A Vermont-bred musical comes full circle for its first performances in the state since its Broadway debut.
The national tour of Hadestown kicked off a sold-out four-day run at Burlington’s Flynn theater Tuesday night — around 48 miles from Barre, where the folk-opera musical launched its first tour around Vermont back in 2006.
Hadestown is the brainchild of Addison County’s Anaïs Mitchell, a singer-songwriter who composed and wrote the musical’s lyrics and book.
The original musical’s cast and crew was composed primarily of Vermonters; However, alongside Mitchell, orchestrator and arranger Michael Chorney and bass player Robinson Morse were the only people to be with the musical from Barre to Broadway.
Since those first performances in 2006, the show surpassed Mitchell’s own expectations, she said in a 2019 interview with Vermont Public.
“When we did that first version of the show at Barre Labor Hall, I couldn’t have, in my wildest dreams, imagined that it would land on Broadway 13 years later,” Mitchell said.
Hadestown has gone on to win eight Tony awards, launch a nationwide tour and is currently on a five-year Broadway run.
The show has gone through many iterations on its path to Broadway, but Chorney said, through all of it, the show has remained true to its Vermont roots.
“I still believe, like, one of the reasons it's still running is because that essential Vermont vibe is still — it's literally written on the page, on the music page,” he said.
Chorney hopes Vermonters attending this week's performances will feel hometown pride.
“I hope they feel, they will recognize, despite its changes, despite its growth, that there still is something very essentially Vermont about the piece that still endures … and it's like this happened because of Vermont in a certain way. I'm not sure it could have happened anywhere else,” Chorney said.
Mitchell announced on social media earlier this month that a portion of the profits from the Burlington shows will be donated to Vermont flood recovery efforts.
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