T Max reviews our Anais Mitchell and the Hadestown Orchestra show

Me & Thee Coffeehouse, Marblehead, MA  5/6/11

It’s the first time for me at the 41-year-old Me & Thee and it’s a lovely small church setting — pews with a center isle, high ceiling, and a large banner on the wall behind the stage that reads, “We are all one people,” and “Peace” — my kinda place. I almost immediately run into Anais Mitchell carrying her guitar through the hallway. I hold out a copy of the July 2010 Noise with her dominating the cover. She had never seen it because she was touring the West Coast when it was distributed. Then I run into Dinty Child (one of the Hadestown vocalists tonight) who tells me Anais is used to working with a new cast each time she performs Hadestown, but tonight there will be a few veterans. Oh yeah, Hadestown is a folk opera based on the ancient Greek myth of the poet Orpheus and his doomed quest to rescue his love Eurydice from the underworld, set in a post apocalyptic American depression era. · read more >