Hadestown Tickets at the Lyric Theatre
A man walks into hell to fetch back the woman he loves, and everyone in the room already knows how it ends. Watching him try anyway is everything.
From £302 hours 30 minutes, with an intervalAges 8 and up
A musical at the Lyric Theatre, 2 to 4 minutes' walk from Piccadilly CircusBooking to 12 December 2027
Next available
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020 7193 9050 · Monday to Saturday 8am to 8pm, Sunday 10am to 8pm
Help choosing your seat
Who Is Hadestown Best For?
- Anyone who would rather be carried by music than follow a plot. This is a sung-through show with a folk and jazz score and a small band on stage all night. If that sounds good, it is one of the best evenings in London.
- People who like a show that trusts them. Nobody explains the myth to you. The show plays, you don't need to know the story before you come in.
- Anyone who has seen the film and wants the real thing. Hadestown Live in London was shot in this building, with the original cast. The stage version has a different cast and a room that reacts.
- Not the show for you if you want a story that keeps turning. The plot is old and simple on purpose, and a few critics found the repetition heavy going. That is the honest trade.
- Ages 8 and over. There is nothing explicit in it, but it is long, dark in mood and largely sung.
About Hadestown at the Lyric Theatre
Hadestown opened at the Lyric on 21 February 2024 and is booking to Sunday 27 June 2027. It began life as Anaïs Mitchell's folk concept album, became a stage show in New York, played the National Theatre in London in 2018, and then won eight Tony Awards on Broadway in 2019, including Best Musical.
Rachel Chavkin directs and the band sits on stage in full view for the whole show. It is a small band, and it sometimes feels closer to a folk gig than a West End orchestra.
This show has an unusually devoted audience. It is not rare to find people at a performance who have seen it dozens of times, which is a useful signal if you are wondering whether it rewards a second visit.
The Lyric Theatre is on four levels, with a large Stalls, and it suits this show: it is intimate enough that the front rows are genuinely close to the band. Our Lyric Theatre guide has the full seating detail.
What's Hadestown About? The Story in Short
Two stories, told at once.
Orpheus and Eurydice. He is a poor young musician writing a song to bring the world back into tune. She is cold and hungry and tired of being both. When work and warmth are offered underground, she takes them, and he goes after her.
Hades and Persephone. The king of the underworld and his wife, married a very long time, in the worst stretch of it. He has built a walled industrial city and filled it with workers who cannot leave.
Hermes narrates. The part is written for a man and is cast the other way here, and has been in every London company so far. Three Fates trail the characters throughout, singing their worst thoughts back at them. The songs most people arrive knowing are Wait For Me, Way Down Hadestown, Our Lady of the Underground, Why We Build the Wall and Road to Hell.
It is not a happy ending. The show tells you so in the first five minutes, and then asks you to hope anyway.
Performance Schedule
| Day | Times |
|---|---|
| Monday | No performance |
| Tuesday | 7pm |
| Wednesday | 7pm |
| Thursday | 2:30pm and 7:30pm |
| Friday | 7:30pm |
| Saturday | 2:30pm and 7:30pm |
| Sunday | 3pm |
Extra Sunday evening performances at 7:30pm on 20 September and 25 October 2026. On those days the matinee moves to 2:30pm.
Christmas weeks run to a different pattern, so check your date when you book.
Best Seats for Hadestown
The best seats are the middle of the Stalls and the front of the Dress Circle. That is where the theatre charges most, and it is charging correctly.
If you want that view for less, ask for Dress Circle row E or F. They are about £70, where row D directly in front of them is premium at about £90. The cheaper row sits behind the dearer one here, which is the opposite of what people expect.
The value pick is the rear Stalls, from row M. The Dress Circle overhangs from there and the price drops away. What the overhang takes is the top of the set rather than the performers, and this staging does not use much height, so you lose less than the price suggests.
And the front row is worth choosing on purpose. Most shows put their cheapest good seats at the back. This one is staged low with the band right in front of you, so the front row is close in a way that suits it, and it does not carry a premium price.
