It’s 12 years since Anaïs Mitchell began writing folk opera Hadestown – and it was another four before this bold and acclaimed resetting of the Orpheus and Eurydice tale in Depression-era America began to creep into wider consciousness in album form. It featured, among others, Justin Vernon (Bon Iver), and gained momentum as an off-Broadway stage show. And now – about to reach its apotheosis with a three-month run at London’s National Theatre, followed by a transfer to Broadway proper – Hadestown will take her to a new sphere entirely, and possibly come to define her.
But it would be wrong if this were to be at the expense of her other strengths and achievements. The intervening years have seen the irresistible development of a multi-layered artist, not least as a charismatic live performer with an idiosyncratic style, and a songwriter of exceptional imagination and perception who draws subtly from the language of traditional folk to couch her rich and intriguing vignettes of life. Indeed, one of her finest, the charged Young Man in America, is almost a mini-opera in its own right.
This one-off gig saw her performing a smattering of Hadestown songs, including the prescient Why We Build the Wall and the deliciously vaudevillian Our Lady of the Underground. But it was not a preview of the forthcoming theatre show, more a general showcase of the rest of her career.
Slick, she isn’t. Mitchell and her admirable collaborators – Todd Sickafoose (upright bass), Michael Chorney (guitar), Liam Robinson (piano, banjo) – were surrounded on all sides of an intimate stage that must have felt like a boxing ring. With the front rows eyeballing every nuance of banter, it seemed more house gig than prestigious concert.
She’s a folk singer in the widest sense and the lack of anything from her wonderful Child Ballads album was compensated by an ebullient reworking of Bonny Light Horseman and the revelation that she will soon be embarking on a traditional song project. Encoring with a plaintive version of the Woody Guthrie classic Deportee restated her talent for pinpointing and shaping the eternal truths of folk song into a subtly powerful commentary on modern times.
• Hadestown is at the Olivier, London, from 2 November to 26 January.
