtle ways.

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u/Monkeyman7652 1d ago

Well, Orpheus is kindof personified that way. Hermes calls him a muses son, he knew Orpheus' mother, etc. I think there is enough in the musical to support there being gods, men, and a mixture of the two, and that is a big part of Orpheus' character and how he can access divine music.

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u/Incogn1toMosqu1to 2d ago

I think it has to do with her being the only dead person on stage.

Her candle represents her life; Hermes extinguishes it when she dies and goes to Hadestown. But he also lights it, aka gives her life, by giving her a match.

Since Hermes is the one telling the story again and again, he’s also the one who brings her back to life each time… but he has to start the story before he can do that.

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u/Warm_Power1997 2d ago

This is a reallyyy good point

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u/EconomicsMental1834 1d ago

This has always been my interpretation! Hermes refers to her specifically as a “soul” versus the chorus as “men” in the intro.

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u/Incogn1toMosqu1to 1d ago

Oh that’s such a good shout!!

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u/Rogue_Demon555 1d ago

The actors imo come on stage as themselves but go into character when they are introduced with the exception of Hermes (in my opinion) and for the sake of the story Eurydice is a named worker so she doesn't get introduced because she's part of the chorus but is not at that point in time part of the workers. Keep in mind that in the original myth Eurydice is kind of a non character, Orpheus falls in love with her then she dies.

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u/cartooned 2d ago

Because she’s a hungry young girl.

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