Looking back at Hadestown’s long and winding road to the West End – which begun with one song when she was a gigging folk musician and included a run at the National Theatre before scooping an armload of Tony awards for its run on Broadway – Mitchell says, “I think it took so long because I didn’t know what I was doing or getting into. I don’t come from the theatre world, I come from the singer-songwriter world. I love folk music and balladry, but I was always interested in storytelling by way of songs.”
In one of the show’s stand-out numbers, Why We Build the Wall, Hades, king of the underworld, sings, that “our work is never done”. It seems the same is true for Mitchell: she’s flown in for 48 hours to make some edits to the London production. The show has already gone through years of development and multiple versions; will it ever be finished?