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dark heart beneath Rodgers & Ham-
merstein’s sunny golden-age classic,
suggesting that the brashness, violence,
and suspicion of the Other that flavor
this post-2016 era have been baked into
the American pie since the beginning.
And in Hadestown, under the direction
of Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre,
and the Great Comet of 1812), the folk-
rock singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell
resets the Orpheus and Eurydice myth
in a twilight Depression-era New Orle-
ans, turning Hades into a charismaticdemagogue who, in a song called “Why
We Build the Wall,” sings, “Because we
have and they have not!/Because they
want what we have got!”M
eanwhile, away from the
rialto, a new generation
of ferociously talented
playwrights is not so qui-
etly laying claim to theater’s future.
They have been led this season by an
astonishing group of young writers
of color (and one Polish immigrant),creating works of wild invention and
blazing intensity that force audiences
to confront racism, inequality, sexism,
and the pain of being othered in bold-
ly theatrical and, at times, uncomfort-
ably personal terms.
Martyna Majok’s gorgeous, reso-
lutely unsentimental Cost of Living,
which looks at four people—a quad-
riplegic, a man with cerebral palsy,
and their caregivers—who converge
in a New Jersey apartment building,
WIGS, LEAH LOUKAS AND KEVIN THOM becomes a CONTINUED ON PAGE 149