By Dylan Warren
Hadestown: Teen Edition, Community Players in Beatrice, Thursday August 30, 2025
An old, sad, story, Hadestown is a musical telling the story of Eurydice and Orpheus. An ancient Greek legend about the love shared between Eurydice and Orpheus. In this telling of the old, sad story, Hermes, our storyteller, weaves a tale of love found, love lost, love rekindled and death. This musical mixes the old tale with entrancing folk style music that’ll make you want to tap your feet and clap just like the wonderful cast. The ancient story follows the the two lovers Orpheus and Eurydice as they fall in love and work through tragedy together. Orpheus is a musician working on a song to bring spring back to dark and cold world, his heads very much in the clouds. Eurydice is a young woman who has walked the world and has seen how it truly is. They fall in love one spring and without anything to their names they decide to marry. Then as spring comes to quick end Orpheus feels convinced he must write a song to bring back the spring. Eurydice begs Orpheus to think of how they’ll survive but, when he doesn’t listen, she leaves to figure out a way herself. It’s out on this journey she find Hades who gives her a very simple choice.
It’s an old sad story yet one brilliantly told in this musical re-telling. Even more interesting being told through the lens of a teen stage adaptation. The fact that all the characters are played by actors of a younger age does give a more youthful vibrancy to the show, however it highlights an interesting mirroring between the relationships of Hades and Persephone and Orpheus and Eurydice. Though Hades and Persephone has been that of an ancient love, their love has begun to waiver and lose its potency. Thus with the entrance of Orpheus and Eurydice’s relationship, theirs has been rekindled.
Another interesting part of this telling is that of how Hades has become a sort of factory foreman who uses the souls he “buys” to build walls around his kingdom so that his, I mean “their” property can’t be taken. It adds the typical workers rising in rebellion when they see the king is weak story line, but helps to raise the stakes as Orpheus attempts to help the people leave Hades’ kingdom.
The company out at Beatrice Community Players has really put together something special with this show. The lighting design by Brandon Clark mixed very well with the set design by Mel Voorhis creating some really unforgettable vignettes in songs like “Wait For Me” and “How Long”. The costumes we’re very well done by Lindsay Armstrong, I found it very interesting for Hermes to be in such a stark contrast to the rest of the cast showing the characters real presence throughout the show.
A shout out to the whole cast for a well executed show. Joey Westerdale and Eliza Colbert were our leads Orpheus and Eurydice respectively giving us wildly emotional vocals in their songs. Nolan Marlatt and Bailey Schwab play Hades and Persephone another fine set of voices to carry such roles. Cecily Wiedel plays our Hermes with a voice and personality to help her stand out amongst the crowd.
If you go: Hadestown: Teen Edition is currently running July 31-August 3 2025 at Beatrice Community Players. Curtain at 7:30pm and 2pm on Sundays.
Dylan Warren holds a BFA in theater and film design and has worked at many local theaters as a prop master and as a volunteer actor and stagehand.
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