Whichever you pick, check the seat number and not just the row. The Lyric has pillars on three of its four levels, and two seats four places apart in the same row can be a clear view and a blocked one.
Cast and Creative Team
Anaïs Mitchell wrote the music, the lyrics and the book, which is rare in musical theatre, and she wrote most of the score as a folk album years before there was a show around it. Rachel Chavkin directs.
The company changed on 15 September 2026, and two of the new names are a draw in their own right.
Nathan Sykes, of The Wanted, has taken on Orpheus. It is a harder part than a pop credit suggests: Orpheus plays guitar on stage and sings much of the role in falsetto, and every critic who reviewed the show went straight to that voice.
Danielle de Niese plays Persephone, and she won an Olivier Award for opera earlier this year. Persephone spends half the year above ground and half below, so she arrives into the show rather than being in it from the start, and her entrance is one of the numbers people leave humming.
Shaun Dooley plays Hades, with Fayth Ifil as Eurydice and Malinda Parris as Hermes. Marley Fenton, Rachel Adedeji, Clive Rowe, Alastair Parker and Bethany Antonia played the same five parts until 13 September.
What does not change is most of the stage. The three Fates, the Workers chorus and the band carry straight through, so what turned over in September was five principals rather than the production. If you have seen it once, a second visit is a genuinely different set of voices in the same show.
The full company, and the rest of the creative team, are under Cast and Creatives.
Book Your Hadestown Tickets
Every price we quote is all-in: the price you see is what you pay, levy included. The bands are set out under Tickets and Best Seats.
Call us if you want to talk the seat numbers through before you commit. At a theatre with pillars on three levels, that is worth five minutes of anybody's time.
Dates & tickets
FAQs
There is. The proshot, meaning the professionally filmed stage capture, was shot in this theatre. Hadestown Live in London was shot at the Lyric across three performances in 2025 and reaches UK cinemas on 13 October 2026 for a limited run. One thing to know before you choose: the film has a different cast. It captures the original Broadway leads, who played a five-week run here in early 2025. The stage show has been recast since, most recently in September 2026.
Not at the moment. No streaming release has been announced, on any platform. The only way to watch it rather than attend it is the proshot in cinemas from 13 October 2026, and that is a limited run rather than a permanent release. If a streaming date is announced we will put it here.
Yes. The first ever UK and Ireland tour opens on 19 February 2027 at Curve, Leicester, then plays the Lowry in Salford, just outside Manchester, followed by Leeds, Nottingham, Birmingham, Milton Keynes, Southampton and Norwich. Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Liverpool, Newcastle, Dublin and Belfast are announced with dates to follow. The London run books to June 2027, so for several months you will be able to see it either in the West End or perhaps closer to home.
2 hours 30 minutes including one 20-minute interval. A 7:30pm performance is out at about 10pm and a 2:30pm matinee at about 5pm. Tuesday and Wednesday start at 7pm, so those finish nearer 9:30pm.
8 and over. There is no bad language or explicit content. It deals with poverty, death and a marriage in difficulty, and it is sung almost the whole way through, which is a lot to sit with for a younger child.
The production uses haze and smoke, and strobe-like effects throughout.
No. The show tells you everything you need in the opening number, including the ending.
Yes, and it is upfront about it. Hermes tells you where this is going before it goes there. What the show is interested in is the singing of a sad song anyway, which is a different feeling from a bleak one.
We'd say either mid Stalls or front of the Dress Circle. For more information, see Best Seats above, and our Lyric Theatre guide for the pillars.
Yes, six between October and December 2026: BSL on 8 October and 14 November, captioned on 21 October and 5 December, audio described on 29 October and 28 November. Wheelchair and companion seats are half price. Booking for any of these is handled by the venue's own team rather than by us.
Very nearly. There is little spoken dialogue, and if you know the cast recording you already know most of the show, because very little was cut on the way to the stage.
Yes, 20 minutes. The Lyric has four bars but one staircase between them, so order interval drinks before the show starts and they will be waiting.
Latecomers are held and seated at a suitable break. Given the show opens by telling you the whole story, it is a bad one to walk in halfway through the first number.
Yes, sold in the theatre before the show, at the interval and afterwards, and online.
They split, and interestingly they split on the same thing. See what the critics said.
Tickets and Best Seats for Hadestown
Prices run from around £30 to around £70, with premium seats from about £90, rising to about £95 at weekends. Every price includes the theatre's £1.50 restoration levy, and ours are all-in.
What this show does to the seat question. Most seat advice is about how far back you are. Here it is about how close you want to be to a band you can see all night, and about pillars.
- Front row. Close, loud, and a genuinely different way to watch it.
- Rear Stalls from row M. The value pick, and cheaper than the view deserves.
- Dress Circle rows E and F. About £70, against about £90 for row D in front.
- Grand Circle side blocks, at the front. The best of the cheap seats, side-on but close.
- Check the seat number. Pillars stand on three levels.
Seating plan
Dates & tickets
Booking now
Getting to the Lyric Theatre
Lyric Theatre, 29 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 7ES, on Shaftesbury Avenue towards the Piccadilly Circus end, next door to the Apollo.
Piccadilly Circus (Bakerloo and Piccadilly) is 2 to 4 minutes. Leicester Square is 5 to 6 minutes. Tottenham Court Road, for the Elizabeth line, is about 10 minutes.
Buses 14 and 19 run along Shaftesbury Avenue itself. The Piccadilly Circus stops add the 9, 12, 23, 88, 94, 139, 159 and 453.
Doors and bars open about 45 minutes before. Arrive 20 to 30 minutes before, no later. Full travel, access and nearby detail is in our Lyric Theatre guide.
Address
29 Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D 7ES
Nearest Tube
Piccadilly Circus (2-4 min walk)
Hadestown Cast and Creative Team
The company changed on 15 September 2026.
The current company
- Nathan Sykes as Orpheus
- Fayth Ifil as Eurydice
- Shaun Dooley as Hades
- Danielle de Niese as Persephone, an opera singer who won an Olivier Award earlier this year
- Malinda Parris as Hermes
The company until 13 September 2026
- Marley Fenton as Orpheus
- Bethany Antonia as Eurydice
- Alastair Parker as Hades
- Rachel Adedeji as Persephone
- Clive Rowe as Hermes, an Olivier Award winner and one of the most recognisable voices in British musical theatre
The Fates are played by Melanie Bright, Spike Maxwell and Lauran Rae, and they are on stage almost constantly, shadowing everyone. The Workers chorus is Femi Akinfolarin, Michelle Andrews, Gabriela Benedetti, Ollie Bingham and Sebastian Lim-Seet. Both groups carried straight through the cast change.
Behind the show
Written by Anaïs Mitchell. Directed by Rachel Chavkin. Choreography David Neumann, set Rachel Hauck, costumes Michael Krass, lighting Bradley King, sound Nevin Steinberg and Jessica Paz. Arrangements and orchestrations by Michael Chorney and Todd Sickafoose.
The band plays on stage, in costume, for the entire show. They are not in a pit and they are not hidden, and several critics singled them out ahead of the cast.
Hadestown Reviews and Reception
The stars ran from five to two, but the reviews themselves agree far more than that suggests. Every critic said the score was strong and the book was thin. The difference was whether they minded.
The Times gave five stars and called it "a reminder of what musical theatre can achieve", while still asking whether the evening could lose fifteen minutes. The Guardian, at four, called it "one of the best West End musicals around" and the book "barely there". The Evening Standard, at two, said "the endless reprises start to drag" and in the same review called the songs "strong, standout tunes".
Audiences have been considerably warmer than the critics were. If a set of mixed stars is what is holding you back, that gap is the more useful number of the two: plenty of shows have been hits in spite of their press night.
Our full breakdown is in what the critics said.
Gallery
Hadestown
Lyric Theatre